Encountering Artist David Hockney in Paris

“Remember you can not look at the sun or death for very long.”

David Hockney

Last week, David Hockney the larger-than-life artist and creative genius passed away at the grand old age of 88, one month shy of his 89^th birthday. Tributes have absolutely flooded in from all the world’s greats, and even their dogs who are sympatico thanks to Hockney’s love of his beloved dachshunds. Naturally, it’s easy to get on the “me too” bandwagon and add our bit. Of course, we all feel we have something to say and there’s this sense of collective, communal grief. Yet at the same time, who am I to add anything meaningful to the general babble, which hasn’t already been said?

Well…

Let’s just say I offer a different perspective. More that of a fledgling “artist” barely out of the nest and just as Hockney studied the masters before him, he inspires me from the grassroots up.

I first heard about David Hockney last year on Instagram when I came across something about a massive retrospective being held at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. As luck would have it, my husband and I would be in Paris for him to attend a work conference and there was this possibility, as extraordinary and unbelievable as it sounded, that I could actually go! Considering we live in far off Sydney, Australia, plus it had been 33 years since I was last in Paris, AND I have acute health and disability issues, this was a miraculous coincidence. For the first time in a while, all my lucky stars had all lined up. I was thrilled. Yet, at the same time, I still had nagging doubts. Could it be too good to be true?

The mini bus heading off to the exhibition.

Still, in the spirit of the great explorers and even David Hockney himself, I decided to give it a shot. My journey of a thousand miles started out by catching the metro to Charles de Gaulle – Etoile to catch the shuttle bus from Avenue de Friedland right next to the magnificent Arc de Triomphe.

Seeing the Arc de Triomphe out the window of the bus…how extraordinary!

Indeed, I couldn’t believe it when I boarded the bus and it drove around the roundabout and the magnificent arch. Hooley dooley! I was so excited my heartrate went through the roof. Almost too much for this little Australian to bear, I felt like a character on the set of a movie. This couldn’t possibly be real life, especially MY life. Not to play the sympathy card, but my usual outings often involve medical tests preparing me just in case I needed that possible lung transplant. So, I was literally in seventh heaven!!

The rest of the trip passed in a blur, and we were there.

Of course, I could go off on so many tangents at this point. Talk about the amazing building created by architectural great Frank Lowry, which is an extraordinary monument in its own right. However, we are here to explore David Hockney, and the building is but its outer skin.

A Series of Self-Portraits on the iPad 2012, printed on paper, mounted on aluminium.

Encountering David Hockney for the very first time on such a massive scale blew my mind. Naturally, I tried to slow time down to really absorb room after room of vibrant, exotic colour, taking particular notice of his brushstrokes and composition. I wasn’t just looking on as an admirer, but also not an imitator. Just loading up my creative tank hoping something, anything, might possibly help my art making along, even just a little. I did photograph much of the exhibition, which I’m very grateful for because I don’t have the best memory. Yet, surely nobody can take in over 400 works in one sitting, and that’s what I wanted and needed to do. Absorb each and every brushstroke and somehow add it to my repertoire. Mind you, considering I struggle to even draw decent stick figures, this was highly ambitious. Yet, at every exhibition, I always hope a bit of magic creativity dust might fall on me and somehow endow me with their brilliance.

Garrowby Hill, 2017

“Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.”

David Hockney

The exhibition included more than 400 of his works covering 70 years from 1955-2025, but focused on the last 25 years.  I really knew next to nothing about him, so this was an introduction and I was delighted to see what is probably his most famous work, The Big Splash, in person. However, it didn’t speak to me with all the vibrant jumping up and down gusto of some of his other works. Hard to pick a favourite, but I do love Garrowby Hill, 2017 and Garrowby Hill, 1998 with their winding purple road through coloured fields and reminiscent of Van Gogh.

Untitled No. 2 (The Arrival of Spring), 2011… a large work measuring 182.9 x 487.7 cm

I also really loved Untitled No. 2 (The Arrival of Spring), 2011 with its dazzling explosion of flowers. You really sense and appreciate the vibrance and vitality of Spring, especially after a bleak English Winter.  I also love the plethora of portraits, and especially how he’s captured the unique idiosyncratic qualities of each and every character. With our daughter studying floristry, I was also drawn to his still lifes of flowers in vases. He was prolific, but he was certainly no factory.

25th June 2022, Looking at the Flowers 2022 …a massive 300 x 518cm overall.

At the other end of the spectrum and what thrilled and dazzled me the most, was seeing a video installation: A Bigger Space For Dancing (2012). So hard to describe I, as I’ve never seen anything like this before. However, let’s just say it’s rather surreal with dancers moving mysteriously from frame to frame via multiple camera angles. As a dance Mum, I was particularly enamoured and intrigued, and watched it on repeat. By the way, the dancers featured Steven McRae and Roberta Marquez of the Royal Ballet. McRae’s tap dancing was impressive, but I particularly loved all the quirky special effects.

“Artists, real artists, have to work. They can’t be hedonists. Really good painters are always working. The world is such a marvelous place. You have to look and to work. That’s exactly why Van Gogh was such a great artist: total commitment. That’s what you need.”
― David Hockney

Lastly, I wanted to mention an animated iPad portrait which I actually filmed at the time…No. 61, 24^th April 2010, 2010. I was able to watch the entire portrait emerge stroke by stroke and truly witness and observe Hockney at work. What a gift, especially for any aspiring artist. Painting a recognisable face does indeed appear much more possible now as I watched the face emerge stroke by stroke. Indeed, he might even have brought portraiture within my grasp.

The back of the exhibition catalogue.

Unfortunately, like poor old Cinderella, my time with David Hockey was over far too soon and I was just briefly able to explore a few sculptures on display and the building before I was back on the bus into the heart of Paris. However, I did opt to purchase the more bulky and extremely heavy exhibition catalogue. I knew this was going to cause friction with my husband who had set a “no book policy” for our trip, which I’d already violated in Ireland. Of course, as soon as he saw it, he asked me why I didn’t think of ordering it online…too easy!

“Laugh a lot. It clears the lungs.”

David Hockney

A Wall of portraits at the exhibition

Now, a year down the track, and spurred on by his death, I finally opened the exhibition catalogue and am inhaling every precious page in detail. Thanks to his prolific output, you can view subjects from various perspectives flowers in vases, portraits and scenes around Yorkshire.  I have also gone through the photos I took at the exhibition and they’re breath taking. Seeing so many of his works in real life and in the catalogue is hard to describe. I have also read everything I can get hold of on Instagram and online since his death and so many of these quirky anecdotes should be preserved. I am not the most mainstream person myself. However, even I’m dumbfounded by his baggy tweed suits and bright yellow round glasses, which perfectly match the bright yellow crocs he wore to Buckingham Palace. Apparently, he not only smoked but was known to chain smoke using the expiring butt to light his next. There are also various stories about him having a stockpile of 2000 cigarettes and one version goes that his Los Angeles home was said to have 2,000 Camel Wides stored away in case of an earthquake. He was virulently opposed to restriction on smoking in public and wore a badge declaring: ‘End bossiness soon’.  All of his paintings of his beloved dachshunds might  also seem too excessive until you learn these were done at the peak of the AIDS epidemic to cope with overwhelming loss and grief. His output was prolific and it seems he interacted with a lot of people and gave a hell of a lot. So much larger than life and now he is painting rainbows in the sky and leaving us to ponder his legacy.

Did you make it to David Hockney’s exhibition in Paris? Or, perhaps you’ve seen his work somewhere else. Any thoughts? I’d love to read them in the comments.

Best wishes,

Rowena

My Words On The Waves Writers’ Festival

On Saturday, I attended our local writers’ festival, Words On The Waves, for the first time. I absolutely loved it and I inevitably asked myself why I hadn’t been there before.

Words On The Waves has been running for five years, and I would have to fall smack bang into its target market, especially on paper. I’ve considered myself a writer since I was about 19 around the time the movie Dead Poet’s Society came out and I was performing at poetry readings at Sydney University and the inner city. I even did a solo reading at Paris’s most famous bookshop, Shakespeare and Company as a lowly backpacker in 1992, although I had self-published my anthology via the illustrious photocopier no less. After going corporate, but still writing for many years, a health crisis saw me return to writing at a serious level although I’ve stumbled a bit in the last few years.

Not only was I into writing and reading, I also adored the Sydney Writer’s Festival, which was the highlight of my year being immersed with my own people and experiencing that intimate sense of being and belonging…not to mention the frustration of not having got there YET!!

So why wasn’t I one of the very first to book into Words On The Waves? Why has it taken me so long and why did I suddenly attend now?

Covid was definitely a huge impediment for me. I’m not only immuno-supressed, but also have acute fibrosis in my lungs, and am at risk of serious consequences from a chest infection let alone covid. So, I remained in lockdown and away from crowds much longer than the average Joe. I also seemed to have different taste in books to what was on offer, or I couldn’t attend the ones I liked. I do remember two of my favourite authors were speaking there in the past Julie Goodwin and Julia Baird and I couldn’t make it. I am also in the process of culling back my books and I also have to watch my budget and was only wanting to go to something which hit me straight in the heart. I almost needed a written guarantee this book was going to blow my socks off and this was why I was even procrastinating at the last minute this year and then worried I’d missed out. How much psychological turmoil can you go through to simply buy a few tickets to a local writers’ festival when you are a writer and it should’ve been a no-brainer? Sometimes, we really make life hard for ourselves, and we should just put ourselves out of our misery and go for it.

So, as it turned out there was a sense of destiny that my very first session at Words On The Waves would be with Osher Günsberg and his motivational book: So what? Now What? This started at 9.45am on a Saturday morning when I usually sleep in, especially being the cusp of Winter. Yet, this book was exactly what I needed. While I haven’t been paralysed by debilitating depression of late, I have become stuck at times and have questioned that challenging gap between expectation and reality and I really felt encouraged and better informed through his book. In particular, it heavily encouraged facing your situation, setting goals and taking action, taking even the smallest of steps to set the wheels in motion. I was incredibly grateful to be able to attend something so good on my own doorstep instead of having to travel down to Sydney.

On Saturday night, I booked into the Poetry Slam, which was hosted by Will Small. I mostly write poetry and am lucky to come across another writer let alone another poet around the traps. Yet, this place was packed out. Not everyone was probably a poet, and supporters would’ve been thrown into the mix. However, it was a very impressive rollup, especially when you consider the local music scene can struggle to draw a crowd and all these people were here for poetry and in particular slam poetry.

Although I used to be a frequent flyer at poetry readings back in the day, I have never heard slam poetry before and felt my poetry was different and decided this once just to observe and not go up for the open mic section. Perhaps, my caution was misguided and I should’ve thrown my hat in the ring but I’m inclined to see it as a sign of increased wisdom in maturity.

Moreover, my resolve was rewarded by suddenly becoming a judge for the night. The host threw five Freddo Frogs out into the audience. Of course, every man and his dog was trying to catch one of these whether they liked chocolate or not. Everyone wants to be a winner. I leaped out of my seat, fumbled on the ground, but managed to scrounge one of the coveted Freddos. That was how the judges were chosen and I was presented with a whiteboard, marker and a box of tissues and left to score each poet out of ten. I was stoked and it helped me feel better about not performing, especially when I was blown away by the quality of the poets. I awarded at least a couple of ten out of tens. I was very impressed and deeply moved!

Before I wrap up my account of Words On The Waves, I just wanted to add that on my way to the poetry slam, I happened to come across famous and much-loved Australian actor, Brian Brown. It was like seeing an apparition. You’re so used to seeing these people on a screen and it’s almost a shock to see them in the flesh, in real life and know they exist. Brian was absolutely lovely and we had a bit of quick banter and I quickly bought his book, got it signed and even managed to get a photo. Once again I would’ve loved to tell Mum. She would’ve been so excited, but she has dementia.

By the time I went home that night, I was rather disappointed I hadn’t booked in for more events, but also felt that it was good to test the waters. I thoroughly enjoyed our local writers’ festival and found it had an excellent range of speakers covering topical issues as well as writing. While the Sydney Writers’ Festival is fabulous, the crowds can be huge and it’s at least an hour away. This was personal, intimate and I ran into quite a few friends and acquaintances and it had a very warm community feel. Bigger isn’t always better and it’s good to watch out for cultural cringe because there’s a lot of art and culture developing outside Sydney and we need to embrace it.

Have you been to any writers’ festivals recently and do you have any thoughts?

Best wishes,

Rowena

Here’s a link to my review of Osher Gunsberg’s So what? Now What?

Osher Gunsberg at Words On The Waves

Everyone knows Saturday mornings are for sleeping in, and there I was warmly snuggled up when my alarm brutally screeched like a scalded cat. Usually, I reach over pressing snooze on auto-pilot. However, strangely for this hibernating bear, I actually leaped out of bed yesterday. Indeed, I was bursting out of my skin to head off to our local writers’ festival, Words On The Waves, to hear TV presenter and author, Osher Günsberg, discuss his latest book So what? Now What?

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know too much about his book at this point, but this wasn’t my only impetous for wanting to check out Osher Günsberg. While that name mightn’t ring automatic bells these days, he was the famous Osher of The Bachelor and Batchelorette fame, a popular TV dating show known for its rose ceremony. I have to confess to being an ardent fan, perching anxiously on the edge of my seat each season during the finale. However, to be honest, I wasn’t a huge Osher fan as he seemed rather stiff, but he was such a part of the show. So, I was very keen to meet Osher and obviously get a photo with him. What a hoot! Indeed, if my rose bush had been in bloom, I might’ve been that shameless moron turning up to Osher’s author talk asking him: “Osher, would you accept this rose?” Thank goodness for small mercies! While I do love a sense of theatre, I also try to avoid absolute egg on face. Besides, this Osher Günsberg was very different to his Batchelor persona and he’d certainly left his suit at home.

Jokes aside, I was also seriously interested in his book and I really made a consolidated effort to get hold of it beforehand (albeit last minute). Ideally, before I attend these author events, I’ve read the book. After all, I’m not just there to get it signed. I want to pull that book apart. Inspect it under the microscope and gain some understanding of how they’ve put it together, their motivations and I like to ask an intelligent question. You can’t do that when you have to buy the book at the signing afterwards.

Just to give you a quick overview, Osher teamed up with illustrator Cam Walker and a psychologist to create an easy-read graphic novel type feel. It aims to appeal to that person whose been hit with wave after wave of problems and feels like they’re going under. Indeed, they ask: “Have you tried everything, but life keeps getting worse, and now the way that you’re coping has you on a less-than-great path?” If so, they now suggest a new approach and to ask yourself: “So What? Now What?”

Meanwhile, I have to be honest and tell you this isn’t a book review. At this point, I just want to comment on the talk. Osher wasn’t this bullet proof Superman in a dinner suit, but was plainly dressed as your average, ordinary bloke or dude. He was intensely vulnerable, willing to expose his weakest and most troubled moments to reach out to anyone who might be sitting in that anguished dark space now and be needing to hitch a ride out into the light. That’s a big thing for anyone to do and shows much more strength than wearing an impeccable exoskeleton.

Mental Health is very close to my heart. I might smile a lot, but given my long term serious health issues, I can relate to those famous words from Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence: “hello darkness my old friend”. A few years ago, I completed Lifeline’s three day suicide intervention course ASIST with a particular concern for young adults. I spent about a year supporting a close friend fight acute depression following his divorce, but he took his life a year ago. This still doesn’t compute, even though it was no surprise. I am always looking to be better equipped.

So, there was an unexpressed desperation which took me off to Osher’s talk. As the host of the Batchelor, I wasn’t expecting Osher to have the answers and I wasn’t even sure I’d like his book or find it useful. I’d probably have over a hundred books exploring psychology, philosophy and spirituality desperately seeking pathways through the complex maze we call life. None of them had hit the nail on the head. Not given me that one perfect thing to say to that loved one perched on that metaphorical window ledge, but at least we were all trying, searching and working towards a way out. I found it very helpful to hear his story and it helped me better understand someone living on the edge. I might not be able to put myself in their shoes but I might have more empathy. Perhaps, maybe even more importantly, like Osher’s friend I can listen to their story and ask them “Now what?” and encourage them to start taking those vital steps.

I am looking forward to reading the book and will keep you posted.

Weekend Coffee Share: 17th May, 2026.

Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!

How are you? I hope you are all well and if you are experiencing a Northern Spring and basking in all those exuberant and exquisite flowers, make the most of it as we heading towards Winter, which isn’t as bleak here in Sydney as it might be elsewhere and we still have some determined flowers hanging on in the garden, but we’re definitely in wind down mode.

My apologies for being rather intermittent on my blog and barely keeping in touch, but there’s so much going on and trying to make headway working on our house which is arduous hard work and painfully slow. We still have young adult children at home and are still in the thick of it, which in some ways is very rewarding because it’s this kind of relationship that you go through all the hard yards to attain. Our early twenty something children are talking and spending at least some time with us, which is a vast improvement on some of those silence teenage years. At the same time, there is part of me who’d like to find her wings and be able to immerse myself more fully into my writing, art and socialising without a tug on the leash.

We celebrated Mother’s Day last Sunday here in Australia. We had a mostly wonderful day. Our daughter has almost finished her floristry course and presented me with a massive bouquet she’d arranged at work full of roses and accented with Queen Anne’s lace which might be a secondary flower but it has such stature. Our son made pikelets for breakfast, which has been a recent development here and a variation on our traditional pancakes for special days and anytime in between. Then, we were off to church where we had our annual photo taken at the photo booth. Next up, we were onto lunch and our daughter had put together a complex and sumptuous grazing platter including exotics like figs and pomegranates she’d bought at the local farmer’s market. We had lunch at our backyard garden table and we still had some zinnias and dahlias showing some colour. The only downside was that we didn’t get to see my mother. She is living in a nursing home with dementia close to my Dad but unfortunately an hour away, which doesn’t sound like much, but it all adds up, especially when we add on a visit to Dad. Visiting Mum isn’t a click the fingers experience either and it takes time to sign in, find mum and then draw her away from what she’s doing to sit together outside. Making a connection with Mum, usually isn’t instantaneous these days either, but possible. She still knows who I am, even if she isn’t quite sure where I quite fit into the immediate inner sanctum. So I felt rather dreadful about not seeing her on or around Mother’s Day but we had things on here and couldn’t get away.

Another big development last week, was our son’s graduation from JMC Academy with a Diploma of Audio Engineering and Sound Production, which was held at the City Recital Hall off Martin Place. This was a big deal. After the extended covid lockdowns we had here in Sydney which at best “disrupted” him and his cohort through school and decimated the entertainment industry for at least a year. Things were really grim and it didn’t look like a good career option for him. However, he stuck to his guns and finished his caused and is now a graduated. We were so proud!!! He’s been volunteering in sound and production at church for years so also has the practical experience to back it up.

The AWA Tower, Sydney.

While we were in the city for his graduation, we had a bit of a walk around Martin Place, which is a fairly historic area and home to the cenotaph. While in comparison to historic buildings overseas, these are like new borns, but for us they’re “old”. There are a number of bank buildings and the GPO in Martin Place, but what really attracted our attention was the AWA Tower further afield. Geoff suddenly spotted it out the window at the recital hall and pointed out how much it looked like the Eiffel Tower. I was a bit surprised and wondering what he was talking about until I had a look and I also saw the similarity as clear as day. I’ve lived in Sydney much of my life and used to work in the city, and yet I’d never really noticed it before, although I did know it used to be Sydney’s tallest building. However, in my lifetime, it’s been overshadowed by the soaring Sydney skyline.

So now I do my homework, and I find out the AWA Tower was built in 1939 and the blurb says it was modelled on Berlin’s Funkturm Tower, built a few years earlier, and both took inspiration from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I have no shame in confessing I’m a research obsessive and I was delighted to stumble across this exhilarating story:

Meanwhile, I have had an exciting weekend. After my art group on Friday, I watched my friend’s son, Brendan Watson, performing at Gosford Sailing Club where my husband was racing today. Then, I was back to the gallery for an exhibition opening checking out art and catching up with friends. Saturday night, I was off to Karaoke. I am rusty but I sang and boogied to Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and The Beatles “Twist and Shout”. So much fun and I am such a shameless extrovert.

Before I head off, I should also mention that I went to see The Sheep Detectives, which I’ve been calling “the sheep movie” but could equally be called the “Hugh Jackman movie”. He used to be our local heart throb when I was back at school, not that I personally knew much about his existence, but as you could imagine, he didn’t pass under the radar. I do recall hearing some great lines which aren’t referenced online but I do recall the sheep had a philosophy that they don’t die, but become clouds. Anyway, it was a great movie and I highly recommend it. Have you seen it? Any thoughts?

Well, time for me to head off now. I hope things with you and yours are going well.

This has been another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer.

Best wishes,

Rowena

Weekend Coffee Share…8th February, 2026.

Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!

How are you? What have you been up to lately?
Here in Australia, if you’re lucky we have our extended Summer holidays here in Australia during January and in so many spheres, the place comes to a grinding halt, unless you live in a tourism hotspot, which we sort of do. We live at Umina Beach on the NSW Central Coast and there’s a local caravan park, in particular, which attracts tourists. So, we’ve done our share of dodging idiots on E bikes on the footpaths.

We have also been away. We’ve been up to the Byron Bay hinterland staying with Geoff’s sister and husband for a few weeks. The “we” these days includes, Geoff and the kids who are about to turn 22 and 20. As you could imagine, it’s not as easy to get away as a family these days, but we managed to pull it off. We are so grateful we could get away and spend mostly good times together and create those all-important memories and cement all the connections we’ve established through the years. We have been staying there and catching up with Geoff’s family at least once a year and it’s our home away from home.

A photo we prepared earlier up at Byron Bay Lighthouse.

The part of Australia is exceptionally beautiful and very popular. Byron Bay is the Eastern most point of continental Australia and home to a stroking lighthouse which has a stunning view of the sunrise on a good day. For years, Byron was known as hippy heaven and back in the day, rows of Kombis with surfboards on the roof used to be parked beside the beach. Over the years, it’s been yuppified and there’s been quite a cultural shift. Yet, there’s still remnants of its former glory especially at the markets. You can also find more of the hippy element in surrounding towns like Brunswick Heads and Mullumbimby and further out at the Hippy capital, Nimbin. There’s a strong art and music community and probably writers as well, although they’re harder to spot. With our daughter studying floristry and into gardening, we also checked out a lot of plants and bought quite a few home. We particularly love Beehive gingers and Ginger Lillies and we brought a few plants home.

While we were there, we shot across the border into Queensland and visited a fantastic arts complex, Home of the Arts which includes live entertainment and big shows along with an art gallery complex. We were very fortunately because an exhibition by iconic Australian artist, Ken Done, was on. He was incredibly famous when I was growing up for his Australiana art which was turned into all sort of products from t-shirts through to bedding and goodness knows what. He used to be EVERYWHERE especially during the 80’s and I had a Ken Done doona cover…the height of fashion. Being so commercial, has also been a bit of a slur and his work isn’t always taken seriously. However, we really appreciated the chance to view a larger and more eclectic body of his work to realize just how talented he is. Done, btw, lives in Mosman, right on Sydney Harbour and he’s done some magnificent painting s right there in his personal paradise which we really loved.

While we were away we also received some very sad, but not unexpected news. Our beloved dog, Lady, passed away. She came to us when she was two and she was in her 15th year. I’m not sure whether all dogs are characters, especially beyond their own dear owner’s loving eyes. However, all of ours have had their foibles and legendary stories. Lady had her heyday when we used to visit my parents’ the holiday house at Palm Beach. We had so many adventures, some involving the kids and others just Lady and myself.

Lady out walking in the clouds at Palm Beach.

Top of the list was when Lady risked life and limb going onto the busy road to either catch a rabbit or retrieve some road kill. She brought it back to where I was chatting with a German backpacker and the skinned and ate it right in front of us. As a city girl, I was absolutely shocked and aghast. My pretty, fluffy black dog was a killer! Having come from a farm, she was very much a hunter and that very same day, found a dead fish on the beach and rubbed it into her fur like perfume to conceal her scent. That took a few baths to clear up. On a more fun note, we also went out with us in the kayak and seemed to enjoy it. Having been with us for 13 years, she’d also seen our kids grow up and that was very special and I really feel a deep sense of loss at the loss of an era. Our “kids” are now almost 22 and 20! Time sure flies by! Fortunately, we still have “the pups”…Rosie and Zac. However, they are now eight and not forever young. Sadly, time with our dogs passes oh too quickly.

That’s about all I have time for today. Hope you are well.

This has been another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer.

Best wishes,

Rowena

Happy New Year…Weekend Coffee Share!

Happy New Year!

Hard to know quite where to start as it has been a couple of months since I’ve posted, and I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching trying to construct my 2026. Given my passion for art, it makes sense to view the start of the new year as starting off a fresh canvas. However, is that actually the case? Or, would it be more apt to say that this canvas is already a work-in-progress? After all, the transition from one year to the next is just like starting any other ordinary day and the sun just keeps rising and setting one day after another. Nothing special! Yet, I’m fairly convinced even resolution-deniers would agree that New Year’s Day is no ordinary day and would, at the very least, consider whether they’re going to stay on the same trajectory in 2026 or change course. Being the time of our long Summer holidays here in Australia, there’s also a break in proceedings, and so many things come to a grinding halt in January starting up again in February. For me, this pregnant pause at the start of the year usually means I don’t really get stuck into my resolutions until Australia Day hits on the 26th January, which signals the start of the new school year. However, it’s been two years since I had kids at school so I have no excuse to put anything off these days. No more procrastination…except we will be going on holidays. Anything to defer knuckling down a bit longer.

After that long preamble where I actually got nothing done and made no decisions I thought I’d better work out how I am going to approach the new year. I haven’t worked in paid employment for about a decade due to my health issues. So, it’s not like I have a job to return to. However, I was actually paid to give an artist’s talk and conduct a workshop at the local art gallery and that’s got be wondering about what might be possible. I also have a few commitments which are set in stone. There’s church and Bible studies and reading my Bible. I also see an exercise physiologist three times a week for a 45 minute session particularly to look after my lungs which were in dire straits a few years ago. I also belong to an art group for people living with disabilities and that’s one afternoon a week. I am thinking about doing a basics of painting course and maybe getting into printing, although most of my art is mixed media involving textiles. I also attend jazz every Wednesday night at the Ocean Beach Hotel featuring the OB3 and visiting guests. That’s been my main social outlet each week and sometimes my husband comes along. They feature a visiting artist (usually a singer) each week, and this has included Phoebe Haselden on vocal and violin. For those of you with elephantine memories and who have been following me seemingly since before the dawn of time (i.e. pre-covid), you might recall I avidly played the violin. I wasn’t a violin super star and certainly fell well short of becoming a maestro and way too old by then to be any kind of prodigy, but I played respectably well within the context of the music school and performed at annual concerts and for a time in an ensemble, which I absolutely loved and experienced such a sense of connection with the group. There was something definitely very special about sharing the notes together which I’ve missed intensely. However, I’d fallen off the wagon pre-covid and you could say that our extensive and intensive Sydney lockdowns provided me with a face-saving exit. I don’t think I’d intended to hang up my bow for five years. I don’t think I intended to let all the hours of determined practice doing battle with an instrument which often seemed determined for me to be impaled by my bow and die. We all know this isn’t just me being melodramatic either. The violin’s reputation precedes me. Anyway, during lockdown I went and bought an Yamaha synthesizer keyboard and decided to return to my roots not only of years of piano lessons, but coming from a highly accomplished piano family. Indeed, you could well accuse me of selling my soul. Well, since then the keyboard has also been silent and has become more of a storage unit, not unlike the old piano it superseded, which was great for exhibiting photo frames.

Our daughter posing for a photo before performing at the Sydney Opera House

While all this history clearly demonstrates a lack of long term commitment to either of my instruments, after attending jazz where I’ve somehow become known as something of an artist even though I’m much more established as a writer, I’m not longer content to just being a musical bystander. I won’t be good enough to join in with the professionals there, but I am considering going back to lessons and at least getting back to where I was. First, I need to demonstrate some commitment, but even before that can develop, I need to take that very gruelling first step taking my violin off the shelf, out of it’s case and get my husband to tune it because E string is so out of tune it’s posing as A. That’s actually quite a few steps, which I have managed to tackle, by the way, and I managed to force out a couple of scales, Twinkle Twinkle, something unnamed from Suzuki Book 1 and a bit of Bach’s Minuet in G I think it is called. I’m not quite sure where I’ve stashed my violin books because the art supplies superseded the music in the activities cupboard. All of this was done with long fingernails (which have to go) and a broken chin rest and I’d sad to report that all the dogs left the room although my daughter hung round and was very proud of me and so encouraging. After about a year on violin as a kid when my brother did extensive Suzuki violin and played at the Sydney Opera House, I took the violin up again when my daughter was five and she begged me to take up violin although I was much more inclined for her to learn piano. her teacher said I could sit in on her lessons, which was great because I could help her. Geoff and I dug out his grandfather’s violin which his father had brought out from England on the boat back in 1890. From memory, the bridge had collapsed and it needed new strings, but it did me alright for a few weeks until we ordered a cheap and nasty violin out of China on eBay. Hardly an auspicious start and the screeching horrors made fingernails down a chalkboard sound pleasant, but I persevered. My daughter didn’t and I continued on with her lessons in term 2 and then kept going. She, did however, pick the violin back up when she was about 10 at school an their violin ensemble was part of the Festival of Instrumental Music at the Sydney Opera House. So, there she was in the pinnacle of Australian musicianship while I was up in the audience. Once again, she didn’t stick with it and was passionate about ballet and dance. You can’t do everything!!

So, My violin is back in business, and I’ll say I’m going to commit to at least 30 minutes of daily practice which will probably excuse a couple of days off a week, or maybe here and there if I am struggling.

I was also doing daily sketching for about three months last year and I’d like to get back to that. I was quite committed before we went to Europe in May, and once again I fell off the wagon again going cold turkey with no sketching whatsoever and rarely so much as a doodle.

What is this? Why do my passions suddenly stop. Fall off a cliff without even so much as a goodbye let alone tears, guilt, regret followed by inevitable therapy. Do I have no heart?

While I’m on this subject, I’d just like to add that each of these passions, passions I’ve invested heavily in, have their stuff. Stuff the general populace and these….do-gooders call “clutter”. However, I call it dreams…the piles of sheet music for both piano and violin, cupboards full of paint, paint brushes, canvases, bags of fabric, wool. I have a shelf full of the violins my daughter has outgrown and I’ve been meaning to sell. I also found something like three violins beside the road which were in fairly good nick and we still have my husband’s grandfather’s violin and my student Stentor and the eBay violin. I have been thinking about asking my daughter to paint the back of one with Van Gogh’s Starry Night. While all of this could inspire “The March of the Violins”, I’m still not convinced. Not quite sure how to sell them, but keeping them in the hallway cupboard isn’t helping.

Anyway, I wasn’t intending to delve so deeply into my struggles with the violin, although I did feel that mentioning it here and etching my intentions to start up again here in stone, would give me a better chance of sticking with it and progressing.

Meanwhile, the last couple of weeks have been delightfully social and I’ve started to feel like things are finally returning to a pre-covid norm where my health is also fairly good. We caught up with my Dad’s extended family before Christmas and it’s the first time I’ve seen some of them since 2019. Unfortunately, my Dad didn’t come along and my Mum is in care. So, it wasn’t the same, but it was fantastic sharing so many wonderful family stories and simply being together. We had Christmas Day at home with just the four of us, which still feels very strange when we’ve always had Christmas with Dad’s large extended family with over 30 people. This also meant I had to cook and have the house clean and make space for the Christmas tree…a big effort but we made it. Our daughter has also spent the last six months working extensively in our garden and we had lunch outside surrounded by flowers.

Since then, we’ve been to an engagement party and housewarming, a BBQ and had family park their camper in our front yard and we went bushwalking and even joined in a little when they were playing beach cricket and had a bat. While I managed to hit the ball a few times, running uphill in the dry sand was too much and I even struggled to walk. I was very grateful to gracefully get out.

MY daughter looking out across Pearl Beach into Pittwater, NSW, Australia.

So, it appears that my plans for 2026 are still a work in progress, but I am already making progress and am also having a wonderful much-needed social time…along with some rest.

How is the start of 2026 going for you? I hope it is going well so far, and if it’s not, you have plenty of time to change the script as long as things are not too serious.

This is another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer.

Best wishes,

Rowena

Artist Talk – Message On A Canvas

Last Saturday, I was given a very special opportunity to give an Artist Talk at the opening of our art exhibition held in the Community Gallery, at the Gosford Regional Gallery. The “us” refers to Studio Gossie, an art program for artists with disabilities which meets at the gallery on Thursday mornings. The community gallery is where community art groups exhibit and it gives you a bit of an entre into being an exhibiting artist, and a forum for up and comings to share our work. I have to say, it feels supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to see my work up on the wall especially at a smaller exhibition like ours where each work has space and gravitas.

I called my talk: Message On A Canvas, because my artworks in the exhibition both relate to my disability and acute health issues.

I wanted to share my artist talk and insert a few photos which weren’t part of the original presentation. Being a strongly visual person, they really bring my journey to life.

Not a born artist, but definitely philosophical.

My artist talk addressed the fact that I’m not really an artist quite yet, along with how my disabilities and acute health issues have both hindered and advanced my art.

So here goes…

When offered the opportunity to do an artist’s talk today, as an extroverted extrovert, I enthusiastically leaped at the chance. Yet, in my typical inimitable fashion, I hadn’t thought it through. Nothing was straight forward, especially the title of “artist”.

While I might be on the road to becoming an artist, I’m currently more of a “jack-of-all trades creative” with a much stronger track record in writing and photography. Moreover, my relationship with art has been rocky, often affected by my disabilities and my ardent passion hasn’t always been reciprocated. Fortunately, I’ve learnt practice helps and you can’t just pick up a pencil and draw like Da Vinci on your first attempt.

Mr Squiggle

My art journey began as a pre-schooler eagerly watching Mr Squiggle on ABC TV. Like magic, he’d transform random squiggles into amazing works of art. Of course, I had a go myself, but couldn’t pull it off. Maybe, I just didn’t have the nose for it, or perhaps my issues went deeper.  When it came to colouring-in, I also had trouble. Couldn’t stay between the lines. So, despite my passion, art and I seemed incompatible… like oil and water. We didn’t mix. Yet, finally in year 7, my art teacher took me under her wing and my art flourished. While I could’ve done elective art, I was in an academic stream and left art behind.

Graduation from the University of Sydney

I ended up at Sydney University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with honours in history. While I was there, the movie Dead Poet’s Society came out and I’d found my calling. I got involved in several poetry groups and was doing poetry readings. In 1992, I self-published my anthology of poetry: Locked Inside An Inner Labyrinth and left for Europe. While in Paris, I did a solo poetry reading at the famous bookshop – Shakespeare and Company.

Reciting my poetry at the Shakespeare Bookshop in Paris in July, 1992. I had a little black book with my poems in.

However, when I returned to Australia, reality hit and it was time to get a proper job. I went into marketing mostly doing tedious database analysis and being a fish out of water.

However, my world soon received a massive shake up. Turned out my difficulties colouring-in between the lines, were part of a bigger problem, showing up again as I struggled to stay in my lane learning to drive. I’d also had a hard time at school for being clumsy or “unco” and was always the last person to be chosen in PE. Then, in my mid-twenties with my head spinning, I was referred to a neurologist and found out I’d been born with hydrocephalus, or fluid in the brain. This ticking time bomb, suddenly exploded and I rapidly deteriorated. I had brain surgery to insert a shunt. This was a bit like fixing a simple plumbing problem albeit in my head.

My road to recovery was long and traumatic. There I was an up and coming something, and now I was just a huge question mark.

The Photographer Bride: taking photos at my own wedding. Totally incorrigible.

However, a professional photographer friend got me deeper into photography, recharging my creative battery and lighting a real fire. I could also go to parties and say I was into photography, which helped bridge the gap of not being able to work…a real salvation!

Our Wedding Day

Yet, I mostly recovered, and got back into marketing. Geoff entered the picture about six months later and we were married. We have two lovely young adult children and three dogs.

Family Photo- An oldie but a goodie.

However, the birth of our second child brought about a debilitating auto-immune disease which attacked my muscles and has wreaked major damage on my lungs. I am currently going through pre-transplant screening at St Vincent’s Hospital, but hoping not to need it.

That’s been a long and winding road, but finally we’re arriving at Destination Art, where I am definitely a Johnny-come-lately. Much of my art is abstract expressionist with lashings of brightly coloured paint protruding from the canvas and I’m often covered in paint. I’m also into mixed-media using repurposed materials and a lot of glue.

Painting At Our Kitchen Table…I don’t think Pooh Bear knows quite what to think!

I mostly work from our kitchen table and have to be careful cooking and painting at the same time making sure the wooden spoon goes in the pot, and the paintbrush on the canvas and also stays out of my cup of tea!

After Dark The Music Starts

At the start of 2024, I fell back into art searching for my tribe after lockdown and my kids leaving school. Our daughter was working next door to Bloomfield Fine Art Gallery in Terrigal and I started going to their openings and getting to know a few artists. I also started going to jazz at the Ocean Beach Hotel. The music really lit my fire and helped inspire my first major artwork. The big spark came with hearing about the Mental Health Artworks Exhibition.

My artwork evolved through a series of light bulb moments where I suddenly saw the same old packaging from my medication in a new light. A silver bag became a dress. The Rennie’s packet became windows and I jazzed them up with glass paint to form a colourful nightscape, and also put music in some of the windows. My empty bottle of prednisone became a person. Then, the people became a band and were healing through playing music. I ended up calling it After Dark the Music Starts. I also submitted this artwork into Willoughby Council’s disability art competition where it received a Highly Commended and $100 voucher.  I was so encouraged, and went on to join Studio Gossie, where my horizons blew wide open!

Wanting to build on this, I developed the Odd Socks’ Night Out, which is in this exhibition. The back story was inspired by Radiohead’s haunting lament: Creep…

“But I’m a creep

I’m a weirdo

What the hell am I doing here?

I don’t belong here…”

and

“I don’t care if it hurts

I want to have control.

I want a perfect body.

I want a perfect soul…”

Odd Socks’ Night Out – Rowena Curtin

In this work, the outcast odd socks have come together at their own exuberant festival celebrating: “we all belong here”. However, they are not so accepting of outsiders and have their own list of restrictions…no smelly or holey socks, no pairs, no shoes. I felt this was a pretty true reflection of how a lot of community groups operate. 

There are two types of odd sock in this work. There are the high flyers up the top, which are made out of polymer clay and egg cartons. The odd sock characters down below are made from repurposed household items, especially packaging from my medication, my husband’s odd socks, fabric, wool. I chanced across a bunch of Barbie dolls at the op shop and they provided arms, legs and hair for the creatures. There’s also “Joe” whose wheelchair was made out of two kitchen plugs, and there’s a reference to dyslexia in the title. While some of these creatures still embrace being socks, others are in self-denial and are all dressed up. On the side of the canvas it says: “With enough camouflage, you can be anyone except yourself”. Being yourself is perhaps one of life’s greatest challenges.

Beyond Silenced – Rowena Curtin

Moving onto my other work: Beyond Silenced, this features a stark white plaster mask of my face which is both rooted in the soil and growing flowers from its head. Significantly, my mouth has been plastered over and I have been silenced. Our daughter helped make the mask out of plaster bandages a year ago, and I decided to do something with it for our exhibition. While at Studio Gossie, I made an array of Spring flowers out of air-dried clay and decided to have them growing out the top of the head. Then I thought of the flowers having roots and being nurtured through the soil. So, there is an ecosystem at work. The side of the canvas reads: “I am more than my broken body parts”.

My husband Geoff has been a wonderful support during this artistic awakening attending openings and providing nuts and bolts advice for putting my artworks together. Geoff is also my carer and breadwinner for our family. While my disability has freed me up to pursue my creativity, he’s made considerable sacrifice, but is also grateful for how much art is helping me.

Geoff and I at the Eiffel Tower-June, 2025.

Lastly, having shared my bad luck, I wanted to share our incredible good luck.  A few months ago, Geoff was sent over to Paris for a work conference. I went too and we toured Ireland, France and Germany. Naturally attracted to the galleries, we found out people with disabilities and their carers get in free in France and also by-pass the queues. That was like winning lotto! However, while queuing to see Mona Lisa, things went next level when the guard plucked me out of the crowd and escorted me to the very front of Mona Lisa. Turns out they have a special lane right under Mona Lisa’s nose for people with disabilities so people in wheelchairs can get a good view. How wonderful is that, although it should be automatic. So often people with disabilities finish last or miss out, but here in front of the most visited artwork in the world, we are given special VIP treatment… Wow!

Mona Lisa

That’s a lesson for us all. What can we personally do to make life that little bit easier or inspirational for people living with disabilities? Moreover, as a person living with disability, I also need to be loving and accepting of myself.

This is what Studio Gossie is all about. Here I am giving an artist talk and my fledgling artistic beginnings are starting to flourish. We as a collective are forging friendships and breaking through all kinds of ice. So I’d like to thank the Gallery, Anna, Lesley and my fellow artists for our wonder-filled art tribe. We are changing lives.

Rowena Curtin

PS: Had to include a few pics of painting with our son as a toddler. What fun and exuberant creativity and expressionist!

Abstract Expressionist???

Weekend Coffee Share- 9th November, 2025.

Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!

I have spent much of the last couple of years apologizing for being absent on my blog and now my writings are very scant and a lot of the more meaningful stuff has been buried in the distant past. I am also very short of storage and upgrading is very expensive so this has also really slowed me down.

The Rock of Dunamase Ireland

Heidelberg

Mona Lisa

Eiffel Tower

Fehmarn, Germany

Much of this year has slowed down on the blogging front due to our trip to Europe and somehow it’s been taking me forever to write up my travel journal, sort and print up my photos. I did start up a travel blog with a view of uploading I guess an online journal, but I didn’t get past the first post. Indeed, I have been so bogged down in our first week in Ireland which I absolutely loved, that I haven’t even scratched the surface of our time in France or Germany. I have both Irish and German heritage and that’s just magnified and complicated trying to write up our travels.

Another distraction from my blogging and writing up about our trip, has been my involvement in art. While I have had passionate spurts at art in the past, it really took off at the start of last year (2024). This was part of a bigger mission to find my tribe after I felt much of my social circle had dried up following our extensive covid lockdowns here in Australia, which were also compounded for me by my acute autoimmune disease. My kids also grew up, left school and a lot of incidental contact with close friends dried up as their activities stopped. I also had a few close friends pass away. I am an extroverted extrovert and so I need a fairly extensive social circle. Well, it seems I need a fairly extensive social circle just to get a few people to turn up what with people being so busy, it usually isn’t the same ones who turn up either. Anyway, I started going to art openings and would meet people there, and then there were events at the local bookshop and what has become the main string to my bow… jazz on Wednesday nights put on by the OB3. I also joined an art program for people with disabilities at the local Gosford Regional Gallery called Studio Gossie. That provided a series of art workshops conducted by local artists in printing, oil painting, ceramics etc. Through all of this, along with our involvement at Church, I am finally starting to resurrect myself. Yes, it does feel like I am rising from the dead.

Last year’s entry…After Dark the Music Starts

Anyway, this time of year has become a busy art time for me. Last year, I entered a Mental Health Art Exhibition locally and I also sent my artwork from there down to a disability art competition in Sydney where it received a Highly Commended and a $100 voucher. I had a bit of a three month lull in my art after returning from our trip and had wondered whether I’d reached the end of the road with art, but suddenly with the competitions back in the wings, I was up and running again and working like a trojan to get complex mixed-media pieces finished in time. Then, on top of that, I was asked to give an artist talk at the opening for our Studio Gossie Exhibition yesterday. Thankfully, I started working on that a few weeks ago, because it took a lot longer than expected to glue the bits of my story together. However, I was really pleased with it and with the turn out. I might also be conducting an art workshop at the gallery in a few weeks. I am quite stunned about the opportunities which are opening up. I am not even thinking of selling any of my artworks at this stage. I am still learning, growing and experimenting and I am not willing to part with them. There is not “yet” at this stage.

Odd Socks Day Out- Rowena Curtin Sign says: “We All Belong Here” but there are restrictions…

Odd Socks Night Our – Rowena Curtin

Well, it is Spring for us here in Australia and while your leaves are changing colour and falling from the trees, everything is sprouting here and the beautiful jacarandas are out. Spring is better than ever here this year as our daughter has taken over our dreadfully neglected garden, ripping most of it out and planting thousands of seeds, tubers etc. We now have the makings of a thriving veggie patch, have eaten some of our homegrown lettuce and we’re just starting to see the first of the flowers appear. We had a few tulips, and now we have lilies, cosmos and I’m not sure what the rest of them are. This has been a wonderful project for her, as she is studying floristry and doing work experience one day a week with a local florist. As you may recall, she had tried going into ballet full time, and she’s back at the local studio.

So, now I’ll finally ask you how you’re going. Sorry, for rudely asking you at the end after chatting non-stop about my own affairs, but after being gone for so long, I thought I’d better offer an explanation.

So, I’d love to hear from you and hope you are well.

Best wishes,

Rowena

PS Here’s a photo of my feet enjoying Pearl Beach and the wonderful view!

Weekend Coffee Share – 22nd June, 2025.

Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!

How are you? I hope you’re well and had a great week, although on second thoughts with the latest developments in the Middle East, there’s a lot to think about. While I am trying to keep up to date, I must admit I’ve been going into my own world a bit lately trying to sort out the gazillions of photos from our Europe trip and try to put them in identifying folders so I don’t forget what they are. That’s the downside of digital photography and just storing them on your hard drive. I’m planning to print out some photos and probably to do a photo book.

I’ve also started working on an additional blog to write up about the trip. Although we were only gone for a month, I think I have enough fuel for this blog to last a couple of years. We really pushed ourselves to the max, especially in Ireland and Paris and probably carpe diemed too much. So, I’ll wait until next week to share it with you, when I’ve got a bit further along with it.

While we were away, I tried not to think about coming home and that awful tyranny of distance, which separates Australia from Europe, and indeed, much of the world. I’d last been to Europe in 1992, leaving a 32 year gap in between visits. That’s such a long time, and when you’re on the plane going backwards and forwards seems so easy. Indeed, some lucky souls do it quite often. However, for most mere Australian mortals going to Europe is a once or twice in a lifetime event if we’re lucky. What’s more, we also need to be grateful for the opportunities we get, and I guess not get too depressed when we return to salt mines back home not to start saving for the next trip, but to pay off the one we’ve just had. That sounds a bit depressing. So, I’ll get back to sorting out and soaking up my photos and feeling like I’m still there. Denial is a wonderful thing!

Meanwhile, my lungs have been a bit under the weather since arriving home and I’ve had a terrible cough and have ended up on antibiotics and the nebuliser, which is helping. I’ve also been taking things very slowly and resting. I am looking like quite a different being to the maniac walking around Paris and overcoming all those stairs in the Paris Metro and I’m trying not to let go of all that activity because it is so good for me. Yet, at the same time, we both need to rest and recharge.

Before I head off, I thought I’d just mention that I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of stuff in our house. I won’t use the dreaded words “declutter” because I actually like lots of little knick-knacks, especially from my travels. They’re so interesting and reveal personality and interest. The world can be too beige and sterile at times. Yjat said a bit of elbow room and breathing space doesn’t go astray either.

Anyway, I’m going to head off.

Hope you’ve had a great week.

This has been another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer.

Love and blessings,

Rowena

Weekend Coffee Share – Our European Vacation

Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!

How are you? I hope you are all well!

I don’t know how I can possibly condense a month in Europe into a single post, especially when I’m planning to set up a whole new blog to write about it. However, I love a challenge and when I’ve been catching up with friends, they’ll be asking me for the snapshot overview, not the duck’s guts inside tour. That said, I’ve been posting photos on Facebook and quite few friends enjoying quite a detailed photographic tour.

Just to recap a little, my husband was recently sent on a work conference in Paris, which covered his flight to and from Australia to Europe and accommodation in Paris. He’s a smart man and knew he’d be a dead man travelling to Paris without me. Yet, at the same time, I have serious health issues and there was a real question mark over whether I’d be well enough to travel and also whether I could get travel insurance to cover my pre-existing conditions. On top of all of this, I’d broken my foot about three months before departure and my foot was still recovering. However, I can be a determined soul, although that’s no guarantee it’s all going to pan out. However, in this case, it has and turned out spectacularly well and far beyond our wildest dreams flying into Dublin and spending almost a week in the Republic of Ireland before flying to Paris for 8 nights and then hiring a car and touring the WWI battlefields before driving into Germany and staying with friends in Oelde near Bielefeld, up to the island of Fehmarn on the Baltic Sea near Denmark and then heading down to Heidelberg where I lived for six months with a German family back in 1992.

Poetry Reading Shakespeare & Company Bookshop, Paris 1992.

By the way, I should mention that an element of this trip involved revisiting my backpacking adventures through Europe as a much younger 22 year old in 1992. I had just graduated from university and while gap years weren’t officially a thing back then, that’s what it was. Back then, my friend and I had flown KLM to Amsterdam and then trained to Cologne and then I went on to Heidelberg and met a family there and stayed with them for about 6 months and later taking their daughter to and from school while working in a plant nursery during the day. Another highlight of this trip was staying in Paris for about a month. Initially, we stayed at the Hotel Henri IV near Notre Dame , but later couch-surfing with some friends. A highlight of my stay in Paris was doing a solo poetry reading at the famous Shakespeare Bookshop when it was still owned by the infamous George Whitman. So, going back to Paris provided an opprtunity for me to revisit the Shakespeare and also to catch up with all the people I’d met in Heidelberg and revisit that former stomping ground. On top of that, we started out with almost a week in the Republic of Ireland. Geoff had been told he could fly and out of any European city, and we were tossing up between Dublin and London. We both have Irish heritage and were curious…what did we come from? I’ve always heard the Irish are very friendly and people have had a wonderful time there, but I wanted to check it out for myself. Indeed, I’ve been longing to go to Ireland for years and I didn’t have to twist Geoff’s rubber arm too much!

Cobh, County Cork, Ireland

Loop Head Lighthouse, County Clare.

View of the Cliffs from Loop Head Lighthouse

When it came to planning our time in Ireland, I was trying to get some kind of idea of the size of the place and setting realistic goals. Compared to Australia, it’s obviously much smaller, but I’ve been caught out travelling to Tasmania and that seemed to be much bigger on the ground than the map. Anyway, Tassie turned out to be a good reference point for the Republic of Ireland, because they’re roughly the same size and that warned me to stick to a confined area. We were interested in the Irish people, history and culture as well as seeing important sites, but we were also being guided by seeing where our ancestors were from, but this didn’t mean we were going on a genealogy holiday scouring libraries and cemeteries. The family connections mostly gave us a sense of direction. My Curtins came from Cork City. John Curtin had married a Bridget O’Sullivan from Mallow and her mother Margaret Egan had come from Buttevant. Then I had Quealey’s from around Loop Head in County Clare not too far away from the Cliffs of Moher and McNamaras from East Clare near Ennis. Geoff had the Burkes from Thurles and the O’Mara’s from around Holy Cross, Tipperary. All these places lined up fairly well on the map and we were off.

Stopping off at the castle at Dunamase, County Laois was our first stop of the way to Cork.

There is so much that we loved about Ireland. Probably the thing we loved most was the Irish people themselves. What they say about them being friendly, is absolutely true and they reminded me of Australians 20-30 years ago when we weren’t in such a rush. They love to chat and have really cultivated the great art of storytelling. They also stop and let you cross the road, which is really lovely. We really enjoyed roaming through and photographing loads of ruins in Ireland. Our first stop was Dunamase Castle on the Rock of Dunamase in County Laois. Here you could roam unimpeded through the ruins and take fantastic photos both of the ruins and the local countryside. Needing a toilet, we drove into the nearby town of Portlaoise where we had lunch at the LemoNick Cafe where we had wonderful creamy vegetable soup and much to my delight, they had Honey cake on the menu. I’ve been following a bakery in Sydney which makes it, but hadn’t managed to get down there. So I was delighted to find it on the other side of the world in a cafe in Ireland. We loved it! Our next stop was Holy Cross Abbey near where Geoff’s O’Mara’s had witnessed a shooting and had been sent to Tasmania under witness protection back in the day- Quite a story. Unfortunately, by now we’d run out of time to tour the Rock of Cashel, but said hello to some sheep and photographed the exterior.

Next stop was our accommodation in Midleton, where my 4 x grandmother Bridget Donovan had been an inmate of the workhouse during the Irish Famine. Her luck suddenly changed when she was chosen for the Irish Famine Orphan Scheme and sent to Australia with a trunk to help her find a husband. We visited Cork City and I was able to go inside St Finbarr’s South where he was baptised in 1831. We also visited the English Markets, but then went on to Cobh,which we really loved with its magnificent cathedral and coloured houses. From there we drove up into County Clare and stayed overnight in Doonbeg as we wanted to check out Loop Head and the Cliffs of Moher and Doolin. We ran out of time, and missed the latter, but had great views of the cliffs from the Loop Head Lighthouse and watched the sunset over the cliffs at Kilkee. Before driving to Dublin, we visited the Museum of Irish Rural Life in Kilrush and saw an authentic farm kitchen from the 1850’s, timber salvaged from a bog which I think was 10,000 years old and then there was the inimitable museum man himself, Joe Whelan who also owns the tractor dealership next door and he remembers selling a tractor to the last of the Quealy’s farming in the area 50 years ago. That was priceless.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t leave much room for talking about Dublin, and that’s exactly how things panned out as well. However, we did manage a full day in Dublin where we toured the Wax Museum, wandered around the grounds of Trinity College, but didn’t have time to see the Book of Kells, which we have seen in Australia. We went to the Natural History Museum where we saw bogman and finally onto the art gallery. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any Irish music, but hope to see some back in Sydney.

Next stop Paris. I didn’t mention that we were trying to stay in bnbs so we could get a taste of living as a local. Even checking out our accommodation in Paris was fun exploring all these French apartments, but managed to get a great one in Denfert Rochereau near the conference and the Metro and we experienced true Parisian living including having to put in something like four security codes to get in, plus undo two locks on the door. This was our first insight into the high security we experienced in Paris. Probably a good thing, because the world has changed a lot since I was last there in 1992. The Eiffel Tower is now fenced in and you go through airport level security going to the tower and I think all the museums. We went to the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, L’Orangerie and I also caught a little mini bus out to the Louis Vuitton Institute out in the Bois de Boulogne to see a magnificent exhibition of David Hockney’s works which covered 4 floors and was just extraordinary, especially that something of that magnitude would be on while I just happened to be in Paris all the way from Australia…extraordinary. We also visited Shakespeare and Company, but to be honest it didn’t feel the same as when I was back there in 1992 and it was so carefree. The poor place is now besieged with visitors and there’s a security guard at the door managing traffic flow. I also couldn’t buy many books and ship them back to Australia, which was probably the most frustrating part of all. However, I did manage to attend a book talk there by Irvine Welsh, author of Train Spotting, which gave me a lot of food for thought but again couldn’t buy any books to take home and to be fair, I’d bought the catalogue from the David Hockney Exhibition and had already broken the rules in a big way. That book weighed a ton. Before I leave off on Paris, I must mention having dinner at Les Deux Maggots, another legendary literary nook in Paris, and the desserts in particular were to die for. I’m having serious withdrawals just thinking about them. There were two things I found rather frustrating about Paris. Firstly, there was the near absence of public toilets and secondly the stairs in the Metro system. There are very few lifts or escalators in the Metro system. I could also talk about getting lost in the Metro, but I just realized I forgot to mention my visit to the Paris Opera. This place is absolutely exquisite, but it’s charm was considerably diminished by the number of women staging full-on photo shoots in very glamorous high-end outfits with their puppy-dog husbands and even young children in tow. I was starting to walk up the marble staircase with my walking stick, when one of them asked me to move out of her photo. She hadn’t bargained on running into a straight-shooting Australian and disability activist. I actually started photographing them for a bit of fun. Get over yourselves! I wonder if they noticed the building as anything more than a background for their reflection?!! One last thing about wonderful Paris, people with disabilities and their carers get free entry into museums and there is even a special lane for people with disabilities to go right in front of the Mona Lisa. This is so considerate because I really struggle with standing, and while I certainly pushed myself well beyond sensible limits in Paris, without skipping the queues, I would’ve missed out on so much.

Deary me, this post has run away from me, and I still have to get onto Germany. Yet, considering all we experienced, I really am giving you a fly by tour. Then, I just remembered that we toured the WWI Battlefields and stayed overnight in Amiens before we headed into Germany.

Sunset Fehmarn

Fields in Fehmarn

Fischbrotchen, Fehmarn

Sunset Fehmarn

So we’re now driving from Amiens to the town of Oelde near Munster to catch up with the family I used to live with in Heidelberg back in 1992. That was 33 years ago and we’ve all shuffled down a few seats in the bus since then. They are now grandparents and it’s hard to believe their kids now have young kids and I guess they probably found it hard to see how much I suddenly aged when I appeared and have adult children myself. I was 22 years old when I last saw them. I can’t tell you what it was like seeing them again after all this time, and for my husband to meet them and for him to be a part of this German world of mine. It was a complete part of my life, which he knew very little about and it was hard not being able to get back and it used to be so expensive to phone and difficult to keep in touch. They cooked me some fabulous German meals including white asparagus with hollandaise sauce which I’d been seeing in the markets and wondered about. We also had fabulous German bread. Oh how I’d missed that! from Oedle, we drove up to Fehmarn, an island on the Baltic Sea just South of Denmark to meet up with another friend. After knowing her for over 30 years, it was so special to see where she was actually from and where she lives now. Unfortunately, after weeks of glorious weather, the rain caught up with us in Fehmarn, but it was so beautiful and I particularly loved the village of Burg which was like out of a fairytale, especially for an Australian. We also learned a new word in Fehmarn…Moin which is their equivalent to Guten Tag. We found a great bakery in Burg and I was able to have Mandelhörnchen biscuits, a wonderful strawberry cake and I later tried out a regional specialty Fischbrotchen. It was good, but I only managed to get through half. We stayed three nights on Fehmarn and then we were off driving to Heidelberg. Fortunately, it was a public holiday and the traffic was better on the Autobahn. However, the crowds in Heidelberg were rather overwhelming for the long weekend. The queues to take the funicular up to the castle were crazy in the morning and so we walked down to the Alte Brucke and up 198 steps up the tower of the Church of the Holy Ghost. Don’t know how I made it and it wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t so lucky the next day trying to get up the Philosopher’s Walk and had to turn back halfway. We came across Heidelberg University’s fascinating Student Prison but only managed to see the outside of the Castle as it had closed by the time we got there. We walked extensively around the Altstadt and also went on a river cruise. Next we were off to Heidelberg to stay with friends for a couple of nights. Oh! I should also add that the weather in Heidelberg was hot and balmy and we savoured every second of it knowing we’d be returning to an Australian Winter. There is an old German song “I lost my heart in Heidelberg” and I’d lost it once 33 years ago, and now I’d lost it for a second time. Why did Australia have to be so far away?

At the Alte Brucke, Heidelberg

After leaving Heidelberg, we drove to Nancy France via Baden Baden and the next day spent a few hours in Rheims and absorbing the magnificent Rheims Cathedral and nearby library. We had our last dinner in Europe in Rheims in the shadows of the Cathedral before driving to our bnb on the outskirts of Paris. No parking difficulties here. We were staying opposite a wheat field and had to get the car back at 6.30am before our flight.

By the time we were on the plane, I suspect I was too exhausted and numb to dwell on all I was leaving behind. It had taken me 33 years to return to Europe. Given my health troubles, I was lucky to get back at all. Perhaps, I should just count my blessings. Be grateful for what I’ve had and not dwell on that sense of loss and missing out. My husband and I had had the trip of a lifetime, beyond our very wildest dreams. Moreover, we had so much to go home to with our kids and our three dogs and our less than perfect house which is home. Responsibilities and jobs awaited but as the plane flew into Sydney with a magnificent view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the opera House right at sunset, I knew we have it pretty good.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief overview of our trip to Europe, which I guess is really quite extensive for a single post.

Have you been travelling lately? Or, perhaps you’ve been to some of the places I’ve mentioned and have your own posts. Feel free to add a link in the comments.

This is another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer.