Sarah Konoski

Look, we were in Richmond at a pretty interesting time when it was really multicultural and colourful and lots of factories.

And yeah, and there was a heroin issue as well.

So, you know, of a morning I would actually go out and collect syringes in a little basket and make sure, you know, we didn't step on them when we played handball or marbles or something later.

My mum, Pip Stokes, and my father, Greg Burgess, they just found a house they liked and I think it was, you know, property was actually affordable back then and they just built a home somewhere they could afford and they, yeah, they wanted to be central and they liked the hustle and bustle of the city and the trams and

and all the action in all of its various colours.

Dad, an architect, well, he played football before that, and Mum was a painter and a sculptor and a poet.

There was a little shack that Mum and Dad had acquired in the 70s and it was in the Grampians.

Well, the Black Range, which is sort of just opposite the Grampians, about 10 minutes out of Stawell.

Yeah, it's beautiful, powerful country.

And there was a hut there, granite, built by a woman named Mary and her daughter in about 1890.

and very basic, you know, earthen floor, tank water.

Mum and dad got some power connected, but it was very sporadic.

So, yeah, you had that contrast there.

You'd go and pick mushrooms and in the city you'd be picking up syringes.

So it was a really nice balance actually and certainly a place where I fell in love with nature and probably found one of the main themes running through my work.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, if you were to try to trace, you know, some of the adventuring impulses that I have, you might look to my grandfather and he would always tell us stories of salvaging old shipwrecks and looking for artefacts, like on the Zuytdorp, a Dutch wreck off the coast of WA.

And free diving.

Yeah, he was.

Well, it was just one of his hobbies.

But he actually held the Southern Hemisphere record for free diving in the 50s.