Giant earthwork on show

LONG ROAD: Frank Dale with Road Train, one of his new works painted of, and with, the Australian landscape, at King Street Artworks

Masterton artist and sometime Midweek columnist Frank Dale has returned from his annual pilgrimage to Australia -- and has once again brought back some of that giant land's soul and ochre in his paintings.

Dale has been experimenting with paints composed of earth pigment for some time.

The process resulted last year in an Aratoi exhibition, Hands On, of Australian themed works.

Earlier this year Dale created some artwork depicting -- and consisting of -- the landscape of Desert Road, New Zealand.

Now the road theme is continuing with a piece Dale has brought back featuring a line-up of some of the 'road train' trucks along the Great Northern Highway from Perth to Wyndham in Western Australia.

The 10m mural now hangs in King Street Artworks where Dale spends much of his time.

"I was given a long piece of canvas and I had to use it," he said.

Painting "with the local earth", Dale covered the canvas with depictions of trucks he had seen on his travels.

He spent some time in Mt Magnet, at the famous Road House which is the busiest truck stop in Western Australia.

The largest road train he saw had 84 tyres, and he "saw one guy going down 72 tyres reducing air pressure".

The lower tyre pressures would have been needed to cope with corrugations in the road.

"It's tough country," he said.

Vehicles include mining trucks and 3-trailer cattle trucks, sharing the road with tourists and locals in utes, who also make an appearance on Dale's mural.

The canvas work was completed "in short bursts" working from sketches, and painted stretched out on whatever flat surface Dale could find, including picnic tables by the Boab Prison Tree. Along the way, a group of young Australian artists donated some ochre paints.

On his travels Dale also headlined an exhibition in the Anzac Hall at Mt Magnet, as part of the town's annual Astro Rocks Fest, which mingles astronomy and geology.

While in Australia, Dale also checked out the largest public corroboree dancing exhibition, the Mowanjum Festival.

"You're meeting ... so many characters when you're a grey nomad."