With state government funding, Mirka Mora painted Melbourne’s first Art Tram in 1978, forever changing the city’s relationship with public art. Other artists daubed dozens more trams in successive years, until the project fizzled out in 1993.

Melbourne International Arts Festival revived the practice in 2013, and now it continues under Rising’s stewardship. This year First Peoples artists have wrapped six Art Trams, which are on the tracks for 12 months from May 21.

Travelling on routes 58 and 59, March of the Ants is by Aunty Rochelle Patten, a Yorta Yorta, Dhudhuroa and Wemba-Wemba elder, and her grandson, Dixon Patten. “She’s renowned for her animal illustrations,” says Kimberley Moulton, a Yorta Yorta woman and Rising’s artistic associate. “She’s talking about healing and connecting to Mother Earth, and coming together to work as ants do, which is a really strong message for us all, particularly post-Covid.”

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Aunty Zeta Thomson’s work, Mookies Around the Water Hole, was inspired by a Yorta Yorta cultural story about crossing country and depicts spirit figures dancing in front of scar trees. “Scar trees carry the markings of canoes and shields and coolamons that our ancestors removed,” Moulton says. “There are scar trees in Melbourne that you might walk past every day and not realise.” This design can be spotted on tram routes 5, 6, 16, 58 and 72.

Thomas Marks, a Wotjobaluk and Gunaikurnai man, uses a footprint motif in his work, Walking On My Father’s Country, which can be seen along routes 6 and 19. “It’s a really connecting piece,” Moulton says, “not only to land and environment, but also to journeying, and his way back to his people and his family and identity, coming through as a survivor of the Stolen Generation.”

Jarra Karalinar Steel, a Boonwurrung and Wemba Wemba woman, based Iilk on a story that her mother told her about the migration of the short-finned eel, beginning down a creek that ran along present-day Elizabeth Street. Steel’s pink-and green tram, which runs on routes 48 and 109, is illustrated with the eel, plus wattle and manna gum leaves.

Ray Thomas, a Brabrawooloong Gunnai artist (and the creator of the Northcote Town Hall mural) dedicated Djeetgun Dreaming to his granddaughter. Onto her photograph, he painted a blue wren, a women’s totem of the Gunnai. Moulton sees similarities between his use of bright colours and animals, and the 1991 tram by Yorta Yorta man Lin Onu. Catch it on lines 70 and 75.

The final tram is wrapped in Wadawurrung woman Deanne Gilson’s painting Karringalabil Bundjil Murrup, Manna Gum Tree (The Tree of Knowledge), a 2021 Blake Prize finalist depicting birds in a tree. A creation story for her people, it represents a coming together of different knowledge and the deep roots First Nations peoples have to the land. It’s running along lines 3, 3A, 64 and 67.