not titled [Refugees Finisterre Mountain Range]

This is one of a number of sketches made by Dargie in April 1944 in Finisterre Mountain Range in the upper Ramu Valley, New Guinea. The drawing depicts Papuan refugees who had walked into the positions held by the 2/10th Australian Infantry Battalion. It is a moving image that provides a rare insight into the wartime experiences of the local people and is supported by a harrowing oral history of the event as recalled by the artist then attached to Platoon HQ (2/10th Bn). The group included women, boys and babies who had been liberated from a Japanese compound and Dargie described them as ‘walking skeletons’. The emaciated child being carried in the centre foreground of the work had died being brought up the hill to the Battalion HQ and the Australians helped to bury them.