Sometimes it’s good to just sit and take in one’s surrounds. I’ve done a lot of this over the last few weeks. Drawing this is also good because it tunes me in to the details I might not otherwise pay much attention to. My time in the Grampians involved soaking in the surrounds of two places in particular.

The first was the natural rock pools, the Venus Baths, which provided a well-needed retreat from the soaring mercury levels. Here we sat, sometimes moving from one pool to the next, gazing at the darting dragonflies, the overhead formations of cloud and the brilliant reflections. We even found a beautiful blue freshwater yabby in our favourite sitting spot on one day.

The other place that beckoned us to sit and just be was the back porch of the old house we use whilst visiting. It was also a place to chat and to eat but we often found ourselves quietly sitting and taking it in. After resting there so many times a day I began to see new things – such as the random flight paths of the passing butterflies and the changing colour of the overhanging eucalypts. Apart from the obvious visits of emus and deer, the smaller, more humble, but equally beautiful occurrences slowly came to the light.