Australia – Page 2 – World After Work

Wednesday, 23rd of January and we decided to visit the Tweed Regional Gallery. This is a small gallery in Murwillumbah, just across the border from Queensland in New South Wales. They run guided tours of the gallery in the morning so we thought we’d get an early start and get there in time to enjoy that.

Did you know that New South Wales has Daylight Savings Time in the winter and Queensland doesn’t? Me neither. So when we showed up more than half an hour ahead of time for the tour, we had actually missed it by 20 minutes. Luckily, nobody had showed up for the tour that day anyway and the lady who was that day’s designated guide was still in the building and was happy to show us around. It was interesting to get some more background on some of the artworks in both the permanent collection and the temporary exhibitions.

The gallery itself is set in rolling farmland with striking views of the nearby Mt Warning.

This is a peak that Ishbel and I, together with our two boys and various other family members, ascended over 20 years ago on a previous Australian visit. That was during the Australian winter and I recall even then being somewhat hot and bothered by the time we got to the top, so I had no appetite to repeat the experience in the middle of a blisteringly hot summer.

We continued to wander the gallery and our informative guide showed us around the house/studio of the late Australian artist Margaret Olley. Her Sydney residence has been reconstructed inside the gallery building. It’s a similar concept to the Francis Bacon studio which was rebuilt inside the Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin.

We had a pleasant lunch enjoying the view at the gallery’s cafe then headed back for Queensland, going back one hour in time as we crossed the border.

It’s been a week since I put up a post, apart from the impressions of Japan, so I haven’t yet touched on the Australian leg of our journey. In time-honoured fashion, and like so many UK visitors before us, we are spending a lot of our Australia visit imposing ourselves on friends and relations.

We arrived at Brisbane airport early on the morning of Friday, 18th January and were picked up by Ishbel’s sister. She lives on the Gold Coast and, showing kindness above and beyond familial duty, had agreed to put us up for a couple of weeks. We’ve been changing accommodation every few days for the past month and a half so it’s nice to get the chance to just settle down and properly unpack for a while.

We landed at around 6:30am and it was already blisteringly hot, and that has remained the case ever since. Quite a contrast from Japan’s Northern hemisphere winter. Friday was really a settling in day as we found our feet. There’s only a one hour time difference between Queensland and Japan so jet lag wasn’t a problem. We were both pretty tired though because we did have an abbreviated night’s sleep on the plane. There’s a pool at the house so we have been able to enjoy a refreshing dip whenever the heat gets too oppressive.

Saturday was a family gathering day as our three Australian nephews and three Australian great-nephews came round for, of course, a barbie. We’ve visited here a couple of times before and they have come to the UK as well so, like all long-distance families, we have seen them grow up in episodic fashion. The nephews are now all grown men and it’s lovely seeing the next generation of kids as they interact with us. They’ve met us before but, of course, we’re strangers for a couple of days until they get comfortable with accepting us as family.

The other acceptance process that we need to go through is with the dogs that live in the house. There are four of them:

Oscar

Spirit

Diva

Oscar and Spirit are West Highland Terriers; Diva a Border Collie; and Buddy is a horse. Well, he’s almost the size of a Shetland Pony but he’s a Wolfhound/Bull Mastiff cross. They all seem to have accepted us now.

On Sunday, we went along the coast a little. We had a specific task in mind as we had to buy Ishbel a new hat. Her Tilley hat appears to have parted company with us at some point before Japan. With the sunshine here on the Gold Coast, a hat is a necessity so we found a Tilley hat purveyor nearby and went to acquire a replacement.

That was our relaxing first couple of days in Australia.