In 2022, my parents told me they had decided, as they had been thinking about for many years, to move from my hometown and unexpectedly, I was sad. My relationship to the place I grew up in was complicated. Warialda is a tiny town located in North-West NSW, 2 hours from Tamworth and in between Inverell and Moore. It has a population of 1300, and has really nothing going for it. It’s name, Warialda, means ‘The Place of Wild Honey’, in the language of its traditional owners, the Kamilaroi people.

I hated life in Warialda growing up. I wasn’t bullied necessarily, but I did struggle to find ‘my people’ there. During school I flittered between friendship groups, never truly feeling the strong friendship connection I feel with the people in my life now. This was never their fault - I was a shy girl who was yet to discover her love for the Lord, making things, or her confidence. My years there were spent thinking about how much happier I would be when I finally got to move to the city. I was right, of course, I am so much happier now that I have settled in Sydney’s Inner West, found my people and my voice.

But, nonetheless, the thought of my last connection to Warialda being severed was very sad for me. Even though I spent years wishing to be far from there, it was still home. My visits after moving away resulted in a strong connection to the land around me. I was, and still am, hugely defined by the calm I feel when I walk in the surrounding bushland. So much so, that my work in ceramics is inspired by that place in the colours and textures that I use. It’s an endless search to maintain my connection to home.

Prior to the move, I needed to do something to express my thanks to Warialda, and I decided to embark on a personal art project of sorts to leave my mark, as it did on me. And so I thought I would tell you about how I said goodbye to this place.

On my second-last visit, my Dad and I visited an off-the-map quarry where he took my brothers and I growing up. Back then it was full of water and we would hunt for yabbies. Previous visitors had left dried, dense bushes tied to a tree and lowered into the water. When pulled up and shaken, hundreds of baby yabbies would run out onto the sandstone on the water’s edge.

On this visit, though, it was dry as a bone. On the surface of once was the bottom of the lake was cracked, dry clay, looking like the pictures you see of desolate wastelands. We brought buckets and filled up as many as we could - about 10 altogether - with the wild clay. It was the colour of sand and had rocks, leaves and probably some animal bones and other nasty things in it.

I brought it back to Sydney, soaked it in water (it smelled REALLY bad when it was wet), and put it through a process of refinement. All of the rocks, leaves etc. were sieved out, leaving behind clay slip (liquid clay) with a sort of sandy texture. I mixed red iron oxide into a small amount and left it all to sit on a plaster board for a day or so to dry out enough to use. I then kneaded it into a smooth ball, ready to throw.

With this clay I made a series of small vessels that aimed to replicate the rock formations of the sandstone from Warialda. I threw thick vases and carved back into them, creating gouges and lines. The red iron oxide created layers of colour that looked like the layers of the earth. When fired, the vases were the exact colour of Warialda’s sandstone - pale mustard yellow with red-brown streaks, and grainy.

I saw these vases as a tribute to the place that meant so much to me. Making things for people is one of the ways I show love to the people around me, and so I wanted to do the same to express my gratitude to my hometown. I had a series of about 14 vases the size of my palm and, on my last visit before my parents moved I gave them back to where they came from. I placed a vase in all the places that are particularly significant to me - the quarry I visited with my family and where I found the clay, on the route I walked my dogs everyday for 15 years, at the church I lived next door to, in the old graveyard next to my highschool and more. I wanted to leave my mark, while showing that this place had made its mark on me.

I’ve titled this project say a prayer at the stones of home, after a line from my favourite book growing up, The Messenger by Markus Zusak. This book is largely about fulfilling your potential, getting out of your hometown and doing something meaningful. At one point the main character is led to ‘the stones of home’, a natural rock formation that was his childhood refuge. Warialda was, and still is, my refuge and my vases are my ‘stones of home’. No other place makes me feel as still and calm and closer to God. When I am walking in the bushland there, I have a sense of the feeling I will ultimately have in heaven when I am with my Father - free from stress and obligation, pain and struggle and truly connected to the life force that sustains me.