The Woonona artist's parents, Eve and Hennie Davel, own Sketch Coffee and Art at Towradgi and they asked their daughter to complete a mural outside.

Later, when contractors were recently working on Towradgi Train Station, they frequented the coffee shop for their daily caffeine fix. Each day they admired the mural as they walked in.

As they say, one thing lead to another, and soon enough Ms Burgess was asked to paint her first public artwork by "beautifying an ugly old station wall".

And beautify it she did, taking inspiration from Illawarra's flora and fauna, along with help from students at Towradgi Public School.

When she was tossing around ideas of what to paint she teamed up with the school and asked students to paint what they loved about their local area.

Ms Burgess' mural is based on many of the ideas the students painted themselves - beach scenes, wildflowers, kookaburras, cockatoos, black cockatoos, an echidna and kangaroo.

It took three weeks for Ms Burgess, with the help of assistant Andromeda Lembo, to complete the work.

"I've got quite a good knowledge of the flora and fauna here .. there's such a diverse range," she said.

Rather than the mural be a local scene, it contains various things anyone could see along the Illawarra coastline.

"The scenes I wanted to include and create are something that takes the viewer on an adventure," she said. "It's familiar foliage and familiar seascapes. It's connecting with trains passing by and the possibilities of going on an adventure."

As she stands back and assesses her now-complete mural on the walls, and also nearby bike locker, she said the best part was creating it as the public watched on.

"I usually work out of my studio towards exhibitions," she said. "One woman stopped and told me she was on her way to Wollongong to get some tests and 'I was really nervous so I took a photo of it [the mural] and looked at it while I was at the doctors'."

For those who pause to check out the mural a little closer, there's a surprise in store.

"In the painting I've actually hidden some words of encouragement and affirmations. There's about 20 of them," she said.

"I didn't want it to be obvious, I wanted it to be for people who were looking at it a little closer."