I had the privilege of collaborating with Kalkadoon (Kalkadunga) artist Colleen Sam and her mother, Aunty Ena Sam, to create the central moving-image piece for The Unbroken Spirit of the Kalkadoons, the State Library of Queensland exhibition celebrating Kalkadoon resilience and the healing power of culture. Suspended as a 360-degree cylinder at the very heart of the show, the five-minute loop surrounds visitors in Kalkadoon Country through light, colour and motion.

The animation retells Colleen’s family Black Cockatoo Dreaming. The bird rises from the red-stone sacred mound, climbs into storm clouds, and calls out as rain begins. At the peak, thunder and lightning crack across the sky while sheets of water sweep the landscape. As the storm calms, the cockatoo descends in slow spirals, alights on the mound, and flows back into Country, symbolising renewal and the unbroken bond between sky, water and earth.

Sound is an equal narrator. Inside the animation, recorded cockatoo cries, rolling thunder and building rainfall synchronise with each visual beat. Beyond the screen, an ambient bed of flowing creek water woven with distant cockatoo calls permeates the gallery’s yarning circle and learning space, extending the Dreaming story throughout the exhibition.

Every frame draws on Colleen’s iconography and the exhibition brand identity created by Gilimbaa. Hand-drawn illustrations were composited into textured 2-D sequences; storyboards, animatics and colour passes were reviewed with the Sam family and SLQ curators at each milestone to uphold cultural accuracy and permission. The result is an immersive experience inviting visitors to pause, listen and feel the unbroken spirit of the Kalkadoons.