 The Aboriginal group forms the inner centre piece in the tondo of both bowls . As the same image was used for both bowls , the implication is that the Chinese ceramic painters were copying from the same drawing and finishing them at the same place and time . The image is of a group of four Aboriginal men with club , shield and spears , one woman with a baby on her shoulders – standing and turned slightly away from the rest of the figures – and another woman cowed by the men . This is thought to depict a preliminary marriage ceremony . As with the Museum bowl 's Sydney Cove image , no directly related , surviving , version is known that would have been used by the ceramic artists to paint the Aboriginal group . The closest match is a drawing after an apparently now @-@ lost original sketch by Nicolas @-@ Martin Petit , artist on the 1800 – 1803 French expedition to Australia led by Nicolas Baudin . Research made around 2009 – 2012 , indicated that during Baudin 's expedition , a report was prepared for Emperor Napoleon on the feasibility of capturing the British colony at Sydney Cove . As this expedition progressed around coastal Australia , Petit began to specialise in the drawing of portraits of indigenous peoples . The French expedition arrived at Port Jackson on 25 April 1802 . Petit 's drawing was copied for publication as plate 114 in the Voyage autour du monde : <unk> par <unk> du roi ( Paris , 1825 ) , regarding a voyage around the world ( 1817 – 1820 ) led by Louis @-@ Claude de <unk> de Freycinet . The engraving is entitled Port Jackson , <unk> Hollande . <unk> <unk> d 'un mariage , chez les sauvages ( ceremony before a marriage among the natives , Port Jackson , New Holland ) . Port Jackson aborigines are from the Eora group of indigenous people living in the Sydney Basin . 
