Why the Water Sprite?

Water Sprite logo

Back in the 1980’s, my mother set up a company through which she published a few things. She called that company “Watersprite Pty Ltd”, although we have pretty much always thought of it as the two words “Water Sprite” despite that. The name is a homage to the locality we lived in (a Victorian irrigation district) and a hat-tip to the nature sprites of mythological and fantasy stories. A friend of mine (Andre Czausov) drew the logo for her – back then it was only in black and white, and was originally drawn with pen on actual physical paper. I still have the original in a box somewhere, I think.

When my mother wound that business up in the 1990’s, I bought the shell off. The company lived on for several more years as the home for my ISP business. I colourised the logo sometime around then. The terribly simplistic colouring is testament to my extremely limited abilities with actual artistic endeavours. It should not be seen as a slur on the creative genius of Andre’s original work. Eventually the ISP market became unviable for micro-operators, and I wound up the ISP business and the company.

Water sprite leaning on a water wheel.
The Water Sprite lives on…

I still controlled the domain name, however, and the logo was still sitting on my hard drive. When I was contemplating setting up a website to publish my blog and photos, it seemed worth checking to see if I could recycle what I already had. It turns out, the Water Sprite name (as two words) was available to be registered as a business name. So in a sudden, fairly unconsidered rush, I registered the business name, organised some hosting, and … HERE WE ARE!