During the fateful year of 1939 when the world exploded, a young , popular painter , Noel Wood, said to have been inspired by his lonely Robinson Crusoe -like existence on Bedarra Island , in the Great Barrier Reef , held an exhibition of his tropical landscapes in Melbourne for a fortnight. His pictures , a reviewer wrote, seemed to express much of the feeling of tropical Australia , were strong and vital .
An oil of his featuring vegetation on nearby Dunk Island was included in the Australian Art Annual 1939,edited by Sydney Ure Smith, a copy of which made its way into the Queensland Parliamentary Library , then into the Little Darwin pile .
Born at Strathalbyn , South Australia, in l912 , Noel Wood studied under prominent art teacher Marie Tuck ,who had studied under Julian Ashton and , in Paris, under Rupert Bunny . His paternal grandfather, Thomas Percy Wood ,1855-1937 , had been an accomplished water colourist in India .
An elder brother , Rex, also a painter and graphic artist, studied art in London , went to Portugal .
In 1933 Noel married Eleanor Weld Skipper ,whom he had met at art school in Adelaide , the wedding ceremony performed by his father, an Anglican minister . After spending two years on Kangaroo Island , off South Australia , they are said to have set out in a T-model Ford in 1936 to find their own island .
Passing through Townsville, they eventually bought 15 acres on Bedarra Island , 40 minutes by launch from Mission Beach , where they built their own house, established a tropical garden, claimed to have used early permaculture . His wife and two daughters were evacuated during l940.
Apart from travelling to London and painting there , in France and Italy , often doing portraits , in the l950s he was invited to America as an assistant art director in Hollywood , before returning to the island . At times he taught art in Cairns and Tully, where he died in 2001 , aged 89.
