Mrs Rusling, a Canberran with a background in nursing, is very ill but in the several weeks she's been at the hospice she's been impressing and inspiring everybody by systematically and creatively photographing the views and the wildlife that are there before her and that trespass within her now necessarily limited range. Her room opens on to a balcony above a picturesque corner of the Molonglo River. Her photographs, often taken at dawn (''I've always been an early bird'') capture the constantly changing light as the sun comes up (often filtered through quintessential Canberra morning mists), and capture too the several species of birds that haunt the water and that come to her to be fed. Hot air balloons, and the moon, and a river bank upholstered with frost are other favourite subjects.

Yesterday there were so many milling pigeons it reminded us all of Trafalgar Square in London but then the ranting and raving miner swaggered in and got a special welcome from the heavily rugged-up Mrs Rusling, resplendent in her thick black beanie.

''I love the miners,'' she told us. ''They remind me of comic birds. I wear a hat very similar to them and I think they've adopted me. I come out here in my hat and my gloves and my rugs and with my cushions.''

In spite of the efforts of the noisy miners she reflected yesterday: ''This place is very, very serene and the photos envisage that. It's peaceful. It's quiet. There's tolerance. People are patient. It's a good atmosphere. I think that comes through in the photos.''

It certainly does. As photographed by her this stretch of the Molonglo and its immense skies (for the river plain landscape is very flat and gives the sky a big part in the scheme of things) are a kind of paradise. So for example, in one of the dawn photos the tastefully pale pink clouds are mirrored in the river while a kayaker paddles gently.

Staff at Clare Holland House are impressed by and proud of Mrs Rusling. Coordinator of volunteers at the hospice, Megan Evans, said yesterday volunteers always encouraged patients ''to carry on living their lives as much as possible and to continue with things that matter to them, to make the most out of every day'' and in this Mrs Rusling was setting a splendid example. It's also a fine thing, Ms Evans thinks, that someone is taking such very beautiful photographs of a profound place, the hospice and its surrounds, that has so much meaning for all those Canberrans who ever have had and ever will have loved ones cared for at Clare Holland House.