Perfect Melbourne

We enjoyed breakfast in the stimulating communal spaces at Studio Schaller - the carefully curated collections are displayed so invitingly - it would really be a fun space to spend hours in!!

 But we were on our way to Melbourne today!! 

After an easy drive down the highway and an even easier run into the city we were able to drop our cases off at the Rendezvous Hotel on Flinders Street and make our way South of the CBD to the Royal Botanic Gardens in time for lunch.

We wanted to try the food at Jardin Tan - the beautiful contemporary Vietnamese cafe adjacent to the Garden's Visitor Centre. We loved their fresh and delicately flavoured Pho and fragrant salads - although we missed out on the setting under the fig tree today!

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the National Gallery of Victoria - at the amazing Ai Wei Wei - Andy Warhol exhibition. There are over 300 pieces of art work of every size shape and media in this exhibition...enough to look at, think about and learn from for at least a week...but we took in as much as we could over two hours or so!

The curators had done a wonderful (and surprising) job of drawing the parallels and intersections between the work of these two iconic artists..it was a very thought provoking exhibition!

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Ai Wei Wei has shocked a lot of us with what he has done with priceless Han dynasty and Neolithic era pottery (which is nothing compared to what happened in the Cultural Revolution).

 And this work was constructed from Lego!!

Andy Warhol has played around a lot with making art out of everyday materials and imagery (among other things) to surprise us too!

Flowers and seeds figure a lot in Ai We Wei's recent works - but used in very powerful contexts as a means of protest.  He used the bunch of fresh flowers image in his bike basket every day for two years or so (for the benefit of the surveillance cameras) as a protest against the loss of his passport to the Chinese authorities.

 and Andy Warhol worked with flowers too!

We stayed until the gallery closed this afternoon - still a long way short of seeing everything this amazing exhibition offers. But what an experience!

We returned to the Rendezvous - a very grand old Melbourne Hotel in the old style - but very well preserved and maintained now. We are very happy to be here!

Finding Marilyn

We're in the middle of a road trip - through Yass, Gundagai, Albury and Wodonga on Saturday - with a long, late lunch at the Bridge Road Brewers at Beechworth and then an overnight stay at sleepy Rutherglen, in the middle of one of Victoria's great wine producing areas.

We missed our chance to do breakfast at The Pickled sisters Cafe at Cofield Winery yesterday morning (they were closed for a private function) so made do at the very satisfactory Doc Yarrum Cafe in Corowa instead.

We paid our respects to the region through a visit to the nearby picturesque Pfeiffer Wines on Distillery Road in Wahgunyah. 

It felt too early in the day to taste their renowned Muscats and Topaques so we tried their dry crisp Riesling and a sparky Tempranillo. 

We loved the setting of Pfeiffer's, with its historic old cellars and acres of old vines set on the banks of beautiful Sunday Creek, a tributary of the Murray River. Rob was excited to see his first native platypus swimming just below the old timber bridge (but we missed it) and we all saw dozens of turtles and schools of oversize carp in the mirror smooth water.

We made it to Bendigo yesterday afternoon just in time to book into our funky Art Series Hotel - The Schaller Studio - and walk (briskly) to the Bendigo Art Gallery by 3.00pm - our pre-booked timed entry into the gallery's big ticket Marilyn Munroe exhibition (in collaboration with twentieth century Fox). 

The exhibition includes her iconic costumes, studio portraits, fabulous film material, personal items and letters. Fabulous, talented and beautiful Marilyn was evident in all her glory in the exhibition - but what remained an enigma was the tragic Norma Jean who created her. Marilyn's star shone brightly for barely a decade, but what a gorgeous (though fragile) creature she was!

We mused over all this at the historic old Rifle Brigade Hotel opposite the gallery on View Street as we downed some pots of locally brewed Southern Ocean Pale Ale.

We love our funky Schaller Studio hotel. There is original art work, superb design and stimulating spaces everywhere we look. It would be fun to spend a longer time here - and with some good eating and drinking places close by too.

Bendigo Grace

Bendigo is only two hours drive north of Melbourne, but together we've only ever visited this small town once before, many years ago (that's apart from my short work related visit there back in 2002).

Seeing we were in Victoria anyway at the weekend we couldn't miss an opportunity to see the Grace Kelly Style Icon exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery. First staged at the V&A Museum in London, and then on to New York; it seems amazing that it has ended up here in Bendigo of all places.

The gallery has been inundated with visitors - tickets all have to be prebooked and there is timed entry. We were booked in at 10.00am (opening time) on Monday morning and there was quite a crowd waiting to get in from 9.30am onwards.

Needless to say we both enjoyed the exhibition. Rob and I have seen enough of Grace Kelly's old Hitchcock films to get a buzz out of seeing her costumes and the background stories on them and I really enjoyed seeing her princess paraphernalia, her French couturier wardrobe (a Hermes bag and Chanel suits for walking the children to school no less) and the family stories told very discreetly but revealingly through montages of old film clips and still photos. Seeing this material prompted me to help Rob stay alert during the late stages of our 7 hour drive back to Canberra by reading him Wikipedia summaries of all the scandals befalling the ill fated Grimaldi family over the past 40 years.

I will enjoy my next Rear Window viewing (for the 5th or 6th time by now) that much more now I understand the significance of Grace Kelly's wardrobe in that film so much better.

Back in Canberra it was great to catch up with the girls today. Abbie looked a perfect peach in pink - and now 9 weeks old.

Ella was in fine form. She's been watching Dancing Down Under carefully and can now do a very creditable Irish jig - Riverdance style - kilt and pony tail flying, head and torso very erect!

She keeps it up for hours on end while ever the Chieftains are playing and there is an appreciative audience.