I have been asked to paint a Flame Robin for a Christmas card for the National Trust of Australia. When I was younger, Flame Robins were a delightful decoration of every winter. As we rode our horses across the paddocks there would be parties of them, flitting ahead and perching on thistles or twigs until we caught up with them and moved them on again. Sometimes they would be my companions over long distances, as they dipped and looped along a fence-line that I was following, before flitting in a wide curve to land behind me.

We have just had a visit from old friends from America. Steve Is an Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at a south-western university. I first met him and his wife Ruth in 1985 when I was in Phoenix for the 100th Anniversary Congress of the American Ornithologist’s Union. They have been good and generous friends ever since.

That year I joined them on a field trip to the Chiracahuahuas, a fascinating mountain area in the south of Arizona, where the habitat undergoes more than a dozen changes as it rises in altitude from the Sonoran desert to the alpine meadows at the summit. All of these habitats were foreign to my experience – desert cactus, oak forest, pine woodland and more. There could have been no better teachers than Steve and Ruth.

Looking through sketches from my time in Antarctica today I realize how quickly time has slipped  by since I was there.  It was an inspirational place and I have produced a lot of paintings and drawings from that trip that are hanging all over the world.
The extraordinary light is the challenge and I have been developing new ideas with icebergs to try to catch that feeling.
Now I have been asked to look at the landscape at several of the old stations that have been partially rebuilt since I was there.  I have great ideas for paintings of Casey and Davis stations, but although I spent more time at Mawson, its industrial feel is less appealing.  Also the savage beauty of the abandoned station at Wilkes has a weird fascination.  There are some wonderful shapes and colour balances at Wilkes.
There are so many opportunities:  not just the bright, low light, but the strength of the light even in dull conditions.  Also the birds – everything from strength to fragility, but always with a sense of freedom.

The chill of winter has arrived, suddenly the mice venture indoors.  There are plagues of mice on arable country this year and, living on a farm as I do, there are some that wish to share the warmth and security of my home.
I like mice. This affection is not always shared by wives or mothers.
I painted a number of “mice pictures” for my first one-man exhibition in London and, when interviewed by the Daily Telegraph, explained the source of my sketches.  When I was a kid, there was nearly always a mouse or two living in the closet in my bedroom.  I used to love watching them as they pottered about, and they were the source of most of my sketches.
My mother was terribly disappointed.  Her pride in my exhibiting in London was totally dashed by the knowledge that every reader of the London Telegraph knew that she had mice in her house!  She could never understand that I considered that a point in her favour, not a matter of shame.

As winter closes in that familiar feeling returns.  I need to get back to red dirt country again.  I have spent so much time camping in the red centre on field trips or environmental surveys and this is the only way to see it for me.  The sense of heat when the midday sun is beating down is memorable, but it is the early morning, particularly, and the late evening which bring the country alive.  The colours are subtle then and the shadows long, producing the contrasts that make it so enthralling and revealing the animals going about their business before the heat drives them back under cover.

Bushfires have influenced much of my lifetime.  I was involved in volunteer preparation – burning firebreaks etc. – from my early teens.   I first attended a major fire in 1977, and then again as massive new fires occurred in 1983, 2003, 2006, 2009.
The sad thing is that, despite all the fear and the misery and the destruction, bushfires are amazingly beautiful.  This is less obvious if they are at your own back doorstep.
I find it difficult to separate all the conflicting emotions relating to fires.  I hate the over-burning of our environment to prevent fire, as it not only does huge environmental damage, but dries the country and increases fire-risk.
My Grampians studio is on the fringes of both wildfire damage and controlled-burn areas.  I am getting to the point where I need to put down some ideas I have sketched in the 2003 and 2006 fires relating to the recovery.   I returned to a section of familiar country that I saw burn in a catastrophic crown fire in 2003 just three months later and found it under snow.  The subtle contrasts between the scorched leaves and the new growth were stunning;   but It was the stillness that was over-whelming, with the contrast of the black tree’s skeletons and the soft snow behind.
There is so much to separate from the whirling vortex of images in my mind.