Celebrating Ku-ring-gai’s Creeks, Wildlife and Natural Environment

Blackbook Ink was selected by Ku-ring-gai Council to create a large-scale public artwork at Roseville Chase Oval on Sydney’s North Shore, as part of the Council’s 2025 Urban Murals program.

The mural was designed and painted by Blackbook Ink founder and mural artist Brode Compton (Sekt Compton), bringing the native wildlife and waterways of the Ku-ring-gai area to life on a public wall — while carrying an environmental message Council wanted the local community to sit with.

Roseville Chase Oval Wildlife Mural Project Overview

Client: Ku-ring-gai Council
Location: Roseville Chase Oval, NSW

Theme: Where water flows, life grows

Project Type: Public Art / Wildlife Mural / Environmental Mural

Featured Wildlife: Sacred Kingfisher, Superb Fairy-wren, Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog, Red-bellied Black Snake
Artist: Sekt Compton

The Brief

Council set a clear theme for the 2025 Urban Murals program:

“Where water flows, life grows — Ku-ring-gai’s creeks and the wildlife that call them home.”

The brief asked artists to explore the relationship between the area’s waterways and the native species that depend on them, and to use the artwork as a way of encouraging the community to think about protecting local creeks and bushland — not just brightening up an existing public space.

Twenty-two applications came in for the program, assessed by a panel of three Council judges and two independent judges. Brode Compton’s concept was the one chosen for the Roseville Chase Oval site.

It’s a competitive brief to win, too. Ku-ring-gai runs Urban Murals as an annual program, with previous years delivering the Lindfield Village Green Car Park mural (2024, illustrated by James Gulliver Hancock), the Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden Visitor Centre mural (Grant Molony and Jason Goulding), and the St Ives Showground Gate 4 mural (Reuben Boughtwood). Being selected from 22 applications put Roseville Chase Oval alongside that established track record.

The Concept

The finished mural draws together a handful of native species found in and around Ku-ring-gai’s waterways and bushland: the sacred kingfisher, the superb fairy-wren, the eastern dwarf tree frog and the red-bellied black snake.

Rather than painting these as separate, decorative motifs, Brode wove them into one continuous scene. Native vegetation and a flowing creek run through the wall, connecting each species and framing them as part of the same ecosystem rather than a gallery of individual portraits.

An Environmental Message, Told Through Wildlife

The brief wasn’t just to make something visually engaging, it was to say something. Ku-ring-gai’s creeks support a surprising amount of wildlife, but that habitat is under constant pressure from rubbish, weeds, pesticides, synthetic fertilisers and other pollutants that find their way into the storm water system.

Putting recognisable Australian animals at the centre of the artwork gives residents, families and passers-by an easy way into that message, it’s a lot harder to walk past a fairy-wren or a tree frog than a paragraph about water quality. The mural also puts a spotlight on species that are easy to miss in a busy urban environment, even when they’re living right alongside us.

The Outcome

The mural was unveiled on 28 January 2026, becoming the first of the two Urban Murals program artworks to be completed.

Marking the unveiling, Ku-ring-gai Mayor Christine Kay said: “These murals will help remind us all of the importance of conserving our natural environment for current and future generations,” adding that “small everyday actions and decisions” are what ultimately protect local waterways — the exact behaviour change, around waste disposal, pesticide and fertiliser use, and weed control, that the program set out to encourage.

The second artwork in the program, at West Pymble Bicentennial Park, is due for completion in March 2026 and is being delivered by First Nations artists Emma Hicks and Merindah Funnell. Continuing the same “Where water flows, life grows” theme, it features the glossy black-cockatoo, red-crowned toadlet, tau emerald dragonfly and native plants of the area.

Together, the two murals give Council’s environmental message a permanent, physical presence in the community — turning a message about creek health into something residents walk past, and hopefully think about, every day. For Blackbook Ink, it’s a clear example of how a mural grounded in a genuine local story — real species, a real waterway, a real council program — does more than decorate a wall.

Services Used

This project included:

• Public art concept development
• Site-specific mural design
• Outdoor mural painting
• Native wildlife and flora illustration
• Council public art commission
• Community environmental storytelling

For similar projects, explore our mural services, mural process and mural costs pages.

Council & Public Art Murals

We work with councils, schools, community groups and developers across Sydney, NSW and Australia to create murals that are genuinely tied to their site — built around local wildlife, native flora, environmental themes and location-specific stories rather than off-the-shelf designs.

Every project starts with research into what makes a site and its community distinct, and carries through to full-scale mural installation, so the finished artwork actually belongs where it’s painted.

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