From the 18th March to the 23rd March I will be attending an Artist Residency in Stuart Town which is beyond Wellington.
During the Gold Rush era in Australia Stuart Town was a gold town and has a rich history with many people flocking there in the 1850s to seek there fortune.
Prior to this the land was inhabited by the Wiradjuri people.
Stuart Town has a population of 478 people in town and outlying farms and area. There is a school, two churches, a pub , cemetery, a railway station and an assortment of very interesting buildings which harken back to the early days of settlement.
It is reported that Ben Hall held up the shanty at Mookerawa which is close to Stuart Town and they had their own bushranger who would dress up in all sorts of disguises.
This will be a wonderful opportunity to bathe in the history of the town, capturing what it was like before and now - so that the past and present are captured in a way for the future.
Am also interested in the Lady Bushranger - Jessie Hickman and her adventures in and around the area .
This will be a time for gathering information, making connections with the people of Stuart Town, sketching, taking photographs and generally exploring the area. Although I have an idea of what I will be doing that could alter when I get there and am sparked by something in my scope. I look forward to sharing this residency time with another artist Nicola Mason from Bathurst way who is working on her own project but being in the same space a sharing of ideas and art talk will definitely be on the agenda.
Accommodation is in the renovated hotel and look forward to seeing this as the pub itself is a storehouse of DNA of times past and present. They tell me it is haunted so I hope whoever is there is friendly.
In due course it will be wonderful to share the outcomes of this experience the art and poetry created .
Once again the trusty Hyundai packed to the gunnels with clothes, food and art supplies, will venture forth some 500 odd kilometres to the Central West of NSW to regions it has never travelled before.