And then the dry air mimicked on my paper the same heatwave conditions of high summer which surrounded it . As the pools dried over several hours, spidery reticulations and watermarks recorded the gradual evaporation of the liquid. As the sun dried the pools of colour the pigment in suspension thickened and began to cake and crack - for all the world in the way mud does on a dry waterhole. Battalions of ants, several lone mud-daubing wasps and finally hundreds of very thirsty European bees rested on the edge of the drying pools of colour etching away at the reticulated pigment.

I read a book under a big Bull Mallee and kept a weather eye on the work in progress. Watched a Striped Honeyeater as it dipped into a watercolour pool , snatch an insect and fly off. Later in the last rays of the setting sun a kind of Dragon lizard arrived and tiptoed around, casting dinosaur shadows on the paper, and leaving little orange footprints. The pools were not quite dry by bedtime so I crept into my tent only to be woken up as another shower of rain drenched the paper again. ‘Damn’ I thought – ‘there goes some fine lizard prints and insect etchings’. In the morning rain had filled the mud holes near the tent as well as the areas of dried pooling on the paper. And wild winds had delivered a potpourri of Mallee leaves and seeds whose tannin ghosts still haunt the painting.


I left the camp and went looking for birds - reminding myself to let things take their course - slow down to rain and sun time - and time to accommodate the vagaries of insect and animal movement. I returned that evening to find that vast hordes of flying ants celebrating the rain had fallen on the paper and the shores of the dried up pools were littered with shipwrecked astronauts; whose bodies were being carried off by normal ants - leaving behind the gossamer wings of their cousins on the watercolour shores.