I have heard of a painting referred to as a ‘canvas’.   But what if it is painted on masonite?

This ‘masonite’ is based on a photo from 1938 of the (now long-defunct) Rose Bay Water Airport.  It was Sydney’s first international airport, where flying boats (or were they floating planes?) took off on the long ‘kangaroo’ route to the other end of the British Empire.

Judging from the light, the photo was taken late-ish on a summer afternoon.  I imagine a (no doubt wealthy) passenger bobbing drunkenly in the plane, awaiting take off.  She has spent the afternoon at a picnic in one of the robber baron mansions on the waterfront near Vaucluse, and she is sun burnt and a little salty with sweat and dried sea spray.  The champagne is transforming from fizzing joy to a dull headache.  By tomorrow morning she will be buzzing over Queensland, headed towards the Arafura Sea (what a name!), perhaps never to return to beautiful but painfully provincial Sydney.