These ten prints by established and emerging Indigenous artists were commissioned by the Netherlands Embassy to mark 400 years of Dutch contact with the Australian continent and its people.

The Dutch East India Company's Duyfken (Little Dove) was the first European ship to sight the Australian coast when its sailed along the western side of Cape York in 1606.

Duyfken's mariners were the first Europeans known to tread on Australian soil. Artist Laurel Nannup's etching Old Spirit of the Sea captures the cultural confusion of the initial encounter between Indigenous Australians and Europeans. To the Indigenous community Duyfken's white sails may have looked like a great white bird, and the white men might have been Aboriginal ancestors' spirits returning from the dead.

In his lithograph Chris Pease considers the construction of early Dutch vessels, suggesting that the wooden hulls protected the sailors as the ribs of an animal protect its organs. The artists selected to work on this commemorative print portfolio come from regions visited by early Dutch navigators in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Tasmania.