When considering the theme ‘Lost Buildings of Ipswich’ we immediately thought of the layers of development, longing, memory, fleeting personal histories and half-forgotten stories that colour cities, particularly the vibrant central business district that surrounds Bottle Alley.

As evocative as memories of Ipswich's lost buildings are, these recollections rarely occur in high-definition clarity. Instead, we recall fragments of buildings and faces, collages of light, sound and fading moments in days past.

Our painted depiction of Ipswich's built environment aims to be a dreamlike recollection, blurring foreground and background and creating transitions between buildings, streets and moments in time that swell and bloom. We constructed a narrative around the lost buildings that had momentum and flow despite the narrative subject being a seemingly static and inert built environment.

We wanted to give viewers a sense of immediate history. Not far from the mural site, they could stand where the buildings featured in the mural once stood.

The design features five historical buildings that were close to Bottle Alley but are now no more. We’ve provided a mix of different sketches that use the same key locations:

• Whitehouse Cafe
• Street scene showing the Nicholas St covered entrance to Bottle Alley and the Central Hotel
• Rockman building, formerly Fleischmanns
• Waltons Building, formerly the Beirne building
• Street scene showing a view of Nicholas St in the 1950s including the Bottle Alley side of Nicholas Street and the Central Chambers building
• Hoopers Store

These buildings were significant fixtures of Ipswich’s city culture and commercial history. Our historical research was completed through Picture Ipswich.

We have included large native flora and fauna to create visual interest and give viewers a break from the angular elements. We included local Ipswich flora and fauna including Plunkett Mallee, Black-necked Stork and a Ficus.