Wandering around Wildbrumby you will find Andreas Buisman’s polished rocks scattered throughout the property; some are immediately observable totems, while others are less so, nestled amongst gorse and grasses. Buisman is drawn to weathered, rounded rocks and never works with mined stones.

As a ski instructor at Perisher in the late 1980s, the Austrian became fascinated with the boulder-strewn landscape of the region and with our ancient landmass; later, he went on to return to Australia regularly to sculpt the stones here, including a memorial stone for Fred Hollows in Bourke.

Buisman describes himself as a “translator” rather than a “maker” because the rocks appeal to him as sculptures themselves, rather than mere materials.

Using angle grinders and diamond saw blades, Buisman works with the grain of the rocks to peel back the outer surface and reveal the inner core beneath. He incises linear patterns along the exposed grain of some of the rocks and then uses finer and finer polishing attachments to create a silken, smooth surface to contrast the rough exterior.

Clouds of dust billow up, throughout the sculpting process.

All around the property, you will find local granite boulders which have been polished where they were found. Often visually subtle differences in texture make these particularly tactile and the polished surfaces declare themselves by glinting in the sun.

The various placed rocks come from a number of locations. The exposed inky black pieces are basalt from Adelong, on the other side of the mountains; the dark grey, flecked rocks are Gebhardt granite from a region near Vienna; whilst the paler, speckled pieces are coastal

granite from Moruya, NSW. The large blond granite egg near the restaurant, which looks as though it might be ready to hatch, was found in Thredbo; and you may spot the shiny basalt nose of the wombat in the car park which was inserted into the log to bring the beast to life.

Buisman says that the rocks find him, like the stones we all collect when walking in a beautiful place. His sculptures ask us to reflect on these personal connections to the natural world around us and wonder why it is that we are drawn to the particular (such as a pretty stone) within the mass.