Terre de Diemen. Bara-Ourou. (The handsomest man in Oyster Bay) Hand coloured engraved portrait. 1807

Portrait of an Aboriginal man from Oyster Bay on Maria Island off the east coast of Tasmania, Bara-Ourou, described by Peron as one of the handsomest of the Tasmanians. Drawn by Petit on the Baudin expedition of 1802 and subsequently published as a print in 1807 in Paris. Peron described Bara-Ourou as a young man of 24 or 25 years, ‘who was more handsomely built than all the others’.

Peron and Petit had gone ashore at Oyster Bay with the sailor Rouget in attendance. They met some fourteen men who greeted them rapturously, the more so when Petit indulged them with a few sleights of hand like pretending to run a pin into his flesh without feeling any pain. All was going well, but the appearance offshore of another French boat changed the tone dramatically, as the group tried to hustle the Frenchmen for gifts, and Peron, in particular, only retained his jacket when he pointed at Rouget’s musket and said the word “Mata”, or “death”. Indeed it was Bara-Ourou, who suddenly menaced the French again as they tried to leave, not desisting until Rouget pointed his musket

Miffed that their gifts had not prevented such alarms, in his account Peron used this event as central in his argument about the dangers of such meetings.