5 September

I was taught this too at school, that the earliest paintings of Australia were fantasies, painters trying to make the bush look like England. But the story is much more interesting than that. This IS how Australia looked. The people who said these paintings were make-believe were comparing Australia as it is now with the paintings. Australia as it is now (what we call ‘the bush’) is the ruins of that early Australia. We trashed it. Like somebody’s garden left to get out of control, which is exactly what happened. It’s all in the Gammage book.