Shirley Peters

We went to the opening of Shirley Peters' first one man show last night. It is at Brunswick Street Art Gallery in Fitzroy near Melbourne. She had a fantastic collection of rather large oil paintings, mostly depicting the unexpected combination of modern secular people, such as young runners and surf swimmers, in St Peter's Basilica in Rome!!! Even horses! They are great paintings, each one is amazing, but all together it really was impressive. She sold 3 paintings on opening  night!!!

Here they are:

Elizabeth Barnett - etching

Last night we went to the Bruswick Street Gallery near Melbourne, to an opening night of a whole lot of exhibitions. At one of them Jon and I bought an etching by a local artist, Elizabeth Barnett. We really liked the gentle nature of her work that was rather narrative, and mostly collages. Here is a photo of Elizabeth and the etching we bought called 'saying goodbye'.

Preparing for a trip to Sydney tomorrow

It's always nice when we go away from home to leave the garden looking good. Hopefully, it will still look good when we return! So today we spent most of it outside mowing, and trimming, and digging up burrs that like to grow outside our fence in the paddock... where we also mowed. So the place is quite a picture. Too tired to take one though, you'll have to imagine it!
We had dinner underneath the trees and it was wonderful.

Back home

Had a beautiful trip home yesterday. The Gwyder Highway is such a pleasure to drive. It took about 7 hours.
Today we went to Tamworth and picked up some shelving for our new studio and shed (2 shipping containers). Funny to say what I just said in a such a short sentence, because it means so much: our new lives are almost about to start!!!! Once we have our space re-organised this little bit, we will be able to do so many things that, in the past, we have not had the space to do ...  you just wait and see!

Have a look at our 2 containers being delivered on this youtube video.

Waves at Wooli

Tonight Jon and I had a delicious meal at a wonderful restaurant overlooking the Wooli Wooli River. Because we have daylight saving here (it's summer!) we had plenty of daylight to watch the river and the birds, and the clouds and the sunset.... while we ate beautiful food that someone else cooked!

Here we are:

ps. the lawn is mowed!

Wooli

We drove to Wooli today, it took 7 hours. Wooli is a lovely beach side village where we have a rather oldish house that needs some work ... but we're here to mow the grass.

Here is a photo of a plover sitting on eggs with ibises keeping a safe distance, all happening in a park next to our house after some very heavy rain, last September.

Yellow Mountain

A bird I photographed recently on Yellow Mountain in China.

Apple snail called Xiao Luo

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May I introduce Jon's and my first pet in many years, an apple snail named Xiao Luo.
(The music is "Dance of the Yao People" composed by Peng Xiuwen)