The recent Walk for Truth, completed by Yoorrook Justice Commissioner Travis Lovett, inspired a people's movement.

Every day, mostly First Nations mob, joined the procession along the path of a 510-kilometre journey from Portland onto Naarm/Melbourne, calling for a Treaty with the Victorian Government – the first of its kind for a state and its Aboriginal people.

By the end of the walk, more than 4000 people stood out the front of Victoria's Parliament.

Mr Lovett, the deputy chair of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, stood above the throng of witnesses on the steps, draped in a kangaroo-skin cloak while barefooted and proclaimed that the walk was a "Treaty in motion".

Rhys Jeffs, who runs the Yeerra Ngitj Indigenous Inclusion & Design enterprise since 2023 and was one of the resolute faces that felt inspired amid the crowd, which spilled down Melbourne's contemporary tram-filled Bourke Street.

But Mr Jeffs had a personal purpose with a difference to most standing around with sore feet.

The Wadawurrung man, who lives on Gulidjan Country, joined the march from rural Colac.

Like every footstep it took to reach Naarm, the artist would get out his tools to paint traditional Aboriginal footprints on canvas between the breaks for posterity to document the stand Koori people and the solidarity of non-Indigenous support were taking.

But the artwork did not come about in a grand collaboration with the organisers of the Yoorrook Justice Commission Walk, but from the heart.

"I ended up donating – and apart from the first stop – all of the canvas, the time, and anything I needed to make it happen," he said.

"I was more honoured just to be able to contribute."

Mr Jeffs had only reconnected to his Wadawurrung traditional culture after once distancing himself during his adolescence following non-Indigenous peer pressure at high school.

The other Gunditjmara side of his mum Belinda's heritage remains a work in progress.

"There were discussions with my wife that it's not my choice to take away from our kids knowing their culture and who they are," he said.

Among the contemplation of his own cultural journey, by the time mob arrived in the state's capital he had painted 508 footprints.

One of his Yeerra Ngitj supporters noticed the number of footprints Mr Jeffs had painted nearly coincided with the distance from the site of Victoria's first British settlement to the place where decisions about Treaty are taking place.

"So, I painted 510 footprints – that was by fluke – but they represent every kilometre travelled or walked from Portland to the Parliament," he said.

"On the last paint at Fed Square, someone started counting them and went, 'Hey you should do this' – the beauty of paint and yarn."

Whether it was divine intervention of past ancestors or just dumb luck, he says an additional two footprints was only apt for the occasion.

"I swear it was not (intentional) until the last two on canvas," he said.

"I had footprints in between each larger meeting places."

The historic journey weaved from highways, diverting onto byways to important cultural and historic sites of multiple mobs, including the early-1830s Convincing Ground massacre of the Kilcarer gundidj clan, the first recorded massacre site in Victoria.

While massacres across the Port Phillip District – the predecessor to the colony of Victoria – was not as widespread compared to some other colonies, historical reports suggest colonial settlers directly killed about 11 per cent of the Aboriginal population from 1836 until 1851.

Yeerra Ngitj plays its own small part in the healing process, providing and retaining a connection to culture for Indigenous people, engaging in a creative process which contains meaningful conversations of what it means to be Aboriginal with an understanding of community.

The final artwork measured more than eight metres wide that had to be strung over six large pieces of canvas along a journey which overwhelmed Mr Jeffs as "an experience I'll forever be grateful for".

"I didn't realise the size and what we had created until all of them were on the easels (stands) at the end, and I looked at it and went wow," he said.

Yeerra Ngitj hosted a paint and yarn session for mob once arriving back in Naarm through the Kinaway Chamber of Commerce, an organisation which represents certified Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses in Victoria.