Expedition Series - Exploring Kakadu National Park Area

After our inspirational journey with Jo Bertini earlier in the year, Artworkshops Australia and the award-winning Anthology, are excited to follow up with a unique art experience to Wildman Wilderness Lodge on the border of the Kakadu National Park.

Set amidst the lush wilderness of Australia’s breathtaking Top End, Wildman Wilderness Lodge is a new nature-based travel experience, situated in the Mary River Wetlands. Recently opened in April 2011, Wildman is a small-scale, high quality wilderness retreat. An unforgettable journey to an incredible destination.

“Both painter and explorer, Jo Bertini re-creates the immersive experience of travelling through the remote landscapes. Employed as an artist by Australian Desert Expeditions, her paintings reinvigorate our way of seeing the interior, distilling it into solid, sun-drenched planes of colour. Bertini says: ‘There are still things in our inaccessible regions that only the human eye can see and only the human hand can record. My role is most important to not only visually record and represent what is seen but also to record that which is unseen.” Victoria Hynes for the SMH

Jo Bertini will lead you on an intimate Plein Air journey. Sketches and works on paper will be drawn immediately from the Kakadu river plateau, through which the group will tour extensively. Jo’s uninterrupted connection with the wilderness will help you produce work, which will contain something of the moment from which they are captured. The body of works produced will form a comprehensive base for inspiring larger studio paintings.

World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park is the land of the traditional Aboriginal owners the Bininj/Mungguy people - a spectacular collection of woodlands, forests, the majestic Arnhem Land escarpment, Waterways and floodplains, all home to an incredible array of wildlife.

Kakadu is one of only 22 World Heritage sites listed for both its natural and cultural heritage. The wide ranging habitats, from arid sandstone hills, savannah woodlands and monsoon forests to freshwater flood plains and tidal mudflats, support an immense variety of wildlife, some rare or endangered.  There are over 50 species of mammal, including kangaroos, wallabies, quolls, bandicoots, bats and dugong.  More than 120 reptile species include saltwater and freshwater crocodiles, goannas and turtles.

A quarter of the country’s freshwater fish species inhabit the park’s river systems. The park is home to over one-third of Australia’s bird species, including more than two million migratory birds such as magpie geese and whistling ducks.  Rare bird species include the hooded parrot and the Gouldian finch, the chestnut-quilled rock pigeon and white-throated grass wren are endemic to Kakadu and Arnhem Land.

It is Australia's largest national park, but it isn't just the size that astounds visitors - it is the sense of something very old and grand. Creation of the 500 km escarpment began 2,000 million years ago, when layers of sandstone built up a plateau to later be carved into an escarpment and scoured by gorges. Today those gorges are brimming with rainforests, washed by waterfalls.

Many species of flora, 30 mammals, 75 reptiles, 1500 butterflies and moths, 50 freshwater fish and 25 species of frog have been discovered in Kakadu. During the lush green season Kakadu's flora puts on its most brilliant face. Between December and March visitors will see plants respond to the monsoonal showers with riotous growth.

Over thousands of years, Aboriginal people have left behind some extraordinary galleries of Aboriginal art, with rock sites dating back 25,000 years. More than 1,000 sites have been recorded.

Included in the cost for the expedition are all tuition, accommodation and meals. Transfers from Darwin by coach to the Wildman Wilderness Lodge is included, however any airfares or other transportation are not included in the package price. Further details on the schedule for each day and specific requirements, will be posted to participants.

We invite you on this expedition with Jo and the Anthology team. We are sure that participants will enjoy a wonderful art experience, rich in colour and diversity.

Expedition Series - Exploring the Flinders Ranges

Artworkshops Australia and the award-winning Anthology, are excited to bring you a unique Australian Art and travel experience that is sure to inspire and enrich your practice. The expedition is led by Emma Walker - an abstract landscape painter and wonderful teacher, will lead a small group of artists to traverse the incredible beauty of one of the earth’s oldest landscapes.

"Emma Walker is already one of Australia’s most convincing and original painters. Her work is as audacious as it is poetic; the one quality leavens the other, so that just as delicate reverie sets in, you’re pulled up by a less immediately seductive note, an act of painterly boldness or some other form of tough, enlivening aesthetic decision. Walker’s work gets stronger with the years, treading the sometimes overtrodden path between representation and abstraction in a way quite unlike any of her contemporaries. She orchestrates her constantly returned-to motifs – seas, inlets, rivers, headlands, skies, clouds and shadow – in ways that are constantly invigorating." - Sebastion Smee

Emma will lead the group on a Plein Air based expedition into the Flinders Ranges. This experience is designed for artists interested in landscape, both painting and drawing and for those involved with a conversation about the nature of art making and different approaches to the Australian environment. By immersing yourself in this spectacular landscape you will have direct contact with your subject matter through the interaction with nature and the environment.

The group will be staying at the Wilpena Pound Resort at the base of the Flinders Ranges National Park. In this natural bush setting, native flora and fauna abound. The resort blends well into the landscape and provides comfortable accommodation for exploring the Flinders Ranges.

The Flinders Ranges National Park encompasses some of the most spectacular scenery in South Australia, made famous by the paintings of Sir Hans Heysen. The Park is world-renowned for its geological history and includes impressive fossil remains. Aboriginal people have lived in the Flinders Ranges for tens of thousands of years. For many groups, most notably the Adnyamathanha, the Ranges are still of enormous significance today.

For years the Flinders Ranges have drawn visitors from far and wide.  The appeal is the unique beauty of this landscape with its indigenous history, ancient geological formations, rich colours and textures, open spaces, clear air and abundant wildlife. The vibrant colours of the 800 million-year-old quartzite and limestone outcrop that is the Flinders are truly spectacular.

At the heart of all this is Wilpena Pound, a natural amphitheatre 17km long and 7km wide shaped by the weathering and uplifting of land over time. Ikara, as the local Adnyamathana people call it, is a significant place of many sacred Aboriginal rituals, and their Dreamtime stories tell of its creation by huge serpents. From the rich indigenous history to the stories of the first European farmers to the region, this place has a diverse and fascinating history of human interaction with the landscape.

Included in the cost for the expedition are all tuition, accommodation and meals. Transfers from Adelaide by coach to the Wilpena Pound Resort is included, however any airfares or other transportation are not included in the package price. Further details on the schedule for each day and specific requirements, will be posted to participants.

We invite you to take a journey worth writing home about, to create your own stories that will last a lifetime. We believe in travel that is personal and passionate, and we hope that in taking a journey with us you will be transformed in some small way, your life richer and deeper for the experience.