Check out the amazing “Two Nations. One Ocean” mural at Palau High School!

This collaboration between Palauan artist Elsei Tellei and Australian First Nations artist Maddison Gibbs is a celebration of strong and growing cultural connections between Palau and Australia as part of Australia Now: Pacific Edition. Palau President, H.E. Surangel Whipps Jr visited the mural and met the artists.

Hear more about the mural on Palau national radio, Eco Paradise.

Elsei has depicted the bai rising from an ocean backdrop – echoing the story of the first bai being found underwater and carried to land. Maddi responded through her own cultural lens, reimagining eucalyptus leaves – central to a First Nations cleansing ceremony – as ripples moving across the water’s surface, an act of purification and renewal. The two motifs overlap in meaning: the ripples also echo a Palauan saying that a good leader is like rain, calming the ocean.

The colours of the ripples and bright border motifs evoke the Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal flags, to represent Australia’s First Nations peoples of the sea and the land. Together, the works meet in the water itself – one culture’s story of shelter rising from the ocean, the other’s practice of cleansing carried across it – rendered as one unbroken surface connecting two island nations.




More Information