TOD Tour, Day 65 - Rockhampton Art Gallery

Into the tropics

A quiet day in Rockhampton after the wonders of Carnarvon Gorge.

We went to the Tourist Information Centre, arriving just as the police did to chase down a would be car thief, who when challenged, drop his plastic bag of possessions which included his wallet. He is now helping police with their enquiries. His nomination for the Darwin Awards will follow.

The Art Gallery is currently hosting a visiting exhibition of clothing, ornaments, photos and furniture from the Art Deco period. Art Deco was a visual style which began in France after the WWI, possibly in response to the devastation wrought upon them and the destruction of so much of their public infrastructure. It was reflective of the development of machines and a movement towards rectangular shapes, often elongated to the heavens as a form of aspiration of a new age of human development. The influence of the earlier period of Art Nouveau, with its rounded organic lines, waned quickly, although Deco furniture and buildings often had golden statues and figures at their pinnacle, perhaps harking back to the Nouveau period. 

This collection included a number of artworks we have seen before at the New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale: "The Yellow Gloves" by Esther Paterson being one of them. The clothing was divine darlings, all feathers and bold colours, green being a recurrent theme. There was even a "pub portrait" of a game between the Australian and English rugby league teams. These portraits, painted onto glass panels, were commissioned by Tooth & Co, the dominant beer company in NSW during much of the twentieth century. There were over 6000 of them in NSW pubs, the vast majority individually painted to reflect the pub they were to hang in. People of my vintage and older will remember them - usually an action scene from a rugby league or cricket match - hanging in bars owned by Tooth & Co right across NSW or often on the exterior walls.

Upstairs was an exhibition of and by women which are part of the permanent collection of the gallery and an outstanding display of ceramics, including works by icon Australian potters, Greg Daly and Victor Greenway. The painting that caught our eye was by a local Rockhampton artist, who died in his middle forties only two years after Brett Whiteley. It was a painting greatly inspired by Whiteley lines and body shapes.

The afternoon was cooler and windy and showers set in for the night.

A Little Further North To Kuranda

The Esplanade, Cairns

After a quick jaunt around the Paronella waterfall, including a walk along the suspension bridge which runs immediately over the falls, we were on the road but with a slight problem. Potholes the previous afternoon on the deteriorated road to Paronella Park had caused a trailer tyre to lose pressure so a repair was needed.

We were in Innisfail within 15 minutes and soon found a tyre place. It only took another 15 minutes to diagnose and repair the problem as the beading had separated ever so slightly from the rim and had created a slow leak. Our north Qld location was apparent in the way the guy doing the repairs related to me. An Aboriginal man in his fifties, he answered my questions with "Yes Boss", even when I pointed out to him my name was Peter. He received a rebuke from the owner because he had neglected to place a dusk cap on the valve (even though the had been no dusk cap on it). As the owner of the business walked along side of me to the office, he cautioned, "doesn't pay to be too familiar with them." I'm always gobsmacked in the face of such racism.

We parked the car and Sue took some snaps of the art deco buildings for which Innisfail is famous and then had the best mocha of the trip.

Even though it was mid morning, cloud clung to the peaks of the ranges to the west, bathing them in a soft opacity. Several road side spots loomed as though they would be interesting but the tall heads of the sugar cane and laden banana bunches in their plastic suits lined most of the road to Cairns, so we kept an eye on them for anything different but found nothing. Instead, we pushed all the way to Cairns and despite common sense, drove straight to the tourist mecca of the Esplanade which runs along the foreshore of Trinity Bay in beautiful-people down town Cairns. In a public car park at the heart of it all, we found a space to park car and trailer which again emphasises my reputation as the parking wizard.

We took lunch in the only shade available and felt extremely frumpish as the other thousands of people around us had, at most, two articles of clothing, whilst we hid from the sun in long sleeved shirts, long trousers and big shade hats. As we ate our sandwiches, we watched skin specialists dreams come true under coconut oil and aided and abetted by iPods and good looking partners.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

After a few shopping tasks, we set of for the mountains behind Cairns, to the small tourist town of Kurunda, located adjacent to Barron Falls. The road was steep and wound this way and that and in and out of 2nd and 3rd gear. A perfect way for me to end any driving day.

Our camp for the next two nights is among the rainforest.