ARTIST STATEMENT

I live very near the Heysen trail at Bridgewater in the Adelaide hills and regularly walk beside the creek. We had good rain in October 2009 and I love to see the water rushing under the railway bridge.I walked out of that landscape ,went home and got a call from Russell Starke, the principal of Greenhill Gallery, to invite me to participate in a show about the Heysen Trail. I don’t do landscapes so I was rather lost  until I remembered seeing a sign on the trail – the Pioneer Women’s Trail.

On investigating (thank you Google!) I was amazed to discover the story of pioneer German girls who from 1839 into the 1840s walked all the way from Hahndorf to Adelaide carrying their families’ produce down to the markets.

In 1839 Captain Hahn had brought Prussian families searching for religious freedom to South Australia, in his ship The Zebra. He arranged for them to take up land in the Adelaide hills and in honour of that kindly and benevolent man they named the area Hahndorf. It was rich and fertile, and they were overjoyed to settle in such a beautiful place. The first families began farming.

It became clear to me that, as a narrative painter, the story of the girls is what I would paint – these remarkable young women, the Johannas, Marias and Annas. The plains dwellers were hungry and eager for fresh food. The girls set off at midnight, often bare-footed to save on shoe leather, carrying butter, cheese, eggs, potatoes, carrots, onions and fruit and anything else they could make to sell – clogs for instance, whittled from wood for women to wear in muddy conditions.

The girls began their journey at midnight,(1) walking through Verdun, up German Town Hill, down along Cox Creek (2), through Bridgewater (3) Coming down to Bridgewater through the stringybark forest and across to Crafers (4) -

Locally, there were escaped convicts and men who had jumped ship and were hiding  in the bush, known as “the tiersmen”,  so the girls sometimes carried clubs for protection. I thought about these men and the characters I painted evolved into young sailors, struggling to survive in the gloomy dampness of a cold Crafers winter, far from their homes and families. But the German girls feared them.

The girls then made their way across to Waterfall Gully, down through Beaumont (5) to the plains and on into Adelaide to the markets where the fruit, vegetables and butter and cheese were eagerly awaited.

They would have been cold and wrapped in coats and jackets and shawls over their dresses, mittens on their fingers and scarves on their heads. Nights in the hills can be bitterly cold and in winter sometimes snow fell around Crafers. They probably joked and laughed as they walked and may have sung traditional songs. They would have sat by creeks to rest and told stories and gossiped about their families – and probably boys – but it would have been a long and arduous journey. I thought about the things they saw and heard: birds – finches, wrens and the strange kookaburras and parrots; animals – kangaroos bounding along in the stringy barks and many other small creatures rustling in the undergrowth beside the trail. The creeks would have been deeper and full of clear clean water, abundant with fish and frogs and yabbies.

Eventually other ways were found to take produce to town and the memory of the pioneer girls’ walk faded from memory. However, in 1980 research revived the memory and the trail was retraced by comparing old maps with Department of Lands Maps. There was a re-enactment of the walk and since then the trail has been signposted and much of it follows what is now the Heysen trail.

My sixth painting, The Lost Way (6), is not about a point on the trail, but about the memory of these brave and resourceful girls and about the fact that we do forget so easily. It is a celebration of their strength and spirit and humour.

I would like to thank Anni Luur Fox for her help and advice in relation to the original research, and Diana Hetzel for lending me a most elusive and very important book, The Hahndorf  Walkers and The Beaumont Connection  by Elizabeth Simpson, which was published in a limited edition in 1983.

I work in a second hand bookshop on Fullarton Road, Highgate, (Back Pages Books). I paint there too, and in the months to November 2009 I painted my ‘German girls’ pictures and told visitors about them. Most had no idea about the history of the trail and the strength and tenacity of these pioneers. Only a few had heard of them – but then came a surprise. I discovered that two of my visitors were actually descended from them! So it seems that while the past is perceived as ‘history’, in reality something of the past remains with us, if we are prepared to acknowledge and value it. 

Janet was born in 1948 and educated at Presbyterian Girls’ College, now known as Seymour College. Her art training commenced at the Ruth Tuck Art School and continued at the South Australian School of Art (which was then at Stanley Street, North Adelaide) where she studied fine art. She taught at the Ruth Tuck Art School for many years, commencing when she was still a student at the School of Art . She also taught at Douglas Mawson Institute of TAFE (mainly in life drawing and illustration).

She has had many solo shows, and has been exhibiting at Greenhill Galleries since 1985.

She has also been illustrating books for many years and is currently a director and art director of Calypso Press. She is an artist in residence at The Adelaide University Union Studio, where she paints pottery thrown by the wonderful potter, Helen Sacharias.

“Talking about my pictures

"Sometimes I dream my images – sleepless nights are good for thinking of pictures. A phrase or a story will give me an idea; then again sometimes a character or place will appear on the paper in front of me. I go on with it to see what will happen next, which is always entertaining. I read a lot which means I live in the mysterious half-world of the imaginations of countless authors, probably because we have a second-hand bookshop and I am constantly surrounded by books and writers, some modern and some dead for centuries.

My patterns repeat quite often. I have used some for years, varying them and adding to them as my work progresses: from Greek key patterns to the tumbling block pattern of the quilter, to the decorative birds and the irresistible fish that I love. Someone asked why I put fish on women’s heads. I really have no idea, but I like it and find it intrigues and sometimes irritates people – good enough reasons."

Publications:

“The stew that Grew” written by Mike and Rhonda Gray
“Things” written by Mike Gray
“Something rich and wild” written by Margaret Wild
“What’s for Tea?” written by Janet Bridgland

Covers for:

“First Born” by Jane Carroll
“The Chinese Gold Murders”; “The Chinese Lake Murders”; “The Lacquer Screen”; “Judge Dee at Work” – all written by Robert van Gulik and published by Calypso Press.
Publication of the next two in the series “The Chinese Bell Murders” and “The Haunted Monastery” should occur later in 2005. The covers are ready.