Sculpted by Sydney

This year our "sisters and spouses reunion (long) weekend" in Sydney coincided with the "Sculpture by the Sea" exhibition from Tamarama to Bondi. We avoided the weekend crush by using our first Friday morning together to experience "Sculpture by the Sea". We walked from Coogee to Tamarama, along the new Sesqui Boardwalk on this cool, windy, overcast Sydney morning.

Glamorous Tamarama beach had been transformed into a stunning, sandy, gallery space. I loved seeing giggling schoolchildren, coachloads of tourists and earnest locals interacting with the works, against the fabulous backdrop of ocean and sandstone cliffs.

One of our favourite works was this spectacular, slow moving, kinetic sculpture set high above the cliffs above the Southern end of Bondi Beach.

But none of us could work out how to pick a winner from this diverse collection of works!

We braved the early Friday afternoon bumper to bumper traffic on Parramatta Road to travel West to Auburn for a late Turkish lunch at Cafe Mado and then coffee and Lebanese pastries at the wondrous Abla's at Granville. We also found it hard to resist a visit to Authentic Turkish Delight at RT's at Auburn.

We were able to meet up with Jeremy and Claire and the boys in Coogee this weekend too. We had great fun sharing an early evening meal at our favourite Clovelly Pub and Sunday morning breakfast at the newly spruced up Barzura's on the Southern end of Coogee Beach. Angie was in fine form and enjoying the opportunity to spread his influence around Sydney and Ollie was inspired by his Poppa's explanations about playing Chess.

We crammed a lot in on Sunday. Bus, then train to Milson's Point for the Kirribilli Art and Design Markets, then walk to Lavender Bay and a wander around Wendy Whiteley's garden. I didn't get to have much of a wander. I tripped on the wet stone stairs, twisting my ankle/foot and falling flat on my behind. I had lots of kind people to help me recover but it made walking for the rest of the day very painful.

Wendy was working in the garden. She must have groaned seeing me topple over on the stairs (..another likely lawsuit perhaps!). She came over for a chat after a while and checked I'd survived. She told us that the sculpted stone tablet we'd noticed at the entry to the garden was new and that the words were from a Van Morrison song on his Astral Weeks album.

One of my kind helpers suggested we walk back to Milson's Point via the boardwalk around the harbour, past Luna Park. It proved to be a spectacular way to go.

Ferry to Watson's Bay - lunch at Doyle's - back to Coogee - then on to see An Education at the Randwick Ritz. What a day!!!

Ros and Pete headed back to Sandy Beach this morning, we all headed back to Canberra. Our four days together will be treasured until the next opportunity to meet again!

Melbourne Cup

We celebrated our last Melbourne Cup Day holiday in Canberra with a family gathering at our house. The kids played their favourite hot weather game on our very green (for once) grass, taking advantage of our first few days of really warm weather for the season. When not keeping out of the way of the hose (just a trickle) the grown ups were excited to hear about Josh and Jody's plans for their new business and the latest about Jeremy & Claire's new office.

Ella found the big boys very rowdy at times but she did her best to keep up, and keep out of the way when required.

Ollie thought he'd hit the jackpot when he drew Allez Wonder in our family sweep. I was excited for him too - a Bart Cummings horse and a female jockey!! Maxie ended up taking home the sweep pool. She'd drawn Shocking.

Girls and their Art

It was all about girls and their Art by the end of last week. Maxie and Claire were getting lots of publicity and expecting lots of visitors from the very effective promotion of the Queanbeyan Arts Society Open Studio and Arts Trail.

Ella on Thursday was in a very artistic frame of mind, completing some of the most focussed and layered pictures I have seen her do at our house. She responded well to the new "rolling" oil crayons and got very inspired by incorporating flowers from the garden and her water paints.


She looks so much more grown up since returning from "overseas".


On Friday we met up with Tania McM. in Sydney at SCECGS Redlands in Cremorne and spent a wonderful hour or so with her Morgan experiencing her final Visual Arts portfolio presentation for the International Baccalaureate year 12 assessment in the rather gloomy Redlands Hall.

We found it an extraordinary privilege to gain this insight into Morgan's thinking and talents through her amazing art works: installations, sculpture, photography, drawing and painting...a very mature and insightful body of work!

Morgan has grown up as a global citizen, most recently as a Londoner but previously, for an extended period, in Tokyo, Japan, and lots of other world travel during school breaks. She was born in Canberra and attended Ainslie PS, when I knew her better!

Her embracing of other cultures, the world of books and ideas, and the life of the mind have all been great influences on her work. She is obviously a deep thinker with multiple talents and an extraordinarily hard worker, and is heading for quite a brilliant IB score.

But I loved her unaffected warmth and great optimism the most.

We celebrated over lunch afterwards with Tania at Delante - Cafe and Deli in Waters St Neutral Bay and tried to analyse how she had done such a brilliant job in producing Morgan (albeit with Allan's help).

Sesqui Boardwalking

We started off Saturday in Sydney with a walk to Bronte; extra exciting for me because it was my first time on the new Sesquicentary Boardwalk, skirting the old Waverly Cemetery and bravely constructed on the edge of the sandstone cliffs overlooking this beautiful part of Sydney's coastline. Its a distinctly different experience to the old days of negotiating the narrow crumbling paths of the cemetery, fighting to keep your place against the oncoming waves of sweating, lycra clad joggers.

Apparently though the locals are a little daunted by the unusual name for their boardwalk, as reported in www.streetcorner.com.........


But the big question on the lips of locals was not “who did the wonderful design” or “which viewing deck was their favourite” but “who on earth came up with the ridiculous name”. Sesqui Boardwalk is named in honour of Waverley’s sesquicentenary, that’s right, sesquicentenary. It’s not really an oft used word in the average Australian vocabulary and why would it be. Afterall, 150th’s are not really the most common of anniversary’s to celebrate. Locals are wondering why the walk couldn’t have been named after a local flower, landmark or person. “Something pronounceable, something memorable. That wouldn’t be too much to ask would it,” said one local who didn’t want to be identified.


The only consolation for those we spoke to was that “ we hate the name, but it doesn’t matter because we’ll be calling it the Bronte Boardwalk”.



There were a lot of suburban "festivals" happening this weekend in celebration of the Sydney International Food Festival http://www.siff.com.au/ . We chose a little event from the dozens available and headed off to the Chippendale Food for the Future Fair in Kensington Street. This sweet little hippiesque affair (so not like Sydney) marked the launch of the Chippendale Fresh Food Co-op, and introduced us to the characters who make this pretty grotty inner suburb, with its converted terrace community Arts spaces, so interesting.



In one of the studio spaces in Kensington Street a small installation from the Big hART gold project told the stories of farming families in the Murray Darling Basin who are coping with the worst drought on record in Australia.

Zoe Serafina

Storms and rain in Sydney on Sunday spoilt our plans to meet up with Sydney Clare, Spiros and Zoe at the Dank Street Festival at Waterloo. Instead, we were invited to spend the afternoon with them at Glebe, admiring Zoe's walking and stair climbing (and descending) skills and her enthusiasm for blueberries and various electronic technologies. We enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with her and her Mummy and Daddy over great coffee and light as a feather pikelets and fresh cream.




Spiros is encouraging me to understand my beautiful Canon digital SLR camera better. He has been incredibly patient and generous with his time in taking me through the basics of the electronics and providing me with some wonderful web based resources (and organic chocolates). He is such a lovely man. No wonder Zoe loves him to bits!

Waiting

We've been looking after Nellie the Beagle all week while her family has been holidaying in Bali. She waits all day for us to come outside and pay her some attention. She's still very playful for a dog of such mature years, although she tires a lot more quickly these days.



We decided not to wait any longer for warm dry weather and we both got out into our rain soaked garden this week. Lawns to mow, lots of weeding, cow poo to spread, and pea straw too, planting out the petunia seedlings and setting up some new herb pots filled most of the weekend.


With dam levels at just under 52% and still more rain predicted we're even going to give our tiny patch of green grass in the back garden a treatment with organic fertilizer - first time we've bothered doing this in quite a few (drought filled) years.


This rhododendron in our front garden has waited the past 8 years to flower like this. Amazing Spring!

I waited since the 2 October to hear that the small lump on my face was perfectly benign. My clever doctor has left a very small scar on which I am now trying the organic rose hip oil treatment.

We are waiting with great excitement to see Ella and J&J again on their return from Bali. I hope Ella has scored herself her own pair of beaded shoes so she'll be able to stop clacking around in her Mummy's at last.

Sydney subdued

I celebrated my birthday last Friday by having an "excision" performed on my face (by a plastic surgeon), for strictly medical reasons I hasten to add, not for enhancement! It needed 3 stitches and a very noticeable dressing (which quickly became blood stained), so I felt very self conscious and somewhat subdued (sub Jude as Rob termed it) for our 3 day long weekend in Sydney.

Rob did his best to cheer me up on Friday night with a lovely birthday meal and beautiful wine at our favourite Morroccan Feast in Randwick. When Saturday dawned cold and rainy he extended his good cheer to tolerate a couple of hours with me at Westfield, Bondi Junction where I was able to update my collection of Metalicus staples.

To end off a day of self indulgence we walked up to the Randwick Ritz (in quite heavy rain) to see the enthralling Mao's Last Dancer. Although the critics don't seem to be overly excited about this film, we just loved it. I felt so proud to see that the amazing choreography in the dance sequences had been devised by Graeme Murphy, with dancers from the Sydney Dance Company and the Australian Ballet.

We explored the Danks St, Waterloo area on Sunday - another cool and rainy day in Sydney. We discovered the wondrous Sanoma bread at Fratelli Fresh Food (the bread Tetsuya uses), ordered organic coffee at Wholefoods House and checked out the groovy and stylish Danks Street Depot.

I was expecting the foodie delights. What I hadn't expected were all the beautiful quality homeware and interior design showrooms. We found Abode Bazaar in Danks Street very much to our liking and brought this beautiful antique Zulu meat platter home with us to celebrate my truly unique sub Jude birthday in 2009.

No one in the Eastern suburbs seemed to be showing any interest in the NRL final game on Sunday afternoon....until we just happened to be walking past the infamous Coogee Bay Hotel at 6.00pm on Sunday. The bars and courtyard were crammed with excited people and masses of balloons in the Storms and Eels colours (I can't believe I knew the teams!). I guess it's reassuring that the CBH has found its groove again after the great icecream debacle last year. The beachfront itself was pratically deserted in the grey, windy dusk with storms threatening all around us.

It took us longer than usual to do our end of stay clean up yesterday. I guess I had been too sub Jude when we first arrived to really notice the thick layer of red dust on all the window sills and skirtings. Our apartment obviously isn't very airtight in a dust storm.