1. The Mary Valley Rattler

This old smoky does the tourist run from Gympie to Imbil up the Mary valley two or three times a week (South East Queensland).

We came across it while site seeing during the Kenilworth Art workshop week. 

The view from in front of where we are building.

Katoomba

One of my painting from the John Wilson workshop, I made a couple of changes after looking at it for a few days, really don't know if it's an improvement.

Prague - Watercolor from a Photo by Lisa

Watercolour - Gum in SA

Watercolour - Practice

Watercolour - The passing of Margret Olley from a photo 

Watercolour - my attempt at Namajiro

W/c - Old Gums Flinders Range SA

Update 9th Oct - 15th Oct

^9th October 2011

Last Sunday we celebrated Damien Pote’s fiftieth birthday at our little dwelling in Lota. Damien is our French nephew by marriage and delights in calling Nancy and myself Auntie Nancy and Oncle Nigel. Damien and wife Susan (our actual niece) live only a 15 minute bike ride from us along at Wynnum and although they have a very nice town-house, it is not big enough to cater for a large gathering. Damien’s parents are currently visiting from France obviously timing their holiday to coincide with Damien’s 50^th.  Some time ago when Susan mentioned having a lunchtime gathering Lisa offered the use of our good sized back-garden where we are currently renting, it has plenty of room for a BBQ gathering. So we turned the caravan around to use as a food preparation centre, put the awning out for a bit of shade, then we set about putting up marquees, several gas BBQ’s, tables and chairs, access to numerous fridges and esky's and table settings for about thirty plus seated guests. By the time Damien’s mum and dad had finished setting the tables they looked fantastic, white table cloths and all and at least three different types of wine glasses per setting and all nicely finished off with hand fashioned table napkins, it looked more like a setting for a high class wedding reception instead of a Sunday BBQ and while we were doing all this we had to blow up numerous red, white and blue balloons of the French colours at the same time. It all looked rather elegant and French but I think Damien’s dad came down to earth with a bit of a bang when as soon as all of the Australianised French guests arrived they just grabbed any glass off the tables and headed for the wine eskies, men one end talking sport, the women the other talking ?? whatever, they don’t take long to learn all of our good habits do they !?!?

In all honesty it turned out really nice, the weather was beautiful and everyone had a really good time – it was great day.

Monday Art lesson I started my first portrait, this one is of Margaret Olley and although I’ve yet to finish it I’m really pleased with how it is progressing. If it turns out ok I’ll post a photo in the blog

Tuesday, stitches out and the results of my blood tests and biopsy. Well I haven’t got Coeliac desease, which is a good thing but I do have some sort allergy related dermatitis with a name a mile long. Doctors verdict was that it can’t be cured but it can be controlled with the use of cortisone ointments and to kick it I take a cortisone tablet twice a day for ten days only, he was most specific about the timing. The process can be repeated every three months if necessary. So at long last I appear to be getting some relief. Still no idea what triggers it off although I’m pretty sure it was stress originally.

Wednesday we took Damien’s parents to Stradbroke Island for the day, catching the 9.00am barge we were fortunate enough to see a Whale and calf half way across the bay and not that far from the ferry, that was good start.

At Point Lookout we walked the cliff tops and watched numerous migrating whales doing their thing as they frolicked with their calves on the long journey back south.

We had lunch in the bistro at the new Point Lookout Hotel overlooking beautiful Cylinder Beach and out across a flat calm bay where trawlers rest for the day before starting their nightly ritual of work and in the distance the coastline of Moreton Island could just be made out in the haze, once again the weather was perfect.  

A pleasant stroll along the waters edge on Cylinder Beach, a scoop of the best Gelato you have ever tasted at the Point and we were once again heading for Dunwich to catch the four o’clock vehicular ferry back to reality.  Where did the day go?

I think my French amounts to please, thank you, hello and goodbye, thank goodness Bernard and Claud’s English is somewhat better and with the occasional help of a bi-lingual dictionary we all managed very well. We thoroughly enjoy Bernard and Claud’s company and having known them for several years now, find communication no real issue, if we’re really stuck we just throw our hands in the air and say “voila”.

It was another wonderful day in retirement.

Thursday – we had an appointment with the builder to discuss the contract details and to at least have those ready to roll once the Brisbane City Council has finished procrastinating and holding up progress.

Taking the documents home for review and a promise to have them back and signed in a week or so Casey’s parting comment was that he felt the BCC approvals shouldn’t be too much longer.

No sooner had we got home, Michael the architect rang to say specific design approvals had finally been passed by BCC so the project can progress. Yipee at long last, that means the builder should be able to start by the beginning of Nov.

However, overnight I noticed changes on the contract drawings compared to the original set that we had. During the previous course of events and in an attempt to bring the project in somewhere near budget we had agreed to a minor change to the house front profile, this was mainly in an attempt to reduce the amount of expensive steelwork required by the engineer for bracing. As it turned out the saving was bugger all once the engineer revisited it and then on the new set of drawings that came with the contract I noticed the minor change had grown substantially to quite a major change, to a point where it was detracting from the visual appearance. So with a bit of reservation having waited so long for BCC to get their bums into gear, we asked the architect what was involved in going back to original concept and how much extra would it cost, he in turn queried the builder and thankfully it wasn’t too much in the scheme of things and won’t delay the start. Phew!

Last night we had the pleasure of being guests of Bernard and Claud, Damien’s parents, to say goodbye as they are flying back to France today, we felt quite sad and will miss them, they are good company. We did have an enjoyable evening at the Fish Café restaurant Manly but only because of the company we were with, unfortunately the food was just not up to scratch and it’s not cheap. It is a shame because it was always superb, so I sent them a constructive email and hopefully they respond positively so the proof will be in the eating.

That’s all for now I’ll do some painting and then watch the Wallabies beat the All Blacks.

Nigel

Kenilworth

Our week at Kenilworth passed very quickly for me. Nancy was fairly bored but didn’t complain and ended up doing some voluntary work at the centre where the week long art workshops were being held. We arrived at Kenilworth Saturday midmorning (24th Sept) after a good run from Brisbane. To the best of my knowledge there isn’t a dedicated caravan park in Kenilworth and most travellers seem to stay at the local showground. The procedure is that you just drive in, pick a spot you like and set up camp, late in the day “Clem” comes around takes a few details, like rego and name and you pay your money all of $14.00 per night power and water and if you want to use the showground showers $1.00 for 4 minutes of good hot water. In our case we used our own shower. Being situated only a five minute walk to the village and directly across the road from the school where the art workshops were being conducted, we found the tranquil rural setting of the showground an ideal venue, even just sitting and reading a book was most enjoyable and relaxing. “Kenilworth Celebrates Arts Festival Week”, that was the theme and on the weekend of our arrival the place was being well patronised, with stalls of various kinds displaying local fare and crafts etc. This was adjacent to the well-known Kenilworth cheese factory where they were doing a roaring trade with all the tourists in town. I think Nancy and I spend a lot of that weekend strolling back and forth sampling cheeses and yoghurt and buying huge homemade ice creams, along with supporting the sausage sizzles that were also close by. Art Workshop: Always seems to be a lot of ladies attend these things, I guess there were about nine or ten ladies and three blokes in our workshop alone, but they were a pretty good bunch. John Wilson was our tutor, John specialises in traditional landscape painting for which he is recognised as being Australia’s top landscape artist and he also specialises in portraying gum trees. If you are interested in that sort of art, Google his name and you will find his paintings and his gallery at Katoomba. What a fabulous teacher, he doesn’t just paint a picture and talk you through it like a lot do. John’s method is to gather everyone together then he discusses theories, methods and demonstrates mixing etc. talks about materials and how they react and then does a stage of the painting so we can all take notes and then we do our bit and so the process goes on. It’s a bit slow but thorough and he works at the pace of the slowest person demonstrating immense patience with some of the dumb and obvious questions. For all of his fame if you were asked to describe John Wilson, you would say he is a quiet congenial person liked by everybody who meets him. We de-camped on Saturday mid morning travelling home through the scenic Mary Valley via Melany, calling in at Landsborough on the way where we caught up with some old friends who have recently relocated there from the Gold Coast. Couldn’t believe how strong the wind was on the way home fortunately it was predominantly from the rear even so it buffeted us around quite a bit even though our caravan weighs over 3 tonne. Two days later the weather hasn’t improved and feels like the middle of winter instead of October.
I have attached a photo of the two paintings I managed to complete.

Painting No1

Painting No 2

Our Rural Setting Kenilworth