"One Boat, One Bird" begins with a meeting between a wooden pearling lugger and a Far Eastern Curlew, one of the world’s most endangered shorebirds. The bird stands poised on the bow, two creatures shaped by tide, distance and labour, each now fading from the worlds that formed them.

The Far Eastern Curlew travels close to 10,000 kilometres each year, migrating from breeding grounds in the marshes of eastern Russia and northern China down the East Asian-Australasian Flyway to tidal flats like Roebuck Bay. There it probes the mud with its long, down‑curved bill, feeding on crabs and molluscs for a few short months before turning north again. Built entirely for passage, it is a bird that never quite arrives and never quite stays. They reach the northwest of Australia in late August and depart again in February and March. The species, Numenius madagascariensis, is listed as critically endangered.

This sculptural curlew is named after the region and for my friend Kimberley, who visits Broome seasonally and loves to fish. Her recent 116‑centimetre Barramundi catch, is too impressive not to celebrate and sits in playful contrast to the curlew’s more delicate mudflat diet. In the sculpture, Kimberley the Curlew surveys Willie Creek like a ship’s captain through her telescope, while below deck the rats drink B4 rum, snack on cheese and crackers, and cause cheerful chaos. They have developed a taste for the new B4 beverages.

The lugger itself is named for the Sam Male Lugger, registration B4, one of the last commercially operating vessels on the Broome and Kimberley coast. The real boat now rests in Chinatown at Pearl Luggers on Dampier Terrace. Built for the pearling grounds of the Northwest, these luggers carried crews of Japanese, Malay, Filipino, Aboriginal and European workers. Their hulls were scarred by cyclones and salt; their labour reshaped coastlines and communities. Long after the industry waned, their timber frames remain weathered but enduring.

Willie Creek once served as a safe harbour for luggers waiting out storms. The brass plates on the sculpture record cyclones by name, wind speed and category, reminders of the lives, homes, wildlife and vegetation that have been lost to these violent storm systems.

Bringing bird and boat together creates a single moment of stillness inside two long, restless journeys. Steel legs hold the Curlew’s fine balance; its bill, shaped from agricultural tools, carries its strength and tenacity. Beneath it, reclaimed jarrah and recycled ship fittings hold the memory of passage. The rats remind us to enjoy every moment however fleeting.