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Sidney Nolan never believed the story of his brother's death. In July 1947, in an effort to find the truth, he packed his bags and ventured north. Just before the end of the war in the Pacific, Sergeant Raymond Nolan had drowned while on shore leave at Cooktown-the last settlement on Australia's jagged East Coast before the remote wilderness of Cape York. Here, in 1776, Captain Cook had almost disappeared from the pages of history after The Endeavour struck a reef. According to the official report into Raymond's death, the young recruit fell into the water whilst returning to his ship late one night, crashing through a handful of rotten planks on a wooden landing stage. Due to the darkness of the night and an unseasonably high tide, he drowned before a party could be assembled to effect a rescue. Such measures all seemed so simple. The Nolan family had always thought this shoddy explanation odd if not unlikely, largely as Raymond had been an adept swimmer and, despite evidence of drowning brought on by inebriation, they were adamant that, before the war, he had been a teetotaller.1
Yet this was not the only reason Nolan was heading north. He left Melbourne, in the depths of a frosty winter, for the promise of rich tropical light as much as to escape the soured relations between him and his benefactors, John and Sunday Reed. Once he arrived in Queensland, Nolan went immediately to Fraser Island, recording his first impressions in twelve energetic works in oil and ripolin. At this time Fraser Island was a restricted government forestry reserve, a paradise filled with lush forests and little streams of clear water... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline