THE OVERLAND TELEGRAPH LINE

Just over 150 years ago, a Country changing event took place in Australia. A telegraph line, following the tracks of the early explorer John McDouall Stuart, connected the north to south of this huge continent. Suddenly, through undersea connection to asia and thence the rest of the world, Australia's extreme isolation ended. Up until then, there was a two months or more wait to hear about events in the rest of the world. It was no mean feat - the harshest imaginable conditions in Australia's undeveloped red centre made the task a daunting one. And there was no support network, towns, roads, food and water supplies etc.

I like this story, and this painting is my fanciful interpretation of the old telegraph line. Many people see an image from the film "the Life of Brian" and that's fine with me. But to get the real gist of the painting you can see the lines connecting the telegraph poles (which are an iconic image in Australia even today). The view is via a rocky landscape and the perennial long grasses of the outback. There are layers and layers of marks, sort of echoing the layers and layers of the outback terrain.

You might notice that the painting is a little rough in places. I had no choice because my painting arm/shoulder was still recovering from a severe break. And I don't mind rugged paintwork as it gives a bit of charecter to a painting - but it posed a real problem when it came to doing the telegraph lines. I just couldn't do it - my arm was waaaaay too wobbly to do such linework. In the end I came up with the idea of dipping the edge of a piece of cardboard into a thin wash of dark, grey paint, and then bending it and pressing the edge against the canvas to print what could look like a sagging wire between the poles.