LAKE MUNGO

ROARING GUSTS OF WIND WHIPPED up layers of salt and sand and clay and blew them across the lunettes known as the Great Wall of China. Such is the force of nature at Lake Mungo, just one of a series of dry lakebeds in the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area of NSW. This southwesterly blowing wind is how the lunettes were formed thousands of years ago, and how they are changing still.

It was a particularly ferocious wind in this March when I was attempting to paint using plastic cylinders filled with washes of colour and a 10-metre roll of watercolour paper laid out on the ground. As quickly as I could pour paint out, the wind lifted it up, seemingly suspending it mid-air before hurtling liquid colour and sand