Joe Rootsey spent his early years working on cattle stations in north Queensland. In 1954, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent two years confined to the Cairns Base Hospital, where he began sketching on bits of paper, inspired by memories of the tropical landforms around Cooktown and Barrow Point. Rootsey’s watercolours reveal an innocence of vision that is intensely personal. They also convey an unaffected, raw poetry some may describe as ‘naive’, and this is especially apparent in this striking and powerful work.