1 March 2013 - Capital Country Holiday Village, Sutton, NSW

I lay awake early this morning well before dawn expecting Chris to wake and hear the wind and suggest we get up and take the awning down. We should have taken it in last night because I am sure it is not good for the structure to strain like that, even when there are three flapper straps on each side. We had kept the rain out all night with the sky vents shut tight but the cold had crept in as it only can in this caravan. We lay huddled together under too few blankets and remembered the frost and frozen water pipes of last May at the Exhibition Centre. In all fairness, the sun did come out during the day and the rain has not fallen since that before dawn. And best of all, we have been appropriately dressed which always helps.

The school kids were up much earlier than us, noisily moving about camp, excited about their homeward trip. No doubt many were homesick or missing their mothers’ service. (Kids are so spoiled these days) This evening will be far more peaceful without them; perhaps we will see see more wildlife?

We stayed off driving into Canberra until after 10 am making the whole travel experience so much more pleasant, however we were too late to pick up the newspaper from the very convenient service station at Dickson.

Today we returned to the National Gallery of Canberra to visit the other exhibitions currently on, beside that of Toulouse-Lautrec.

The first was “Kastom: Arts of Vanuatu”, a collection of masks, statues and other related “artwork” collected by one Monsieur Charpentier in the early 1970s, co-inciding with my own residence in that part of the world. The accompanying blurb mentions that the art on show, produced for traditional purposes, is unchanged from those of the 19^th century. This was absolutely no surprise to me. Much of that on display at the gallery was gathered from Malakula Island, one of the very many islands in the archipelago; my secretary during my first two years there in Port Vila was from that island, and so it all seemed so much more relevant.

We also happened upon another exhibition; a collection of prints by Jessie Trail titled “Stars in the River”. I had never heard of her. She worked as a nurse through World War I and subsequently travelled quite extensively, was one of four daughters, none of whom married, and was a very talented artist embracing the medium of etching. I am not a fan of prints such as these, so much of it so dark, however I was able to appreciate her gift in drawing and skill in draftsmanship.  

At midday, we returned to the landcruiser parked behind the gallery and sat eating our packed lunch out of the wind and caught the strains of bell song from the National Carillon through the lakeside pines.

Appetites sated, we went back to the National Portrait Gallery visited the day before yesterday and spent some time wandering around that we had missed. We had seen this all last year, however we enjoyed it as much again. Effectively it is such a wonderful collection of illustrated biographies for so many amazing Australians from all walks of life who have contributed in such a diverse way to the nation.

I was keen to visit the exhibition titled “Behind the Lines 2012”, a collection of political cartoons up at the Old Parliament aka the Museum of Australian Democracy. We found this down in the basement of the grand old building and joined a dozen other appreciative voyeurs, chuckling their way through the corridors.

And so that was our day and signalled the end of our visit to Canberra. Even on second view, this is a city that can captivate visitors successfully for weeks and weeks. We could elect to stay but are also keen to move on. Darwin beckons and we want to reach Katherine within the next three weeks.