Dusty Roads, Dry Grass and River Redgums

I laboured long and lovingly on this artwork and gave it to my mother on her 70th birthday, twenty four years ago. When my mother died I passed it on to my daughter Rosemary - the little girl holding my hand as we walk together down the dusty gravel road to my childhood family farm.

Until I left to go to University in Melbourne, I travelled up and down this road on foot, on bicycle, and driving a tractor and car, smelling the dust, dry summer grass and scent of eucalyptus. The large river Redgum trees scattered across paddocks and down the lanes are old. Older than Europeans settlement. Like silent sentinels, they watched as indigenous Australians walked beneath them, as the squatters first brought sheep and cattle to graze, as bushrangers marauded through the countryside, and miners rested on their journey to nearby goldfields. They watched as we ploughed the fields to grow oats, and our sheep sheltered under their branches to grow wool and give birth to lambs. This painting is a link between the past and the future. A memory moment frozen in time. I return to this place each year, and I see the road change, new houses being built, the paddocks being broken up and changed, but those river redgums remain unchanged by the passage of time. Almost eternal.