Clambering into a dinghy at the Derby Boat Ramp, we spun around past a pylon to head across to the “Kimberly Explorer” Catamaran, in the brown muddy water of a very fast flowing incoming tide. It was the start of a fifteen-night trip along the Kimberley coast, with 8 passengers and 3 crew.
Sleeping in swags on the upper deck of a boat at sea was very different to our usual tent and swag camping in remote areas of Australia. For many years we had investigated the Kimberley, with rugged ventures into the Walcott Inlet on the Munja track, a walk on the Charnley river and too many Gibb River Road trips to remember.
Now it was the coastline to discover, with no roads to the beautiful places we saw, almost impossible to portray in paintings. The history was a surprise, with failed ventures from the 1800’s like the Camden Harbour debacle, the mining of Koolan Island and fish farming at Cone Bay. Painting on Board was a new experience. We were lucky to go ashore in dinghies nearly every day to safely swim, or explore.
The fresh water flowing down rivers and springs to the coast was astonishing, after our camps on the South and North West Coasts of WA where there is no water to drink. Some of the paintings in my body of work for MRROS are from the Francois Peron National Park at Shark Bay, where all drinking, cooking and showering water must be carried in.
Living in a desert and rangeland environment as a child north of Meekatharra and later south east of Wiluna on Sheep Stations where rainfall was intermittent and unreliable, water was precious. A “body of water” was a claypan or birrida, a creek flowed once a year if you were lucky and lakes were mainly dry and salty. My first Solo exhibition in Perth was “Katjarra Country” centering on the Carnarvon Ranges north of Wiluna.
My next Solo “Way to Walcott” was in Fremantle, featuring the Gibb River Road, Mt Elizabeth Station and Silent Grove. The last two in Perth were “Desert Messages” after a desert trip on Len Beadell tracks and part of the Canning Stock Route, and “Finding Water”, with paintings of many rockholes and pools in the Pilbara, Gascoyne and Murchison.
We often camp in remote areas for reference studies to complete commissions. Painting watercolours “en plein air” is the easiest and most practical medium when transporting works long distances.
Realistic paintings completed in my shed are in acrylic, while oil on board is my preference when working from Journal notes and sketches.