Collection: Birds of a Feather

There is something wonderfully contradictory about contemporary life in Australia.

Kookaburras cackle outside the window while I put on my mascara, butcherbirds arrive on the verandah expecting breakfast, and magpies patrol suburban streets with all the confidence of locals who know perfectly well that we are the newcomers.

And yet, twenty minutes later, I can be drinking an espresso at the café around the corner.

The more I have lived here, the more interested I have become in that mix. European influences remain woven through Australian life — in our architecture, gardens, food, objects and traditions — while the landscape and wildlife are unmistakably their own.

Even the familiar can have a complicated history. The Australian magpie isn't the small feathered thief of Britain and Europe at all, but a butcherbird given a familiar name by early settlers. A tiny act of recognition carried halfway around the world.

Birds of a Feather grew from these strange bedfellows.

Australian birds wander through Italian architecture, antique coffee cups, pewter, olives and pomegranates — the strands of contemporary life — because we bring things with us: habits, tastes, traditions, memories and ideas of home. They meet what is already here, adapt, mingle and eventually become part of everyday life.

Old worlds. Wild company. Strange bedfellows

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