Arts and crafts

The 2020 Archibald Prize Regional Tour has come to the Tweed Shire in the north-east corner of New South Wales, which is just over the border from where we are on the Gold Coast, Queensland.  We’ve crossed paths with the tour a couple of times in the past (Ballarat in 2016, and Orange in 2019) while we’ve been travelling around the country housesitting, and we’ve always enjoyed Australia’s most famous art competition.

It’s carnival season around Caleta de Vélez, Spain, where we are house-sitting.  I went to the carnival at a nearby town, Vélez Malaga, for the local experience.  

The carnival consists of local people dressing up in imaginative and outlandish costumes and dancing in a parade along the streets – it’s a lively and colourful show!  

I love watching flamenco performance.  While there’s good flamenco at home in Australia, I’m now in the home of flamenco – Andalusia, in southern Spain, so it’s great to get to see it here. 

We’ve landed in a good location for flamenco here in Aguadulce – there is an intimate flamenco venue here in the entertainment precinct next to the harbour; it’s called Entre Flamencos del Puerto. 

A British friend of mine is coming to Melbourne, Australia, soon, for a conference, and she asked me for suggestions for things that she should see and do while she is here.  I put this list of things together for her, plus some general advice on getting around  – it’s not definitive, or even the most popular recommendations for Melbourne, but they’re my personal favourites.  

If you have ever done a Walking tour of Melbourne you would probably have visited Hosier Lane to see the street art – graffiti-style murals on the buildings of this little back street.  

After walking around Hobart many times over the last couple of years I thought I knew it pretty well, but today I was surprised by a pocket of great street art!

I'm house-sitting in Augusta in south-west Western Australia.  This time we are looking after couple of dogs, a cat, and a couple of galahs (large Australian parrots). 

We were in this area twenty years ago, so we're following up on some of the attractions that we saw back then.  One of those attractions is Boranup Gallery, which exhibits handmade timber furniture mostly made from local Western Australian timbers jarrah, karri, and marri. 

I’m currently doing a short house sit in the suburbs of Melbourne on the way between Tasmania and Canberra.  

I’m lucky to have crossed paths with the exhibition Van Gogh and the Seasons, the largest collection of Van Gogh artworks to ever travel to Australia, at the National Gallery of Victoria.  It’s a great opportunity to see some of Vincent Van Gogh’s works with my own eyes.  

We love buying fresh produce and hand-made goods, especially food items, at farmer’s markets – we seek them out and visit them wherever we go, so we went to the Barossa Farmers Market near Angaston, in the Barossa Valley, Australia, at our first opportunity.  

We weren’t disappointed – the market is the best I’ve seen since visiting the fabulous local markets in Tasmania.