Kay Lawerence 70+ 4324/25

The image of a dwelling suspended between the rounds of air and water has haunted me since I was a young Art teacher in Mount Gambier in 1969 and visited an elderly couple on their farm outside Penola. as I drove up the track between the trees, I started to see their Cottage standing in a swamp, Water all around reflecting the winter sky. the image appeared again 50 years later when I drove from Mount Gambier to Adelaide on the Coorong Road, On a flat stretch of Country, right beside the bitumen I saw an abandoned Hutt, seemingly sitting in a sheet of water that mirrored the sky. I have begun to think of These images as signifying a kind of amnesia that haunts the British settlement of Australia. we have all too often drink the water of forgetfulness. This has a race in our mind the indigenous past That lives present beneath the water.