Infinite – like grains of sand on the beach, the number of numbers, stars in the sky, dots on an Aboriginal painting . . .
When I bought this painting in Fitzroy Falls, NSW, from the artist Marie Barbaric of the Dunghutti Nation, she wrote its story on the back of the canvas for me:
One day an elder of our Nation was walking with his daughters, they came to a waterhole and the father told his daughters to wait by the pool till he returned from hunting. . . . While he was away a hunter came from another tribe and wanted to take one of the sisters for a bride. . . . The sisters ran to their father, and to help hide them from the young hunter, he threw his daughters to the stars. . .
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