My mother-in-law Judith Christina Weir nee Long who we knew as Judy, was born on 8 December 1926 at her parents home of 13 Harrabrook Ave Five Dock in Sydney. Judy's grandmothers Elizabeth Hague Newton nee McCleer, had been a Matron and midwife at Balmain hospital. This photo on the right is of Judy's grandmother Elizabeth in her Matron uniform with Judy's mother Christina Emily 'Chrissy' Newton and her sister Ruth.

In 2001 I did not have a digital camera as I could not afford one, so I was using a film camera. Films were expensive and slower to be processed but there is a certain quality about the photos that is different to the super sharp digital cameras used today. I have thousands of film photos and have organised all my film photos into small crates all…

So on a Sunday afternoon on 18th April 1999 I was sitting at a picnic table at Byron Bay's Main Beach with a sketchbook, likely doodling. I cannot remember why we were there, but also likely, we took the kids for a swim, fish and chips and ice cream at the beach. My husband was there so I could sketch a bit while he minded the kids.

I have spent some time recently re-scanning the individual images of the Australian Wildlife Alphabet I did some time ago. The plan was always to get enough money together to make it into a poster but alas the money was always needed elsewhere. So I have been revisiting the images and re-evaluating them along with the concept of a poster - I have some ideas...

Although I had decided to focus on Waratahs because it is currently Waratah season, I am taking a quick a well deserved detour to focus on of my all time favourite birds ..... the Tawny Frogmouth. This is in honour of the fact that the Tawny Frogmouth has made into the final list of Birdlife Australia's 'Bird of the Year' for three years, this year it has finally been named Australia's 2025 Bird of the Year.

In 2000 the Olympics was held in Sydney, Australia and as part of the activities alongside the Olympics was the 'Olympics Arts Festival'. The NSW State Floral Emblem is the Waratah 'Telopia speciossima' and Rosie Nice curated an exhibition called 'State of the Waratah' at the S H Ervin Gallery in Observatory Hill, The Rocks in Sydney. The exhibition ran from 1 September to 8 October with the SH Gallery outlining the exhibition on their website stating: …

In 2013 I had a very successful exhibition at the Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina NSW. This is one of the pieces I created for this exhibition. At the time I only had a small book press to print with and so any larger works were created as panels that could be fed through he press to print. I knew my hands were not strong enough to print by hand so a press is the only option.

In updating this blog and and making it easier to find my art diary entries about particular works I will be slowly making a landing page for each of the linocut designs. This will link back to previous posts of the drawing, design, carving, printing and hand colouring process that I have previously documented. The first of these is a work completed in 2008 I named 'Regeneration Waratah'.

There have been huge changes in my garden over the past five years which I will slowly document and update everyone on. But one of the editions in a small raised garden section is this absolutely stunning Chorizema cordatum - Heart-leaf Flame Pea. This narrow raised bed is near a paved area and it is where I am featuring some of my favourites including Sydney sandstone wildflowers.

Life It has been a very long time since I last wrote a post on this blog. It seems most of us moved to shorter form posting on places like Facebook and Instagram. They were lovey places in the beginning where we could connect with old friends, make new friends and exchange ideas and inspiration. But it has all changed especially with many of these platforms being absorbed by bigger entities and losing a lot of the soul of the communities they created with the idea of 'marketing and 'selling'.

tracing our interwoven family stories