Art in the Mallee

Between the Mount Lofty Ranges and the Murray River, pockets of South Australia’s ancient mallee woodlands still survive. These are havens for wildlife and natural vegetation, a mix of woodland, native grasslands and thick forest. On his 1839 visit to the region the British naturalist John Gould described the mallee as ‘a rich arboretum’. But Gould overlooked one extraordinary feature - hidden in the mallee forests was an ancient set of intricate designs worked on fallen mallee timber by the soft-bodied, iron-jawed borers of the Longicorn beetle species. These designs form the basis of my art…