Artist Statement.

The pictures in this exhibition are all drawings of native flowers that grow on the Croxton to Thornbury railway siding in Melbourne's inner north.


This railway siding in the City of Darebin, is on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people. They are its traditional owners and custodians. I recognise their continuing connection to the land, water, and culture and I pay my respects to Elders, past and present.

First Nations' people have a relatively strong presence in the area and some of their art-work is shared in public spaces near the railway siding. There is a striking example of such artwork on the Croxton railway siding which conceals an ugly metal box about the size and shape of a shipping container. This has been transformed by images that brighten the streetscape.  In these images a leisurely group of long-necked turtles swims, silhouetted, against a swirling backdrop of bright oranges, reds, and blues. They are watched by a large eel that lurks in the background.


During Melbourne's long periods of lockdown in 2020 I wandered the railway siding with a longstanding friend gathering native plants to draw. Many of the plants  are indigenous to the area and would have been familiar to the Wurundjeri woi-wurrung people. Though begun in December 2019, this dedicated project to produce a monthly record of the plants that I could reach kept the me sane through 2020.

Walking with my friend and, subsequently, losing myself in the act of drawing the plants while time passed unnoticed (a state known as 'flow' in arts therapy) had psychological benefits. In addition, drawing has resulted in measurable improvements in my hand function which has been compromised by Parkinson's disease.


I developed Parkinson's disease after contracting a dangerous illness that my doctor-uncle asserted was characterised by episodes of encephalitis. Unlike the medical specialists to whom I was referred for diagnosis, my uncle systematically analysed my symptoms. He concluded that I had contracted an emergent disease caused by an intracellular bacterium, likely a rickettsia.  This was transmitted to me while on a field trip to SW-WA by scores of bites on my shins. WA's then Chief Medical Entomologist, Mike Lindsey, who happened to give guest lectures for me, believed that I had indeed contracted an emergent disease most likely transmitted by larval mites. He suggested that the unusual weather conditions which I encountered, very hot with heavy nightly rainfall that left the ancient dry sclerophyll forests steaming, promoted mass hatching of tick and mite larvae.

I had discovered that while I could no longer write in cursive script i could draw quite competently. This is not uncommon in parkinson's disease, especially when using an art form or technique learned later in life. This is because it uses a neural pathway that bypasses the damaged brain circuitry which is used by the activities that were learned early in life. These become automated and are the motor activities affected in Parkinson's. Thus speech, gait, writing, use of various utensils tend to be affected.
I became interested in identifying the flowers on the railway siding after I noticed that the amount of variation they showed suggested significant species diversity. This variation showed in their colour and form, in their flowering season, and the seasons in which they produced a proliferation of new shoots. I was surprised to learn that Most of the native plants that I have drawn are indigenous to the area.

The advent of the Covid-19 pandemic gave this project new meaning. For me it became a metaphor for humanity's loss of innocence. I saw it as part of the price that we must pay for the environmental damage and ecosystem destruction that has been predicated upon human greed, That greed was fed by a corrupt ideological interpretation of economics about which i had lectured and published as an academic. The failure to stop the covid-19 virus from spreading from where it originated, into Australia and within Australia, also reflects a blatant disregard for the predictable impacts of emergent diseases on human Life. There is culpability on the part of the originating nation, which failed to report on or contain the spread of covid-19 as well as successive Australian governments, whilst knowing of the country's vulnerability to  devastating emergent diseases, for Australia has quite a tally of its own.

During Melbourne's protracted 2020 lockdown which doubtless saved thousands of lives, walking on the railway siding with a long-term friend to collect plants enabled me to recognise the underlying beauty of the world. Drawing the flowers each month helped me to look to the future, enabling me to live in the moment by losing myself in the Detail of the flowers. To be able to reflect on nature, to see its continuing cycle of life, to rejoice in the brightness of the flowers, the setting of their seeds and the emergence of tiny leaf buds, gave me joy in an otherwise joyless time.

Gallery 1 displays the Monthly Bouquets, In these I have drawn a bunch of flowers  collected that month. the first sequence covers four months, and starts with the Bouquet from December 2019 and also  includes the first three bouquets of 2020 when the appalling reality of the pandemic became apparent.
Gallery 2 presents smaller drawings of individual plants.  They too are displayed three-monthly, again excepting the first sequence, which covers December 2019.



                                Media.

The pictures were created with Faber-Castell's Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils on paper.  For the A4 pictures on cream paper I used Arches 180 GSM cotton paper  [29.7cm x 21cm]; I used Fabriano Tiziano 160 GSM drawing paper for the A4 pictures on variously coloured paper [29.7cm 21cm]; and for the flowers on black paper i used Winsor & Newton 140 GSM black drawing paper [29.7cm x 20cm].



                  Species identification.

I have tried to identify all plants as accurately as possible, and this was the most time consuming activity of the project. However, even with the City of Darebin's Guide to the indigenous plants of the City of Darebin, where the Croxton to Thornbury railway siding falls, I was no expert. This valuable resource enabled me to identify a significant proportion of the plants shown here. However, some of the Eucalyptus species and Melaleuca species are notoriously difficult to distinguish from each other. there  were some plants where I had to admit defeat. I apologise for any mistakes, and I take full responsibility for any errors.



                  A comment on Taxonomy.

it has been many years since i applied my  botanical knowledge, As a masters student [1980 to 1983] I tutored in field botany at la Trobe university, later in 1983, I worked as a botanist with the national parks service, in the intervening years, a number of plant genera have been renamed or reclassified. This only affects three plant genera, in the exhibition. in quite a recent change the bottle-brushes, which used to belong to the genus Callistemon, have been reassigned to the genus Melaleuca where they join the paperbarks and myrtles. The genus, formerly known as Casaurina is  now Allocasurina.



                                  Notes.

1. I am forever indebted to the current and former staff of the Fairfield (formerly Northcote)  community rehabilitation centre who enabled me to draw again. But they also helped to rescue me, along with Penny Callaghan, from unspeakable pain that I had endured for years. That pain was consequent upon  undiagnosed disorders and damage to a number of nerves, tendons, and joints. Dystonia in my biceps was dislocating my shoulder, I had a torn subscapularis muscle, carpel tunnel syndrome, spinal arthritis, collapsed discs, sciatica, central canal stenosis...

The NCRC team also fitted me with a *1made-to-measure work station to "enable me to draw again". As evidenced by the pictures on this website, drawing and painting are significant activities in my life. However, art was always important to me, emotionally and physically.  It is only since i was forced to give up my career, due to parkinson's disease, that i have taken up art more seriously, however drawing has been  shown to have effected measurable improvements in some of my Parkinson's disease symptoms.

2. The lack of individual pictures in some months is not due to a scarcity of flowers in any month but February, when many of the plants on the railway siding have set seed. Rather, over the year some pictures were given away or sold.

3. I was often surprised by the capaciy of the native plants on the railway siding to flower so abundantly and for so long. Some of them flower for much of the year, and some seem  to have flowers that last  for many months.

4. I am very grateful to Joan Phillips for all the walks she walked with me, along the railway siding during Melbourne's Covid-19 periods in lock-down in 2020. I'm also grateful to Wendy Harrison, who accompanied me on some of the Pre-Covid-19  walks on the railway siding, and for helping me with some of the finer details of updating this website. It is doubtful that  the project to record the botanical monthly seasons of  the railway siding, nor to present them in an exhibition, would have been possible without joan or wendy who i thank for their help and their company.

5. Australia has already run up a tally of emergent home grown pathogenic diseases that have infected humans and their animals, these diseases include Ross River virus (RRV), Barmah Forest virus (BFV), Murray Valley encephalitis (MVE), and Kunjin virus which are all spread by mosquitoes. In the last human outbfreak in 1974, MVE killed ~33% of patients, ~33% recovered, and ~33% suffered brain damage. MME causes disease in 1/800 of infected humans. Herons and cormorants are reservoirs. Hendra virus emerged in 1994 when it killed three people and 17 horses. Four species of fruit bats with Hendra virus antibodies have been found from New Guinea to Melbourne. Menagle virus was identified in still born piglets in 1997 and in the serum of bats; workers and pigs associated with the piggery where two workers also developed a flu like illness. Australian bat Lyssa virus (ABL) emerged in 1996 when it infected two people, exposed to fruit bats (flying foxes) one of whom died. It caused another death in 1998, 27 months after the  victim was bitten by a fruit bat. The virus is closely related to Rabies, and Rabies vaccine gives good protection against it.