Year - 2026 · Size - 21 x 30 cm / 8¼ x 11¾ in · Medium - Ink on paper

En route to Melbourne I had planned a painting hunt at Cape Conran, but noticing the wind picking up I took a detour to an intriguing spot just off the highway — Cabbage Tree Palm Creek. I had visited twenty years earlier, carrying a vague memory of a creek winding through forest with elegant palms dotted through it. Not much had changed. It was dripping wet, winter cold and leechy — but the sun was out and I had the place to myself.

I wandered the fifteen minute loop track looking for a spot to paint. A small creek of fresh, earth-stained water had carved a deep trench into the mud. Towering flooded gums and mahogany gums formed a spacious old growth upper canopy which looked down upon lilly pilly, blackwood, ferns and sword grass. Through all of this and the endless smothering tangle of vines pushed the cabbage tree palms, their long slender trunks topped with bulbous crowns of fronds, like giant dandelion seedheads rising through the understorey.

This forest is recognised as significant — it is the southernmost natural population of the cabbage tree palm, a species that generally prefers a more subtropical environment. It is thought that the local Gunai/Kurnai people traded cabbage tree palm fruit and seed with their northern neighbours, the young hearts being a good cabbage substitute and later utilised by early settlers who learned of them from Aboriginal people.

Near the end of the track I settled on a bend in the creek, found a precarious perch on a couple of suspended rotting logs, and began to paint the splendour.