Fishing scene with Aboriginal implements
Port Jackson Painter
Watercolour and ink, 1788 - 1797, © Natural History Museum
Watling collection
The scene in the centre of this sheet shows a family paddling a canoe from which protrudes a fish-gigg – a harpoon with a 3- or 4-pronged spear at its end. Smoke rises from a small fire, kept alight on a bed of clay or seaweed in the canoe.
The fish-gigg is drawn in more detail, along with various other implements – a wooden sword, a spear, and a basket containing a fishing line with a hook made from shell.
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The Art of the First Fleet book
Enjoy rare watercolours, ink and pencil drawings and some of the only visual records of the lives of the indigenous Eora people of Australia.
These beautiful illustrations, by artists on board the First Fleet, document the sights witnessed by the first Europeans to colonise Australia.