far too often, i feel, scenes from fantasy art are set in european places, in particular, around stonehenge, or in ireland or in scotland. nothing wrong with that, of course, but i'm not FROM any of those places. so, i like to see a bit more diversity. so, i've set this one in australia.

i've decided the story behind this is that the girl, who became known as the "grey girl of kiandra", was orphaned as a small child in kiandra (for the curious, it's about 85k north-west of cooma) when her irish parents joined the flood of thousands of people trying to strike it rich during the gold rush.
her mother died giving birth to her in one of 15 hotels in kiandra, leaving her father to raise her. unable to afford to stop searching for gold in order to tend to her, he took her to the goldfeild with him, wrapped in many layers of blankets to protect her from the extreme cold.
eventually, when his daughter was 1 month old, he struck gold. however, another fossicker, upon realising gold had been found, shot him and stole his findings, leaving the baby to die.

that evening, a mob of kangaroos happened upon the tiny bundle, and adopted her much like wolves adopted children in other countries. she was raised as a kangaroo in the bush of kiandra, amongst the granite out-crops and gum trees, and remained with her mob for the rest of her life, never aware she was human.


********reference photo for Kiandra herself by the beautiful auralis-stock, here: [link] ********