Straya Folded Cards

This print was the holiday card I created for the 2021 Christmas season; one framed once again in Melbourne by lockdowns and travel bans. While the world had largely opened back up, my home town Perth was still keeping the riff raff (definitely rascals like me) out.

While there is no way that quokkas and koalas have ever even been in the same territory in the wild - koalas being from the forests of the east coast; quokkas from Wadjemup, an island off the west coast - the idea of them speaking on a gum tree telephone à la the tin can telephones we grew up with honestly tickled me.

The metaphor, to me, felt a little like what lockdown felt like - the whispers of affect and distortions of message as you tried to reach across time and space for community.

Behind the quokka is Bathers Beach, the western most peninsula in Fremantle, where I spent most of my youth at university; and behind the koala the view of the Mornington Peninsula from Arthur's Seat, where my paternal grandparents live/d, which incidentally also has some ancestral connections for me to Edinburgh, where my maternal grandparents lived for a time.

The framing photograph is of the native hibiscus, to the left, and the peppermint gum, to the right, that now dominate my parent's front garden. Their native garden is now so lush that the school kids who pass it in the afternoons call it the hidden house at the top of the hill. The photograph is taken on Grandad's Nikon f1.

These high quality paper cards come pre-folded, packed in cello sleeves per 10 cards, and includes a white envelope for each card. Works well with regular ballpoint pens after short drying time.