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The day he pressed his father's treasured ceremonial headdress into the hands of an Englishman, Torres Strait Islander Maino must have known life was changing for his people. 
"Maino gave me the headdress his father King Kabagi [Kebisu] used to wear when on the warpath and a boar's tusk ornament!" wrote English anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon in his journal in 1888. "We were such good friends he ??? wanted them exhibited in a big museum in England where plenty of people could see his father's things."
Skip forward several generations and Maino's great-grandson Ned David, a prominent Torres Strait traditional owner, could not be more proud. "Maino was an absolute strategist," Mr David says. "He must have realised change was on the way, and [ensured] the interests of his own people were looked after."    
The headdress has returned to Australia for the first time, more than 120 years later. With its thick black cassowary feathers, it's one of the hero objects in Encounters, an exhibition of key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island artefacts at Canberra's National Museum of Australia, from   November 27-  March 28, 2016.  
More than 150 items held by the British Museum have returned for exhibit alongside work by contemporary indigenous Australians. Combined, the collection forms a circle of our cultural history. 
Drawcards include two spears and a shield taken from the Gweagal people by Captain Cook and his crew at Botany Bay in 1770. This first contact is a defining moment in Australian history: the objects a tangible witnesses of our own, merged histories. 
"These are extraordinary treasures," says NMA director Dr Mathew Trinca. "The exhibition amplifies the deep human truth of this continent, which stretches back 60,000 years." 
"I think [Encounters] is one of the best things that ever happened to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people," adds Mr David, who took part in consultations between the British Museum, NMA and indigenous communities, from the Torres Strait to  Bass Strait, where the artefacts originated. 
For several years, the two museums have been bringing people and artefacts together to establish each object's historical and social meaning. For some, who discovered deeply personal inheritances lost amidst violence, it has been an emotional experience. 
Artefacts range from the ceremonial to the mundane and from the mundane to the magnificent. Some, including a woman's marriage ornaments, are intensely personal, as is a delicate, metre-long rainbow kelp shell necklace from Flinders Island. It's the sort of keepsake a loved one would treasure. 
"These are family heirlooms. These are deep personal objects with an ??? intimacy that's clear," says Dr Trinca. 
Other objects are more utilitarian, among them a stone used to grind seeds, a honey-gathering hook, wooden digging stick, a belt, tobacco pipe and bark basket (tunga). 
There are also the spoils of war: knives, spears, axes and shields used in the devastating land disputes between Australia's first peoples and foreign settlers. The bark shield that Cook trophied at Botany Bay is marred by a hole clean through its heart whose origin has inspired speculation. Is it a spear hole, people ask, or was it made by a bullet?  
A spectacular tortoise shell-mask was "purchased for a knife", said naturalist Joseph Beete Jukes, who was on the HMS Fly when it pulled into the Torres Strait Island of Erub (Darnley Island) in 1845. Another tortoise-shell mask, from neighbouring Mer (Murray Island), with its white shell eyes and sharp teeth, found its way into the British Museum by way of a naval hospital, filled with curiosities collected by far-roving ships.  
Encounters also includes four paintings from far northern Australia by artist Tom Roberts, who donated them to the British Museum in 1922. NMA curator Ian Coates describes uncovering them in the BM's hold as a career highlight. "They were previously unknown - looked after but unknown. They're a hugely significant find," he says.
Australians love to see the best that the world offers in terms of the art of other cultures. "Now, [they] have the opportunity to see their treasures - a peerless collection of artefacts from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the world's oldest continuous living cultures,"  says Dr Trinca.
The exhibition is both a reminder of days past and an insight into contemporary culture. "You'll still find headdresses ... being made in the Torres Strait," says MrDavid. "We use them today in our dances and ceremonies." 
"We haven't lost our identity," he adds. "We're here for the long run."
Encounters: Revealing stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects from the British Museum, is at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra from   November 27 -   March 28, 2016. Entry is free. Book