Boiling Up Along the Condamine River, Queensland – RESERVED

This atmospheric oil by legendary outback artist, Hugh Sawrey features a stockman boiling his billy on the banks of the Condamine River. The small towns,  farms and cattle properties around the Condamine River on Queensland’s Western Downs are places that are rich in Hugh Sawrey history and much of the folklore surrounding Sawrey’s art stems from his time in this area.

Sawrey was born miles from the outback on the Sunshine Coast at Forest Glen in Buderim. The untimely death of his father (a timber-getter) when Hugh was a young boy, took his life in a very different direction when his mother, now widowed, headed west with Hugh to support her family and work as a cook on outback stations. After leaving school at 14, Sawrey worked far and wide as a stockman, drover, and shearer on stations throughout Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

In the 1950’s Sawrey lived on his mother’s property, “Holdfast”, at Kogan Creek between Dalby and Chinchilla. Thus began his association with the tiny town of Kogan located on the Kogan Creek, a tributary of the Condamine River. The Condamine area features in many of Sawrey’s paintings, recording his experiences and the people and places he encountered when he lived there. Now, many years later, Kogan and the Condamine area have become synonymous with Sawrey’s name.

“Boiling Up on the Condamine River” not only reflects Sawrey’s experiences as a drover, but importantly it chronicles the time when his art was to became a more prominent part of his life and when people began to take more notice of his natural artistic talent.

Kogan provided a turning point for Sawrey when in 1959, he painted murals for his publican friend, Nelson “Darkie” Dwyer’s on the walls of the Kogan Creek Hotel, as well as an artwork on the ceiling of Kogan’s post office. Sawrey also completed other murals and artworks for pubs and hotels in nearby Dalby and Tara. The positive reception to his art and murals encouraged Sawrey to move to Brisbane in the early 1960’s to focus on his art, setting him on the path to become a very successful artist with his paintings now much loved and collected Australia-wide.

Today Sawrey’s time in Kogan is commemorated with the Hugh Sawrey Walk of Fame at Kogan with a bronze sculpture and walkway opposite the pub where his murals were first painted. A life-size sculpture by Bodo Muche titled “Bush Friendship”, features Sawrey with his publican mate Darkie Dwyer at a table playing cards, as they often did.