A tale of two artists shaping Queensland's bush art scene
Marion Moore is 101. Zarabella Bambling is 23. Despite their differences, both women have just celebrated the same major achievement as bush artists.
Marion Moore says she's a late bloomer when it came to painting.
It wasn't until her mid-thirties that she began bringing imagined bush scenes to life, her first pieces painted with house paint on old soapboxes.
That was in 1960.
The 101-year-old said she has spent the past six decades honing her passion in stolen moments, adorning the walls of her family's outback property.
Marion Moore's painting of her home at "The Peaks". (Supplied: Mitchell on Maranoa Gallery)
It would be easy to assume the Queenslander perched on the tallest hill at her cattle property known as The Peaks inspired her quintessential bush scenes.
But Moore said her artistic drive is more innate.
"I think it's born in me," she said.
"I've always had a love of the land — trees and flowers."
Despite her legendary hospitality around Mitchell, 550 kilometres west of Brisbane, Moore was remarkably shy about her artwork.
Marion Moore standing with Maranoa regional councillor John Birkett at the opening of her solo exhibition at the Mitchell on Maranoa Gallery. (Supplied: Mitchell on Maranoa Gallery )
It took some cajoling from her daughter-in-law to take the paintings from the property and display them in town for the exhibition.
"There are 68 paintings — all of them were in the house here," Moore said, sipping tea in front of bare walls at The Peaks.
"It feels a bit empty without them."
Although Marion Moore went on an art trip to Italy and travelled other parts of Europe, the vast majority of her paintings are of the Australian bush. (ABC Southern Queensland: Dan McCray)
While she sat down to talk to the ABC about her artworks, Moore is quick to steer the conversation away from herself and onto her family, whether that be her late husband John who passed away in 1979, her children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
Across her century of life, she has been a nurse during the Second World War, a farmer on the family property, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother and last of all an exhibited artist.
When asked whether any of her grandchildren had inherited her artistic ability, she smiled.