On planes he checked in the well-taped package as oversize baggage - always worried he would misplace this precious cargo.
He once got separated from it on a cancelled flight from Canberra to Sydney. Another time he left it in a Sydney hotel lobby.
"It was always a scary thought to me that it would get lost,"he says of the 2017 statement,of which he is one of 250 signatories.
But on this journey of reconciliation,from Wave Hill (the birthplace of the Aboriginal land rights movement) to Campbelltown in Sydney's south-west,people were always moved - often to tears - by the moment they touched the 183 by 160 centimetre canvas and read the words at its centre.
His union,the Maritime Union of Australia,long-time supporters of the Land Rights movement since the 1966 Wave Hill walk off,paid his way as we went bush and to capital cities with the canvas.
The story of this Torres Strait Islander's travels,shaped around 19 people he met,will be published in a book,Finding the Heart of a Nation by Hardie Grant this October.
"The reason I wanted to travel with this canvas was I saw how powerful this image was - not only the eloquence of the words but the beauty of the art work.