LOCAL weaver, Ann Evers, sits in a shed-turned-studio in her backyard, weaving sculptures and baskets from plant materials she’s grown in her sprawling garden she’s nurtured over the last 50 years.
Evers spent her childhood moving with family from one home to another, living in Switzerland and New York, before meeting her future husband while at university in Canberra, and relocating with him to his hometown of Broken Hill.
“I just loved it from day one,” she said.
“I loved the desert.”
They moved into his family’s home on the edge of town, perched on a hill that overlooks the surrounding desert plains.
“It wasn’t like this then,” Evers said. “It was three stone rooms and a wood and iron lean-to.
“When we came here it was rough, plaster falling off the walls, no hot water, a wood stove and no toilet. We were one of the last houses to have a pan that was collected once a week.”
Evers said years later, her parents told her that when they’d first come to visit her, they cried all the way to Wilcannia on the car drive home.
“They were so upset at the conditions I was living in,” she said.
“It’s a tough place and we went through some tough times.
“But there’s some wonderful people in this town.
“It’s also hard, like the landscape is, but I like that. I like the edginess of this town.”
Her late husband, Bob Evers, taught himself to build in order to renovate and extend the house, as she spent time propagating and planting local plants throughout the property.
“I’ve planted hundreds of trees and shrubs,” she said.
Though she hadn’t had much experience gardening prior to moving here, Evers said her mother was a keen gardener, and that she was inspired after joining the local Field Naturalists Club in the late 1970s.
“There was an old lady, Eileen Baker who took me on board, and taught me everything about local plants,” she said.
“I used to go out bush and learn the botanical names and I’ve always been really interested in how First Nations people used this land and how they survived here.”
Evers worked in numerous roles in town including as a tour guide bus driver, and a teacher at the local TAFE, and became the first sexual assault worker for Western New South Wales.
She then took a job as manager of the recently formed Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service.
“There was a lot of box ticking in that job and I finally decided to go back to the coalface taking on a teaching job at Broken Hill High School,” she said.
After retiring from teaching, a well-known basket weaver by the name of Virginia Kaiser decided to move to Broken Hill and run a TAFE course in weaving.
“I don’t really know why I went along,” Evers said.
“I’ve always been a maker, making my own bread, growing my own veggies and all of that. I like to make my own things, and I thought it could be interesting.”
She said she instantly loved it and quickly recognised her love of local plants could be utilised through weaving.
“Once I learned the techniques she [Kaiser] was teaching, I started to collect bits and pieces to incorporate into my baskets,” she said.
“And Virginia was so wonderful and supportive, and gave me everything she could, and put me in contact with people who might be able to help me. I’m forever thankful to her.”
Evers said Kaiser’s support, along with the encouragement of her partner and fellow artist Rick Ball, pushed her to explore weaving with local materials, drawing on her love of the landscape for inspiration.
“So now I’m growing a lot of the plants that I use,” she said. “I also go out bush and collect things, I spend a lot of time bushwalking and riding my bike.”
Evers also said she hopes her garden and weaving will encourage people to appreciate local flora.
“I guess what I’m trying to do is say ‘hey, we’ve got some fantastic, beautiful plants that grow here in Western NSW’. I like lawns and roses, and I’ve got a bit of that as well, but I just want people to appreciate what we have here, how fragile it is,” she said.
“It’s all very much my take on this place, my story of this place and my reaction and response to it. I’m passionate about just getting people to observe a little bit more closely what’s going on here to our very special, fragile environment.”
Evers is currently working towards an exhibition to be displayed at the Broken Hill City Art Gallery next year.
“I’ve been here over fifty years, and I haven’t found anywhere else I’d prefer to be,” she said.
