The Gate Charcoal on Paper

This drawing captures the moment a veteran hands back their ID and turns to face the gates of the military base. An image loosely inspired by Lavarack Barracks in Townsville. Once a passage that opened freely, the gate is now drawn heavy and dark, symbolizing the weight of separation. Where the soldier once moved through without thought, the fence now stands as a barrier, marking the end of service and for some, the impossibility of return. It is both a farewell and a confrontation with a new identity beyond the wire.

This charcoal drawing carries with it a weight that reaches far beyond its shadowed lines. Loosely based on Lavarack Barracks in Townsville, the piece depicts a set of gates leading towards a distant building, rendered with a quiet intensity. The subject of this work is not just the physical landscape, but the deeply emotional moment it represents for countless veterans, the day they handed back their ID cards and walked away from military service.
For many, that act of returning an ID is deceptively simple. It takes seconds: a card handed over, a name signed off, a final nod at the gate. But the emotional resonance is immense. Veterans often recall that when the card is gone, the gates they once passed through daily seem to loom larger than ever. They are no longer thresholds welcoming them into purpose, structure, and belonging; they become barriers, unyielding and symbolic of exclusion.
The drawing captures this moment with haunting accuracy. The heavy, dark shading around the gates contrasts with the fading background, where the barracks building recedes into mist. It mirrors how memory itself works, the sharpness of the gates is immediate, seared into the mind, while the details of the base begin to blur, already slipping into the past. For the veteran standing outside, it can feel as though they no longer exist in that world. Without an ID, they are no longer “inside.”
This sense of loss goes beyond access to a place. It is about the rupture of identity. For years, the uniform, routines, and gates represented not just work but belonging and purpose. Crossing back through them after a mission or long day meant returning to a community of people who understood you. When that is taken away, the gates become markers of separation, amplifying a sense of isolation.
At the same time, the drawing is not without a strange beauty. The openness of the sky and the faint light breaking across the horizon suggest a duality: while the gates mark an ending, they also stand at the edge of something new, unformed, and uncertain. Like the veterans who recall this moment, the artwork invites us to sit with both grief and possibility, to acknowledge the pain of endings while holding space for what might lie ahead.