I returned a month later and set up camp a few kms west of Sunset Track near an area where the sand hill plains had been burnt twice in the last two years. The branches of burnt Mallee stems formed a black calligraphy on the pure white sand. Over the last few years I have been inventing for myself new ways of drawing. Rather than holding and moving the charcoal over a fixed piece of paper in the conventional way, I have moved the paper against the charcoal - against and within the branches and stems of burnt trees.

There is considerable control in doing it this way round - one is simply moving the paper to make the marks rather than the charcoal stick - but the difference lies in the surprising way the multiple twigs and stems bring the energy of their supple yet firm structures into play as both the tree and myself collaborate to make a drawing. On that December day a hot wind also entered into the collaboration . I moved my large sheet of pooled insect gnawed paper through the trees. I held one end and the paper furled and uncurled against a Hakea bush whose black twigs inscribed it ; and then the drawing quivered to a pause and rested over the tree and was more gently scribbled on.