Gadigal artist, Kate Constantine packed her suitcase full of stones she collected from creeks, streams and saltwater in the Sydney drizzle, and headed to Byron Bay.
At the gate, airport security saw a bag full of rocks - but Ms Constantine saw much more than that.
These are pieces of her Country and tools for cultural expression.
Through milling, bashing, and crushing, those same stones turned into ochre which now sits sprayed across the 11 canvases that make up her latest collection.
Raining on Eora at Rozelle's Kate Owen Art Gallery. Source: NITV
A homage to Gadigal Country, Raining on Eora is comprised of 11 artworks and is about truth-telling.
"How important this is, to write this down in history - as an archive,” Ms Constantine told NITV.
"There is this age-old adage that if you don't write it down, who won the war? We didn't win the war, but I'm trying to write it down."
In the exhibition, 10 artworks are dedicated to representing each of the original language groups of the Eora Nation - Garigal, Gadigal, Bidjigal, Wangal, Wallamattagal, Cammeraygal, Dharug, Gweagal, Guringai and Dharawal.
The final piece binds them together and pays homage to traditional scarification, Garanga.
"Raining on Eora is possibly the most challenging body of work I've ever undertaken," Ms Constantine said.
"I probably now feel the most comfortable and confident than I ever have in my own skin about both my culture and identity, but also about the storytelling and the narrative that I'd like people to understand about this beautiful, beautiful, amazing huge city called Sydney."
Gadigal and Garanga hanging in Rozelle's Kate Owen Gallery. Source: NITV
What is Eora?
For Ms Constantine, creating Raining on Eora called her to investigate what Eora really means and how the First People of Sydney came together.
“I have spent thousands of hours researching what is Eora? In its very definition, Eora means People from here,” she said.
“The question was who are we? Gadigal People from where? For me, we are from here. We are from the Eora Nation.”
“This is how it started. The different dialects within the Eora Nation, how did they come together? What are their stories?”
Kate Constantine with her son at their Byron Bay home painting Dharug. Source: Supplied
Painting each place
To answer that question, Ms Constantine went to Country, spent time and foraged ochre.
"Eleven paintings, a lot of ochre collecting, a lot of milling, a lot of bashing, a lot of throwing of ochres,” she said.
"It's always been raining when I've been collecting. I'm always sitting in a creek, or sitting in the Harbour, jumping over railings in the rain collecting rocks like a crazy person and trying to check them in on flights to go back to Byron to crush them.”
Foraging is a process "led by the Old People" said Ms Constantine.
"At one place I was led to an old cave that had hand ochre prints in the cave, and smoke marks on the ceiling."
"I looked out and I was looking straight up the guts of the Hawkesbury, up the Darkinjung. This was a lookout, it was a lookout position, it was somewhere safe that people stayed up high away, watching the river, making sure that their people were safe, that their mob were understood and were protected.
"There were a couple really visceral, spiritual experiences like that. They're Country speaking to me, that's what it is to me.”
Ochre collected from Country across Sydney. Source: NITV
The legacy in language
Raining on Eora brought together time on Country and language.
Running up a “thousand dollar bill” at the library for photocopying, Ms Constantine gathered colonial journals and collaborated those with stories from her community, to help her learn language and share that with her three sons.
Every week Ms Constantine shares a Gadigal word with her three-year-old.
"He has a Gadigal word that he takes to preschool and he gets to own it. He takes it in and at circle time he gets to introduce that word as his gift to his friends and his teacher. His teacher is amazing and then puts that into a song,” she said.
"She sent me an email saying she’d never realised how powerful the ownership over a language can be.
“Giving my three-year-old a language word every single week is providing him with a power in his culture and an identity he is really strong and happy with.”
All three of her sons became part of the creation of Raining on Eora, both painting with their mother and learning their culture.
“As a concrete Koori, I didn’t grow up like this, I didn’t grow up milling ochre, seeing smoking ceremonies . . . I want [that] for my children, more than I had for me."
“I try to bring my children in on my cultural journey but as much it's their cultural journey - they won't know any different.”
Now, after two years of foraging, researching, collecting and creating, Raining on Eora hangs in Rozelle’s Kate Owen Gallery.
Kate with her children creating an artwork. Source: Supplied
