Gallery 3

Are we doing the right thing by this wide brown land?

The best time of year...in this and the following painting I have tried to capture the mood of the Monsoon

Seen from a helicopter, the magnificent Adelaide River meanders through wetland and rainforest. (The iridescent paint means this painting looks best in low light - the photograph doesn't do it justice)

private collection

A retreating tributary of the Adelaide River is fringed by a few paperbarks. Its deeper water reflects for an instant, a remarkable sapphire blue, as we fly over.

A confluence of tributaries catches the sun and reflects the morning light Paperbarks, Lilypillies, and Freshwater mangroves in this wetland are still partly submerged. Native Cane grass and sedges are breeding grounds for frogs, pythons, native rodents and marsupials and insects. Fish and other aquatic life, including Barramundi, feed in the shallow water.

The run off of mud has turned this tributary of the Adelaide River a pale gold. Floating mats of the giant introduced pasture grass known as Olive hymenachne have invaded the shallow water and behind it, is a stand of the prickly South American giant sensitive plant: Mimosa pigra too dense even for the comfort of feral pigs

A seasonal ox-bow lake on the middle reaches of the Adelaide River system is gradually drying out into a series of jade-green ponds. The water is sought by animals, whose tracks criss-cross the sandy floodplain. Where will these animals go when this water has dried up?

Somewhere on the edge of the Adelaide River system in the Northern Territory. This last pond of drying water is circled by animal tracks. Those animals must soon look elsewhere. It may be 5 months before there is any significant rain. (Private collection USA)

On the middle reaches of the Adelaide River, an area has been fenced and cleared for cattle. Their tread breaks up the soil which turns to red dust. Their tracks converge on a circular water trough, fed by a bore. It is July and the trough is empty, the metal gleams like the setting for a lost jewel. Rain may not come for 5 months