CHAPMAN CREEK

Sometimes, when I do a painting, I don’t know the significance of it until it’s finished.  That’s what happened with my image called “Chapman Creek”.  I’d long known there was a painting there, but it took my wife Joy to insist that we stop there and look for it one clear, cold April day in 2007.  It was on that day that the image was born.

When the painting was finished though, after I’d studied it and lived with it for a few days, its importance became crystal clear.  You see, Chapman Creek is somewhat of a gateway to the Sunshine Coast.  Think of it, the majority of people who come to the Sunshine Coast do so by way of the Langdale ferry terminal.  Most drive straight up the bypass and head to where ever their destination.  If they are driving up the coast they see nothing but houses, trees and Elphinstone Mountain.  In the distance they catch fleeting glimpses of the ocean but in reality their drive is for the most part inland from the “coast”.  After all, we are called the Sunshine Coast and many come here to see just that – the coast.  As you drive north on the highway the very first time you can actually look out and see the ocean waters connected to the highway is when you drive over the bridge at Chapman Creek.  If you look to the left as you pass over the bridge you catch a quick glimpse of the creek emptying into the ocean.  A second later you are driving the only part of the Sunshine Coast highway that physically takes you along an expanse of the coast actually exposed to the highway.  So indeed Chapman Creek is the doorway to the actual Sunshine Coast.  But think further, it is also the very same doorway to thousands of salmon and steelhead trout.  Each year salmon and steelhead are raised at the Chapman Creek hatchery and released into its waters.  Those salmon leave the creek and return in four years knowing only the waters of Chapman Creek as their freshwater home.  To those salmon and steelhead trout Chapman Creek is the Sunshine Coast, their home.

I guess that’s what the rugged beauty of that creek mouth speaks of.  It is a gateway to all of us as it welcomes us to the Sunshine Coast.  It is without doubt one of our most important bodies of running water on the Coast.  Treat those waters with respect and cherish them always, these beautiful waters of Chapman Creek.