Nicholas Harding Pandanus 2012

Immigrating to Australia as a boy, I initially experienced a sense of displacement and sought ways of engaging with my new domicile’s landscape. Through my three-decade long relationship with my wife Lynne (whose maternal grandfather surveyed for the coastal river village of Wooli in 1923) I have found an emotively resonant engagement with the Yuraygir coastal region of northern New South Wales.

The pandanus have become emblematic of this affinity. Pandanus stand scattered along the coastline’s stretches of sand and gravel. This particular pandanus clings to a shallow eroding cliff, mostly sheltered from the southerlies, a tangled flurry of light standing as a sentinel presence.

Nicholas Harding, 2012