photographer PEN TAYLER
Dawn is still about 20 minutes away, but on the south side of the island well-known artist Mel Hills is already up preparing her materials to draw a sketch of the morning light on The Hazards. From her vantage point there is an uninterrupted view across the water. Hills, fellow artist Rick Crossland, myself as the photographer, and our respective partners are enjoying a creatives’ weekend on Picnic Island. The island’s owner, Clem, is also here – far from lock-down in his home state.
“The moods and colours are ever-changing,” Mel Hills says of The Hazards. Both she and Rick Crossland are taking the opportunity to work en plein air painting in this unique environment. “Picnic Island offers a whole new perspective, and being so isolated I can get lost in my painting without disturbances from passers-by,” Crossland says.
Painting outside does carry its own challenges, though, and not just from passers-by. The light changes rapidly, especially around dawn; and Crossland, who has chosen to work out on the rocks on the eastern side of the island, looking past the old jetty across to The Hazards, needs to avoid being swamped by the incoming tide. Both these challenges mean he has to work quickly.
Later in the day, Hills moves to the northern side of the island and here, as she sits on one of the rocks just off the shoreline, a juvenile Pacific gull flies down to join her. While she paints, it seems to be communing with her (when it isn’t poking about to see if some of her paints are worth eating). “Picnic Island is full of inspiration and provides a unique perspective in terms of geology and island ecology,” Hills says.
Meanwhile, at low tide, my partner and I walk around the perimeter of the island to explore the amazing rock formations caused by the endless wave action and tidal movements.
In the evening we all retire to our respective rooms where we go to sleep with only the sound of the waves rolling in and the penguins calling nearby. During the night, the wind picks up, howling around the island. It’s a wonderfully, wild evocative sound, although I’m glad I’m not in a tent.
The next day, the lucky winners of the Forty South Picnic Island competition join us. Doug Herring and Tammie Fleetwood, from Kitchen 7216, seem to provide us, effortlessly, with a memorable evening meal that includes such delights as sunflower and saltbush damper with wakame butter, charcoal roasted rainbow trout, stewed fennel, warrigal greens in burnt butter, and salted peach cobbler, tassie oats and kunzea mascarpone. All the ingredients have been brought by boat from the “mainland”.
After being immersed in such a creative weekend, Mel Hills is keen to return to the island in a different season to explore and document the colourful rock-pool life and other aspects of the island’s unique ecology. Rick Crossland found painting at dawn with the captivating light the most memorable, especially being accompanied by the bird life including a sea eagle high in the sky, and cormorants and gulls perched on the jetty in the soft morning light.
Pen Tayler is a Tasmanian writer and photographer. She photographed 12 towns for Towns of Tasmania, written by Bert Spinks, and has written and provided images for Hop Kilns of Tasmania (both Forty South Publishing). She has also written a book about Prospect House and Belmont House in the Coal River Valley.
Learn more about Picnic Island, visit picnicisland.com.au.