I may not have my own dog (yet!) but I do have dogs by default - my parent’s dogs Bailey and Charli.

I thought I’d take a moment to share with you a snippet of where I’m from, to give a little background to me; artist, dog lover, mermaid.

This is us taking a walk along the beach just up from where my parents live, my old stomping ground of Redcliffe (Scarborough actually, if you want to be more specific).

Redcliffe Peninsula is about 45 minutes north of Brisbane, and as I’ve discovered since moving away a pretty rough area - I don’t know how I missed this but I guess there were some pretty interesting characters on my street alone when I think about it.

I was lucky enough to grow up by the water, with a very creative mother and a very hard working father, I’d like to think I inherited both qualities.

An older brother and younger sister, the three of us were constantly playing on the various water crafts Dad was accumulating and attempting to build and spending vast amounts of time exploring the reef across the road, the cliffs down the beach and the stormwater drains (oh yes Mum, the adventures we had). The ocean became my constant.

Susannah and I would make a huge mess of the dining table with all our art supplies and projects.

A tradition that Mum carries on today.

We always had a house full of animals, my friend’s called my place ‘the zoo’.
And we always had a dog in the house, no matter the hair, sand and salt that came along with it.

When our childhood dog passed we eventually convinced my parents to get another and so along came Bailey.

We picked Bailey up from a farm out west of Brisbane in the country. Her mum was a sandy coloured kelpie and father supposedly a border collie, she was cheeky and we chose her because we thought she’d be good at fetch.. turns out she wants us to fetch the ball, not her.. but we love her anyway.

Charli came to us because a patient of my father’s had also bought a kelpie dog at the same time we got Bailey and Dad always asked about her. So when the situation came up that the family was forced to move house and couldn’t take all three of their dogs they offered Dad to take Charli seeing as he always asked about her. She was sad and scared and appeared unhappy with that family so she won Mum over and she agreed to take her on.

Bai and Char don’t always get along, they possibly fight as much as us kids did, but they make it work.

So there you go a little snapshot of the years before Byron and how I ended up with my dogs by default. Love them!

PS. Bailey is my doggelganger - if I were a dog, a sandy coloured border collie kelpie would be it! Here is a self portrait I painted of me as a dog.