Jacqui Stockdale, Rama-Jaara, The Royal Shpherdess, 2012, Collection Benalla Art Gallery. Purchased with funds from the Robert Salzer Foundation and the Benalla Art Gallery Acquisition Trust Fund, 2015.

In 2009 during the Black Saturday bushfires, Jacqui Stockdale's fmaily lost their property, Long Gully, on the outskirts of Benidgo in central Victoria. Three years after those devastating bushfires, Stockdale decided to make work referring to her personal loss. 'We has lost our family home,' she said, 'and I needed to create a victorious, rising-from-the-ashes, hybrid Australian feminine archetype.'