Rose on my table looking north, 14 May 2020

Today was shopping in a big Woolworths, waiting in a lengthy queue behind a woman bent over with age and disability, who queried the price of everything so that the site manager had to be sent for. The girl at the check-out had a distinctive pre-Raphaelite face and was unflappably courteous and kind so that she made her work seem a noble task.  A work of love is what the rose stands for, the labyrinthine blossom of Aphrodite/Venus and the Virgin Mary. On Bathurst and Melville Islands north of Darwin the Virgin Mary arrived with Sacred Heart nuns, and there are statues of her put up on either side of the turbulent strait that divides the two islands. The Tiwi accepted her with some interest and hope, as another element in their pervasive world of spirits. She has also made the journey to Australia with more recent eastern Mediterranean settlers. Greek friends in Sydney once took me to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Strathfield to be near the miracle working icon of the Virgin of the Sorrowful and Afflicted. She must be very busy at the moment.

Diana Wood Conroy 'Rose on my table looking north', watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 14 May 2020