THE SHOALHAVEN RIVER BENDS AT BUNDANON in a wide, glossy expanse that anchors the landscape folding softly around it. At night it looms even larger – glowing gently in the half light of a waning crescent moon and not surrendering its presence to shadow. This river was a constant source of inspiration for Arthur Boyd (1920–1999) and here I am: practically alone on its banks as if transposed to one of the great artist’s paintings. I feel the water swamp and inspire me too, before I slip back to my room.
You can’t own a landscape, Boyd famously said, and in 1993 he and his wife Yvonne gifted this 1100-hectare property of pristine bushland on the NSW South Coast, which they had purchased in 1979, to the Australian people. Since then, the Bundanon Trust has continued the Boyds’ legacy by rooting its learning and artist-in-residence programs around the hallmarks of art, environment and landscape, bound
