Painting & Wandering: A Creative Guide to

Sea Country

Welcome to Sea Country—where tides move with the moon, where shells mark time, and where stories are carried on salt wind. This guide helps you connect your Sea Country painting pad with real places across lutruwita / Tasmania—where you can walk, rest, swim, and paint with presence.

This is a place of gathering, healing, and return. A space where Aboriginal women’s Country holds deep knowledge and slow rhythms. Let your brush follow the coast. Let your breath slow with the waves. Let the painting come in its own time.

Bring your Sea Country pad, your travel brush, a towel, and a willingness to pause.
Even in winter, take a dip—the cold, deliberate embrace of the sea can reset your body and spirit. It’s a ritual of presence.

The ocean of this Country can heal. Let it offer you a moment of deep, slow connection.

🌊 1. Meet the Beings in Your Pad

Each page features a being of Sea Country—alive in story, ecology, and deep relationship with Palawa people:

• Shells (Rina) – Found along the shoreline in places like Mayfield Bay, Narawntapu, and Boat Harbour. Sit with them. Trace their shape. No need to take—just notice.

• Australian Fur Seal (Naweetya) – Often seen resting or diving off the Tasman Peninsula, Bruny Island, and coastal rock shelves. Watch them play and glide.

• Stingray (Larner) – Often seen feeding around jetties at dusk. Take a look at the nearest jetty or in shallow sand holes along the beach - but don’t get too close!

• Humpback Whale – Look for them during migration at The Neck (Bruny Island), Binalong Bay, or Table Cape. Watch for the slow roll of their backs through ocean swell.

• Crayfish – These coastal treasures are traditionally caught with skill and knowledge by Aboriginal people. You need a licence to harvest. Honour their place in the ecosystem when you paint.

• Seahorse – Mysterious and symbolic. Spot them at Seahorse World (Beauty Point) or imagine them in the kelp forests of Fortescue Bay.

• Penguin (Tomenyenna) – See them come ashore at Lillico Beach, Low Head, Bicheno, and Burnie. Sit quietly at dusk and listen to their chatter.

• Muttonbird (Yula) – The great migratory bird of Palawa people. Harvested on Big Dog, Babel, and Trefoil Islands, they can be seen flying in vast flocks along both coasts from dusk till dawn—silent wings skimming the ocean waves.

🖌️ 2. Where to Sit, Swim & Paint

Let Sea Country guide your creative rhythm. Here are places across the island to rest, reflect, and respond with paint:

Salt-soaked Painting Spots:

• The Bluff (Devonport) – Sit above the tide. Watch seabirds and changing weather. A grounding place to begin.

• Friendly Beaches (East Coast) – Wide open, turquoise water, and space to stretch your palette.

• Barilla Bay (South-East) – Oyster beds, stingrays, and salty air at low tide.

• Tessellated Pavement (Eaglehawk Neck) – Paint the ancient geometry shaped by water and time.

• Narawntapu National Park (North) – Estuary, dunes, and still water full of life.

• Binalong Bay / Bay of Fires (East) – Bright lichen rocks and clear light—paint bold, paint slow.

• Cockle Creek (Far South) – The end of the road. Remote, reflective, sacred.

• Boat Harbour (North-West) – Vivid blue water and soft sand. A perfect painting and picnic spot.

• Southport Beach (Far South) – Quiet, misty, and full of story. Bring a thermos and sit with the seals.

A Dip Before You Paint:

Take a moment to enter the water—cold or not. Let it reset your nervous system. Float if you can. Listen to your breath. Feel the salt on your skin.

Float. Breathe. Immerse. Then sit on the sand or a sun-warmed rock, and paint from that place of stillness.

🎨 3. Tips for Painting with the Sea

• Paint in layers, like waves—soft and light first, then deeper and darker.

• Let your brush mimic tide lines, shell patterns, or bird wings.

• Walk the beach before you paint. Let your body match the rhythm of the place.

• Salt on your fingertips? Use it. Let the sea into your process.

• You don’t need to paint everything—just respond to what you feel.

🖤❤️💛 4. The Sacred Stop – larapuna / Shell & Sea Country

Paredarerme Country

• The practice of kunalaritcha—shell necklace making—has never ceased.
  It has continued, unbroken, across our island—especially on Flinders and Cape Barren.
  But here at larapuna, take a moment. Sit on the shore.
  The wind and tide carry the voices of women and families who have passed down Sea Country lore through generations.
  The middens, the shells, the stories—they are not of the past.
  They are still being made, still being shared, still being held.
  This is women’s Country. And it is alive with culture.