I remember how as a child I used to go outside when a dust storm rolled across the clay pan in front of the house. Billowing red dust rolled over out stretched arms, stung closed eyes and soiled clean clothes.  I loved it; my mother scolded me.

I remember marveling at bravery and courage of men and animals in stories my dad told us kids and the pictures he drew for us. Sometimes we were even the heroes and that was great and I suppose our ponies and dogs also liked being heroes. Then when bad, bad Banskia men terrified me in dreams Dad told me of mimi lights that frightened animals when droving to Bourke. He said there was one spot where lights blinked in the sky after dark so stock had to be settled and camp made well away from the spot. No one said where the term ‘mimi’ came from but it stuck in my mind.

And so stories and images became part of my life. At university I studied English Literature. It became a type of ‘treasure hunt’ to find links and references where poets and writers would salute an idea from another, not with obvious acclaim but with sincere ingestion. Such ingestion enriched the new work itself with silent homage that subsequent readers might or might not recognize. If such reference was noticed the new work offered layers of meaning. Thus layers of meaning can be found if one has prior knowledge and understanding that facilitates linking old with new so that stories, written and visual, blossom anew in the telling.

Throughout history human beings have drawn on external phenomenon to create something; to continue a ‘living tradition’ as T.S. Eliot once said. Another thing we beings do is embrace heroes and I became a fan of Eliot and read whatever of his I could get my hands on. Then there was Milton and his epic poem Paradise Lost when I was painting there in 1985. At that time I was studying his work and I remember how much his images of the cosmos affected me. In fact I used to read at night to fellow artists as we sat around drinking and talking after a day in the field painting, drawing or simply wandering. Maybe they were too polite to tell me to stop or maybe they were amused by my obsession. Whatever the case I read Milton and his image of a great spirit that “… from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss And mad’st it pregnant:” (1973: Hollander and Kermode p. 760) affected me deeply and continued to haunt me during my time in Kakadu.

It wasn’t a bad haunting but I became very aware of presence, of life form and ‘other’ in the environment. I remembered my dad’s stories of the ‘mimi’ lights and I again felt the enormity of the land and yet a feeling of being at home as I had when a child. As I said earlier, ‘mirages’ and silence were part of my growing up.

So, alone at whatever site, I’d talk to the land and it’s inhabitants in my head. The latter were busy as spirit images on the rock faces and I could imagine them getting on with daily life and so I wondered how to let them do this. I had no idea, no plan.

But a great brown snake started the process for me. Alan Howard, a staff member of MAGNT, was acting as our driver and daily he could drop each of us at whatever site we were independently working at and then collect us before dusk. I had spent the day painting at Obiri rock. It had been a hard day for me. Using watercolour as my medium and perched beside the rock had been a battle with wind, heat and ants. A wash would dry before I had time to apply the pigment; the wind blew my paper and ants bit by backside. In all it was a war with the elements that left me exhausted by the time Alan picked me up. But I had done a painting. Not in my usual style of using veils of colour but more like a ramshackle construction using planks of paint.

At the time I was relieved to have done anything and, not yet dry, the painting was laid carefully on the floor in the back of the van. Alan, John and I squeezed into the front seats and we headed back along the red earth track to our camp at Cooinda. 

But suddenly Alan jarred us to a stop as a very long, thick brown snake languidly slid across the road in front of us. We got out to admire and watch the majesty of the great reptile that seemed not to notice us as it continued on its way. Like insignificant specks we got back in the van and continued on our way more subdued and thoughtful.

Unloading the gear at camp I found my painting bleeding over the floor with an empty water container lying across it. I was devastated.

Weeks later at home in Queensland I looked at the mess on the page. I’d already done a few paintings trying to capture the simultaneous vastness and minute detail of the landscape I’d experienced in Kakadu. I was quite happy with the works in which I used loose washes of earth colours to evoke the landscape and then inserted zoom in detailed views of specific fauna and flora. But I was missing something – the shimmering things, the sound of silence and the sounds of life.

I took the wrecked painting outside, hung it on the clothesline and turned the hose on full force. Pigment slid off like clotted blood leaving a clean skin behind – a skin of stains, clear veins and soft veils. I saw a mirage, I felt the silence and I could hear the sounds of life.

I thanked the brown snake. My heart sang and my mind felt free as spirits floated out of the rock stained on the page. 

From then on my paintings changed direction and I spent many hours reading and trying to gain some awareness of Aboriginal connection with the land and its spirits. I make no claims of immersion or deep understanding into another’s belief system or way of life. I can only try to explain my own. For me the Australian landscape, the vastness, the silence, the shimmering things and the creak and clatter of life in the bush are part of me. For my part I try to be reasonably informed about things outside my head because learning for me is all about making the strange familiar. I like to feel at home in my head if that’s possible and within my grasp. 

Having visited Nourlangie, Ubirr, Jim Jim Falls, Barramundi Gorge, Deaf Adder Gorge and some of the Cadell River area in 1985 I found Eric Brandl’s book,  Australian Aboriginal Paintings (1961:AIAS) an invaluable help.  I was able to look at detailed text and figures in the book and cross-reference with my sketches, photographs and a four page unreferenced guide, The Art Sites Of Nourlangie Rock. In this way I was able to build up a personal interpretation of my experience of being alone at sites in Kakadu.  Hence a body of images evolved in which I allowed spirits to float across and above the landscape.

From that time my work developed more and more along lines of referencing and linking history to the present in a way of passing on traditions so that we can dream of being special in some way.”

“As artist/author I can never own the story or image because that possession would kill it. It would be like locking a child in a dungeon.

The wondrous and special thing is being a filter through which the story passes.”