After the road trip

We have just returned home from a road trip to Sydney. We were gone for five days and covered a lot of  ground in that time.  Our first big day of driving took us through all the Anzac Day services in small towns along the New England Highway.  There were riders on horseback, vintage vehicles, bagpipe bands and soldiers wearing medals. Great to see such good attendance along the way.   The New England Highway at this time of year is spectacular.  Blue, blue sky days acting as a backdrop to the eye startling golds and reds of trees turning for autumn.  Just glorious.

Our time was spent with friends in the north west of Sydney.  Living so far apart, it is difficult to catch up with each other regularly so time together is a treat.  We were there to celebrate a 40th birthday which involved great company and a delicious Thai banquet.  On Sunday we headed west through the Blue Mountains and continued on to the dear, sweet township of Millthorpe to visit more friends. Loz and Linda own Galvanised, a quirky, gorgeous store in the main street.  Pop over to their website and check it out.  We enjoyed yet another very late night visiting with friends before setting off on a close to 1200km trip to get home the next day.  This time we followed the Newell Highway through western New South Wales and had a brilliant trip.  Very little traffic, good roads and long stretches between towns so we made good time - no speeding - just a good run.  We left at 6.30am and arrived home here in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland at 9pm the same night.

I've purposely kept our trip details short as we have more important things to talk about..... ART.  Of course! Being tired from our trip I fiddled around with a watercolour piece yesterday.

I finished this morning.  Might redo the background though as my poor skills as a watercolourist are quite evident there...

My sister came over today after dropping the kids at school and we had knit and natter.  Well, Susan knitted and I faffed around with some left over paint.  This is what came off the brush today.

 Far from my usual style.  I quite like it though. I was inspired to do this after reading (ahem, skimming through) a book on intuitive painting.  I used a precut mat to view this piece in different ways for framing.  I came up with heaps of variations but will limit myself to sharing only a few with you.

Lots of fun and I'm now doing one in warm colours to reflect our trip through autumn down south.

It was wonderful to see you all and good to be back with those of you who are reading and missed out on a visit!

Stay well and happy!  Sandy xxx

Road trip

We recently went on a weekend roadtrip out to the Bunya Mountains and Kingaroy. We wanted to show Kathrine a bit of our extended local area before she returned home to Denmark. The above playground was something we stopped near on the trip out. I included it to show that many of our playgrounds here have shade covering to provide sun protection. Our schools also have No Hat, No Play policies as part of the sunsmart programme. We have the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world here so these measures are important. Now you girls in the Northern Hemisphere will know what I've been talking about when referring to the above shade covers!
The Bunya Mountains are about 2 hours west of us and are a popular place for winter get aways, bushwalking and wildlife watching. The wallaby and her sweet joey pictured above where sitting conveniently, next to the path near the toilets and little information hut. They were quite at ease letting me get close.
Funky fungi that reminded me of Avatar.
The cloud rolled in when we were on the track to Paradise Falls, fortunately most of the rain missed us. I walked to the first falls and then let Kathrine and Jeff head off for the longer walk while I read in the car.
I just love cows in paddocks particularly when the sky looks so promising!

Ahhem. Hang head in embarrassment. This post is from August (it's now October) and I just found it in my posts to be edited. Better late than never I suppose.