Two landscapes that I did today, in responce to a power company ACTEWAGL diverting the river near our home into a waterstorage facility called Googong Dam.
It is very sad to have lost the natural flow of the once mighty Murrumbidgee River to a shallow water storage facility where it will just evaporate. We've lost a meaningful river near our home but over the State border, the graziers and irrigators have potentially lost their livelihoods.
Charles Sturt was an early explorer. In 1829 he charted the Murrumbidgee River. We live near 'Camp Sturt' where Charles Sturt first started his expedition. Nowadays Sturt couldn't do the expedition by boat because there is not enough water. http://www.davidreilly.com/australia...turt/sturt.htm
'Goodbye Sturt'. The dry bed of the Murrumbidgee River and the giant Sheoaks.
The Hermannsburg School is an Aboriginal artists group of Western Arrente people from the Central Desert. They are watercolourists who would be very much at home here now, now that our natural water flow has gone. I've tried to use the colours that they use ... pre-empting the start of a new desert. http://www.hermannsburgschool.com/ 'Gallery Archive' is the go, if you have the time to look.
'The Ghosts of Hermannsburg will Haunt the Mountains of the Murrumbidgee' ... now. It is amazing how easily the Kangaroo grass, Snow grass and the Pimelia took on a desert look.
Warren.