Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route

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The Aboriginal people of Australia’s Western Desert lived in their homelands for thousands of years.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the expansion of the Western Australian mining and pastoral industries led to the surveying of a track along which cattle could be driven from Kimberley stations to markets in the south.

This track became known as the ‘Canning Stock Route’.

In July and August 2007 nearly 70 artists travelled up the stock route on a six-week return to Country.

Over 100 canvases were produced on that expedition, and more stories and artworks have since been added to the collection, which was acquired by the National Museum of Australia in 2009.

Yiwarra Kuju includes beautiful plates of the complete Canning Stock Route Collection and for the very first time tells the story of the stock route’s impact, and the importance of the country around it, in Aboriginal voices and interpreted through Aboriginal eyes.

It is a story of contact, conflict and survival, of exodus and return. Above all, it is a story of family, culture and Country.