You may have seen this this poster around, but you may not know the story behind it.

Artist Peter Drew is travelling the country pasting up a 100-year-old photograph of a man who has become a folk hero and a symbol of a new conversation about what it means to be Australian.

Adelaide-based M Drew found the photograph of Indian man Monga Khan in the national archives in 2016 when he was looking for an image to trigger his campaign to reimagine Australian identity.

Khan was one of thousands of people who applied for exemptions to the White Australia Policy.

“Cameleers, Hawkers and other traders were granted exemptions because their work was essential to Australian’s growing economy. For 70 years they played a crucial role… I’d like to celebrate their contribution to Australia<’ Mr Drew said.

Khan was born in the Punjab, then in British India, and arrived in 1895. He worked as a travelling hawker selling goods. In 1916, he had the photograph taken to that he could apply for an exemption to the White Australia Policy so that he could go back to India to see his family and be able to return to his job in Australia.

“It was a powerful photograph I found in the national archives. He looked heroic,” Mr Drew said.

He designed the poster with Khan in a turban sitting about the word ‘AUSSIE’.

“You look at him, and think, I want to meet him. To think that he was walking the streets of Ballarat in Victoria, it makes you think what an interesting place Australia was at the time,” Mr Drew said.

He is traveling Australia sticking up thousands of the posters. Mr Drew’s aim is to turn Monga Khan into an Aussie folk hero and, in doing so, use mythology to embrace our neglected histories and expand Australia’s identity.

“Through crowd funding I’ve now raised more than what I need to complete my original goal of sticking up 1000 posters,” Mr Drew said.

“With the excess funds I am commissioning artists and writers to join the project. The resulting body of work will be published as a book of short, fictional stories, poems and artworks that reimagine the life of Monga Khan, as an ‘Aussie Folk Hero’,” he said.

“It’s important to point out that this will be a work of historic fiction. Following that tradition, I hope that mythology can continue to act as a vehicle for history, as it has done for thousands of years. I’ve begun making short films about these collaborations.

“At the beginning of 2016 Monga Khan had been hidden within the Australian National Archive for 100 years, and with each passing year his story fades.

“This project aims to reimagine his life as a symbol for all those who survived the White Australia Policy. By sharing his story we can begin to revitalise what it means to be ‘Aussie’,” he said.  

Mr Drew’s posters can be seen on streets throughout Australia, throwing down a challenge to passers-by to consider our national identity.

But far from being a strident activist, the artist is keen to question rather than lecture.

“You’ve got to approach it with curiosity and the possibility that you might be wrong,” Mr Drew said.

“There might be something you’re missing. You can’t forgo that possibility and bathe in the certainty of your convictions. You can’t be puritanical, because that is the worst thing of all,” he said.