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WOMAN: I was born on Kangaroo Island
and this island is very special to me.
It's separate from what we call Australia,
or as somebody said to me the other day, "the north island."
I thought that was pretty good.
I see this island through my experience of growing up here,
through places and people.
I think that lovely expression "It takes a village to raise a child"...
Well, it took an island to raise all these children,
and we did wander off.
I was a real scholar. I loved it. And I still am.
I'm continually walking.
That's my great pleasure, is to walk and to see things.
I'm sort of becoming perhaps a bit boring when I think to myself,
you know, muttering around on the beach.
Luckily nobody's listening when I'm out there looking.
I have pictures in my books of oystercatchers,
and I'm always really pleased to see them, and I love to draw them.
The trick is to draw them quietly.
If you sit there long enough, they don't take any notice any more.
They are roundish birds, skinny red legs,
long red pointy beaks.
I really love the shapes of all of those.
I love how they fly and their cries.
I hear the cries here at night.
When I see an oystercatcher or something to draw,
I think lots of connected thoughts,
and one of them is, "I may have seen this all my life."
And then I think "Well, that's human life, but what about their lives?"
So the last oystercatchers I've actually made into a composition,
which goes on and on a bit.
With the oystercatchers,
I've actually got their biological memories
and their geographical memories.
Oystercatchers rising, flying up,
and within the oystercatchers
are landscapes or seascapes
of this very bay - of Nepean Bay.
In one oystercatcher
there's all the oystercatchers that ever were.