By Damien Naughton. Original Painting and Limited Edition Giclee Print size 800 x 500mm

Meating Place

For miles we drove from Byron Bay
To the heart of the rich Red Centre
And all the way our car swerved to escape
The morbid bump of squashed furry creatures
An appalling scene, a road littered
With bodies of marsupial friends
And we became numb as we gazed far ahead
To a flat as a pancake horizon
Hoofed animals had claimed a stake in the land
From our soft footed friends in the gutter
The ones here fallen can’t make a stand
For their feet make no impression
But the memories of their lifeless forms do
So we painted this painting
With love in our hearts
Never-Never to forget them

The Story Behind The Painting
When Damien and Samantha drove their Citroen 2CV car from Byron Bay to Uluru in 1990, they were shocked to see so many squashed animals on the road. Meating Place was the first of many paintings inspired by that drive. The road train was one of the scariest aspects of the drive in that little car. The artists felt like they were being sucked up into the vortex left by the massive freight road trains whenever they passed by, the air thick with the smell of carnage.