Exhibition Opening | Finding Eliza & Tracks

Next date: Saturday, 30 May 2026 | 09:30 AM to 02:00 PM

Join us for the official opening of two locally curated exhibitions, Finding Eliza & Tracks.

This Reconciliation Week 2026 Hervey Bay Regional Gallery is proud to present two complimentary curated exhibitions that delve into the history, present and future of Butchulla Country. Join us to celebrate these landmark exhibitions with a special morning launch event.

Programs
9:30am Welcome to Country
10:00am Speeches/ Acknowledgements
10:30am In Conversation: Larissa Behrendt and Fiona Foley

Finding Eliza
Finding Eliza at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery marks the 10-year anniversary of Professor Larissa Behrendt’s (Yuwaalaraay/Gamilaroi) seminal book Finding Eliza: Power and Colonial Storytelling (2016). Presented on Butchulla country, the exhibition revisits the story of Eliza Fraser, not to retell her account, but to examine how her version of events was elevated, amplified, and mythologised within colonial culture. These sensationalised narratives cast the Butchulla people as figures of fear and savagery, legitimising violence, dispossession, and massacre, while silencing Butchulla law, knowledge, and lived experience.

Finding Eliza has been developed in collaboration with Aboriginal lawyer, writer, and filmmaker Professor Larissa Behrendt and renowned Badtjala/Butchulla artist Dr Fiona Foley, bringing together works by Fiona Foley, Mia Boe, Sidney Nolan, alongside archival materials and historical accounts.

Tracks
In both history and Lore, tracks have allowed Indigenous peoples to navigate Country through trade, song and spirit.

The significance of tracks left by ancestors continue to be honoured today by our community through ongoing cultural practices of art, ceremony, storytelling and leadership.

Coinciding with Reconciliation Week and NAIDOC Week 2026, Tracks celebrates the achievements of young Indigenous creatives and custodians across our region, making visible the footprints these leaders follow and the new pathways they forge.

Featuring artworks by Zartisha Davis (Kabi Kabi, Butchulla and Cobble Cobble), Tori-Jay Mordey (Torres Strait Islander, Meriam, Dauareb and Maluilgal, Wakaid), Kaile Clarke (Butchulla, Woppaburra, Gunditjmara), and other community collaborations

Free, all welcome. Please register your attendance.

Image by Natasha Harth