On our trip doing the lap around Australia, we were lucky enough to arrive at the campsite at Illawong Beach without another person there. It is special and feels like a gift when you arrive to find a secluded beach. When you have time off you learn to eventually slow down and take in the beauty of it all. Each place has something unique, a sole tree in the landscape can be poetic. Once your viewpoint changes, every scene becomes a composition. The challenge for me as an artist was to convey the sense of movement, light and spontaneity. Learning when to stop painting was difficult, to keep some mystery in the work allows the viewer to think that there might be something just ahead. The path can be over a hill or mountain it can draw you in. The unfinished landscape does not have to be fully defined or finished. That is my mission as an artist.

There is something mystical about the long road. We completed over 25,000kms on our ‘lap’ of Australia in 2023. Cutting across the Nullarbor Plain back to Bendigo boasts the longest straight stretch of road in the world. Getting off the road to allow road trains to pass us, first a distant rumble and then a mad metallic streak that barrels past you. Passing Japanese people on bikes making their way across our sunburnt country and grey nomads living the dream in style. The road ahead is our future and we can’t go back to the past. Living on the road gave us time to reflect on what is important and what is not. The beauty of the road ahead is that it is an unknown adventure waiting for us all…..

Just 10 minutes from the South Australian border is Eucla – the largest settlement built on the Nullarbor Plain. We wanted to stop there to check out the old Telegraph Station ruins as I had memories of visiting there as a child. The remaining old stone walls of the station are slowly being covered by the sand drifts caused by a rabbit plague that has destroyed dune vegetation over time. It was late afternoon, and the long shadows appealed to me. We walked down to the deserted and secluded Eucla Jetty that was home to multitudes of water birds. It was hard to believe that once Eucla was a thriving town responsible for transferring information from East to West.

There was something special about Illawong Beach. I was really attracted to the simplicity and uncluttered essence of the landscape. We were now in our tenth month of our journey on our lap around Australia and time had started to slow down for me and I felt I had a deeper connection to the environment, appreciating the subtleties of form, colour and light.

It is easy and we all fall into the trap of making ourselves busy, where distractions are abound, and we often overlook the profound beauty before us.

I loved the subdued hues of Illawong Beach at sunset, everything was still and quiet, the soft hues and the interplay of shadows helped me to make each stroke more deliberate. When we take the time to look in these moments of quiet observation it is only then that we can truly appreciate the richness of our natural world in all its beauty and find solace in its simplicity.