Road Trip - With Photographs

Cropping - Ballan area, Victoria

Eucalyptus - Trentham, Central Victoria

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved exploring unknown roads. I’ve always wanted to know about the things, the places and the people just out of sight, just out of reach.

As soon as I could ride a bike, I was off. At perhaps eight, or nine, I would set off “for a bike ride” on those long straight roads that created endless grids around the rural Waikato property I grew up on in New Zealand. I’d be gone all day and from memory, I don’t think my mother ever asked where I’d been. I sometimes wonder if she was ever worried about me.

Cropping - Ballan area, Victoria

Country pasture, Tylden, Central Victoria

I’d stop along the way to watch a group of California quails nodding their way through the long grass, or to watch a splendid golden pheasant chuckling to himself on the roadside. I might have stopped to investigate a dead rabbit and to wonder if there was any truth in the old saying that a rabbit’s tail brought you luck – and whether or not I should find a way to take it home…and what luck, if any, it might bring me.

I stopped in the summer heat to pop the bubbles forming in the tar seal; or to clamber through bushes to a bird’s nest I’d spied. It was always about Nature and enjoying the vastness of that green, green, peaceful country landscape.

Blackwood, Central Victoria

Eucalyptus, Anakie, Victoria

That urge to explore never left me. As an adult I’ve always explored the quiet back roads and I’ve encouraged my kids to do the same. I thrived in a job as a travel guide writer, travelling the length and breadth of New Zealand every two years to write a new edition. I never missed an opportunity on those trips, to venture down some side road simply because I liked the look of it. I’ve always ‘followed the signs’ – in every way.

Eucalyptus, Anakie, Victoria

Eucalyptus and  cropping, Ballan area, Victoria

 Now, living in Central Victoria in Australia, I am reacquainting myself with many places and relishing the chance to discover many more. It’s like opening a childhood treasure box all over again. As contradictory as it sounds, everything is so different here, and yet somehow the same – familiar, easy…just different enough to be exciting and similar enough to feel comfortable.

As I sit here, thinking back to my latest trip – to Geelong – I realise again, just how important the road trip itself is – more so than just about any destination. For me it is about clearing the head of daily routines and setting off in the expectation of the new. A road trip, much like a train trip, somehow loosens my imagination and I stop over and over again to see, to watch, to photograph the world around me. A trip that should take two hours, might take four. That’s the beauty of travel – making the time to really SEE.

Eucalyptus, Trentham, Central Victoria

Eucalyptus, Trentham, Central Victoria

Now that I have returned to painting, the ‘world’ I pass through is even more important to me, as I try to capture something of the essence of this new place in paint. I’m not out to replicate what I see. For me, painting is about the feeling of a place. I want to feel the freedom (as I paint), that is somehow encapsulated in the natural environment I see around me.  I want to feel again the joy I first felt when I saw the flush of red-gold of that freshly harvested wheat field I drove passed; I want feel the wonder I felt as I looked at yet another stand of gigantic gum trees – so different from the last – and I want to capture a little of the magic of their ghostly white trunks slashed with rust or plum pink.

Eucalyptus, Anakie, Victoria

Cropping, Ballan area, Victoria

Every time I go on a road trip, I collect images – literal (photography) and stored memories. And then later, when I stand in front of a blank canvas remembering those awe inspiring triggers, I freeze for a moment (sometimes for a week); and then, all at once, my brushes and knives take over and I am back there again – for a short time, deeply immersed in the beauty of this new world I have come to live in.