Next stop - Mudgeereeba

From Buderim it is a short hop to the Gold Coast where my brother lives. I stopped in Brisbane on the way down, and paid more for parking than I usually spend in any one day.

This from Neil and Di's garden.

Before Christmas we had a girlie weekend at Woody Point, back in Brisbane. Suzie hosted Janet, Helen and I for the weekend and fed us like VIPs, which we are of course.

And I made a short trip down to Murwillumbah and met up with Felicity at the Tweed Regional Gallery. The view from the gallery cafe is delightful.

There was a special installation that was spreading around at least three rooms, all made from cardboard. This is the In-Habit Project, which

"considers the idea of ‘place’; and addresses themes of journey and diaspora; settlement and resettlement; home and land; plight and displacement. Using the process of collecting and collaborating to express ideas of migration, family and memory, the artists work with the community to construct small houses using recycled cardboard and found materials. These houses contribute to a growing community of dwellings installed on scaffolding within the gallery, resembling a sprawling construction site continuously evolving and always in transition."

But the highlight of this visit, other than seeing Felicity again, was the Margaret Olley Art Centre.

The MOAC celebrates the career, life and legacy of its namesake, Margaret Olley – Australia’s most celebrated painter of still life and interiors. 



I had a Margaret Olley print on my wall in my house in Cairns, and there was the jug of cornflowers featured in that print, sitting on the kitchen windowsill just as I had so often imagined. This is an exhibition I could revisit again and again.

But a few days later it was off on the next road trip, a short one this time - a 6-hour hop down the coast to Port Macquarie, with a breakfast stop in Byron Bay.