This is one of several lace monitors, or tree goannas, that I have encountered at Minnie Water in the Yuraygir National Park in New South Wales. My heart always beats a little faster when one of these majestic and somewhat daunting creatures lumbers out of the undergrowth. Seeing them in their own habitat I know myself to be the interloper and wish to pay respect.

I am fascinated by their extraordinary markings, the pixilated floral pyjamas that so brilliantly blend with and reflect their surroundings, welding them to this location. I am at once looking at and through them, wanting them to be both solid and transparent, strong and vulnerable, to see them as part of the landscape that both hides and flaunts them.