Mountain with yellow cup, 24 May 2020

The sound of wind filled the house, and clouds streamed across the sky. Even with the wind the sea could be heard thumping on the shore; a rim of white is just visible. The mountain is Sublime Point, a peak in the Illawarra escarpment which is part of the Great Dividing Range. All the Dharrawal geographic names echo in the names we use, but the detail of the  huge antiquity of the land is hidden; you have to know how to look. Sometimes a beautiful edge ground axe is found near one of the tracks from beach into the hills. The Dharrawal people say the oral tradition remembers a time before the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, and that they still call from headlands to country buried under the sea since the rise of the waters. The coming of white people caused a vast pandemic of European diseases, much worse than Covid 19.

 Diana Wood Conroy, 'Mountain with yellow cup',  watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm 24 May 2020