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Ferry to Parramatta and then to Culture: Saturday 19 May 2012.
When Dave and I got back to our Shangri-La tent last night after our romantic night out in Darling Harbour and Chinatown we found our tent was surrounded by other tents and cars. An invasion! The morning brought us sounds of lots of happy children playing and singing, and we found we were surrounded by a big family of Indonesian campers, all related and having a bush weekend away from Sydney. They turned out to be delightful neighbours with their smiling happy faces and attitudes, their lovely happy well-mannered children, and their curiosity at "Superwoman" who rides her own big red motorbike. (Me!) I think the fact that I'm a granny also impressed them. Later that evening, Dave was comparing herbs and spices information with a lady who was cooking Indonesian food for her mob in the camp kitchen.
We had a great Saturday morning, catching a ferry from Circular Quay in Sydney, up the river to Parramatta town, along with a lot of other grey nomads like us, on cheap $2.50 all day Seniors public transport tickets. A very smooth and easy way to see Sydney area on a sunny autumn day.
Parramatta main town square had a Saturday Market happening so we enjoyed an African lunch cooked by a Kenyan family, had freshly squeezed fruit juices served by an Asian family, and listened to sublime French horn playing by a young Vietnamese guy who had set up busking in front of the very pretty little old Parramatta Town Hall. I play trumpet with the Armadale City Concert Band and I told the young man this, trying to poach him as a French horn player for our Band ha ha! Our conductor Don Cook would have loved to have him on board, as he played his instrument like an angel in heaven, and the French horn is a difficult instrument to master. Of course we threw money into his case, but we blocked our ears with a Christian music group screeching rap music about Jesus at the other end of the market place…so did everyone else!
There was a rock and gemstones stall and of course we browsed there, buying a couple of small pieces. Large ones cost too much to send back home!
We hopped on an express train to get back to Sydney and then decided to be culture vultures, going to the NSW Art Gallery. The Archibald Prize Portrait Exhibition was on but we ran out of time to see it, dammit. The Art Gallery building is an art in itself, lovely big wide halls with so many exquisite art works that I felt overwhelmed….how can one just casually walk by stunning work that has taken so long to do? Just the portraits for example…my 2 favourites were painted 400 years apart. The first was a Rubens self-portrait, it glowed with light and fine detail like the artist was going to step out of the picture frame, even though it was 1623 when he painted himself. The other was a portrait of the artist Margaret Olley by Ben Quilty, it looked like disconnected blobs of thick paint up close, but turns out to be a stunning portrait when you step back…no wonder it won the Archibald Prize in 2011.
I'm a fan of the modern 1970s artist Brett Whitely, whose studio overlooked Sydney Harbour. He knew how to catch impressions with deft paint strokes and bold colour. Also Albert Namatjura, his watercolours are sublime…he knew how to paint with minimal strokes and catch the moment…imitators just can't do it like him!
Poor Mr Intrepid Dave couldn't handle me looking in the Gift Shop at this Art Gallery, he groaned.….I've been getting ticked off by him when I see Gift shops, then karma bit him in the form of a bush tick on his hand between his fingers….where it came from I have no idea, but he spent time in the Art Gallery courtyard trying to cut it out of his hand with his Swiss army knife while I browsed in the Gift shop, unaware of his titanic struggle with mean Mother Nature! I started itching all over in sympathy when I came out and he told me about his horrible little blood sucking tick….
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