Weekly drawing 74: Wes Stacey's home

Wes Stacey's home camped by the sea

Over the years growing up in Barragga Bay our family became close friends with Wes Stacey and his partner Narelle Perroux. During this time he showed me that an artist can create serious work and also have lots of fun just being yourself.

I was extremely lucky to have my childhood with someone like him around. Wes along with Harold Cazneaux is one of my favourite Australian photographers.   I remember the first time I saw his book "Timeless gardens" a photographic record of Australian environments which included coastal flora, desert flora and even underwater flora (coral reefs). I'd never considered that these were actual gardens to admire until he photographed them and highlighted this concept to me. It was quite a revelation and changed how I viewed the natural environment.

When I was 9 years old, I would walk the rocky coast to visit him and his partner. He was often full of energy and cooking something like pasta and loudly calling out to the commercial fishing boats. Saying things like "Allan catch a big fish mate! catch us a Bea-uty! And drop over for dinner, we don't mind we've got lots of pasta!!!"

I loved his place so much. It was hidden in the bush on the edge of the ocean with paths that blended into the environment. This clever camouflage was subtle but made his camp more secure and extremely hard to find unless you knew exactly were it was. Even the chimney was disguised as a termites nest. To me it was designed like the ultimate cubby house, but it was actually a home. So it was the best of both worlds.

Signing the land by Wes Stacey
'Remote shore'
A beautiful example of Wes capturing the south coast
coastline, which I'd often venture.

Weekly drawing 72: Camping in St Ives bushland

Anthony and I camping at St Ives, 1989

When I was 14, Anthony and I spent many weekends camping in the bushland at St Ives . We would walk down from Acron Oval to the Cascades and then along Middle harbour creek to our favourite sandstone overhang, were we would camp overnight. 

I felt a great feeling of freedom in the bush. I was relived to get away from the bland suburb of St Ives and it's ever growing shopping centre. At times while camping I would imagine how the local Aborigines once lived in St Ives, fishing in the creek and sleeping in the same sandstone shelter which we used for our camp site.

Unfortunately we couldn't enjoy the same simple pleasures because the creeks were now very polluted from urban and industrial runoff. So we had to carry everything we needed into the bush and ration our food and water for the journey. To conserve water and save energy we cleverly hid water bottles at certain secret places along the track (behind trees under leaf mulch) 

To me pollution doesn't mean it's all over and everything is destroyed. It just makes me think we need to clean up our act, so one day we can have clean waterways again. Imagine one day going for a walk in Sydney bushland and confidently drinking or swimming in the water, it would be awesome.