A couple of weeks ago, I popped in to the newest five-star hotel in
Melbourne, Peppers Docklands. It’s right beside Etihad Stadium, at the
bottom of La Trobe St.
Loved the Melbourne tram printed
on the wall above the bed, the pool with a view and the crayfish
omelette. And if you find pancakes on the new menu, you can thank us for
the junior reviewer’s determined efforts 🙂
To read my review, published on Fairfax Media’s Traveller website, click here.
It’s been a good week for eating in Melbourne, and I checked out the new Marion wine bar, by chef-restaurateur Andrew McConnell in happening Gertrude St, Fitzroy. How’s that for a minimalist menu? My pick is the mussels, who are enjoying a renaissance in the food world, and nduja, a spicy Italian sausage that’s crumbled onto the dish.
On the opposite side of the city (and the other side of life), it was all about smoke-pit masters at the new San Antone Texan BBQ restaurant in Crown Melbourne. Vegetarians, please look away, the beef brisket wins the day.
This week’s Takeoff column in Sydney’s Sun-Herald also heads offshore to Singapore to check out the new Hotel Vagabond, by designer Jacques Garcia, who won my heart for his spectacular, three-year renovation of Marrakech’s grand dame, La Mamounia.
The Takeoff news column is published every Sunday in the Sun-Herald newspaper’s Traveller section.
One of the pioneers of Australia’s plein-air landscape paintings, he would set off on the weekends with fellow artists to the ends of Melbourne’s rail, to camp at Box Hill and Mentone for a few days’ painting. There are more shopping malls and beach boxes at these mid-city suburbs today, so we should be thankful he documented the times when European settlers were still eking out a home amongst the scrublands.
“Think of artist Tom Roberts and you’ll probably recall grand works: his muscular Shearing the Rams, painted in 1890, is more than six feet long (183 centimetres). The Big Picture, commemorating the opening of Parliament, is a “17-foot Frankenstein”.
However, Roberts’ small paintings, known as 9 by 5s, cemented
his position as one of the nation’s eminent artists and along the way
created a new school – Australian impressionism.”
Tom Roberts is on at the National Gallery of Australia until March 28.
nga.gov.au/Roberts. Tickets are on sale through Ticketek
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| Buy a goat for Christmas…you know you want to, worldvision.com/gifts |
No matter where your stocking is hung, in a snowy pine
forest or on the walls of a beach shack, here are Christmas gift ideas that will
travel – or will inspire you travel. Here are a couple of suggestions from the story, which was published in the Traveller section of Sydney’s Sun-Herald newspaper. Gifts range from $10 bags up to a slick weekend in Thailand.
Feel good, make others feel good buying a World Vision gift in their
name. Shop online (no postage or wrapping required) to give a child inrural Cambodia some school pencils or hey, buy a family a llama. You
know you want to. From $5 to $197, worldvision.com.au/gifts.
Add a touch of Scandi style to your Christmas babes with this 100 per
cent organic cotton baby travel blanket. One side is a smart neutral
grey (to go with whatever you’re wearing) the other is a monochromatic,
seasonal forest print, $75, jasperandeve.com.au.
From e-book readers to luxury weekends, if you’re an
armchair traveller or enjoy road trips, click on to my story in Sydney’s Sun-Herald newspaper for some crackers Christmas ideas for the traveller in your life.
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| An artist’s impression of WTC transportation hub, US |
In what’s becoming an annual story for the Sydney Morning Herald, here’s my round-up of next year’s great architectural openings. Thanks, as ever, to Sydney architect and founder of Sydney Architecture Walks, Eoghan Lewis.
Who doesn’t love an architectural icon? While rising prices and
global uncertainty have slowed many building projects around the world –
the ambitious Grand Egyptian Museum is once again on ice – eyes are
open for key cultural offerings in Hamburg, New York and London.
Sure,
the skyscraper industry isn’t going out of business any time soon –
just take a look at the new Trump Towers going up in Vancouver, while
skinny is inny as New York discusses the rash of slim skyscrapers
overshadowing Central Park and the first super-tall skyscraper has been
approved for Warsaw. However, take your head out of the clouds to see
what’s trending in the world of architecture.
“Analogue seems to
be coming back … less slick, less same-same,” says Sydney architect and
architecture walking guide Eoghan Lewis. “Authenticity is trending, and
there is a new focus on refinement and simplicity.” (see www.sydneyarchitecture.org)
Australia’s best resorts and hotels? That’s a big call – take a look at this piece in this weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald for the top places to lay your head in Australia.
The writers named luxe safari lodges, industrialia in the Tasmanian wilderness, island stays and beach eco-resorts.
On an urban note, I tipped the seven Art Series Hotels in Victoria and South Australia, because the art is sublime, they’re so much fun, and who doesn’t like to wake up with Ned Kelly pointing a gun at your head?
You can read the story in full here, in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Traveller section.
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| Private paradise: Dolphin Island accommodates only six people. |
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| Street art by artist Smug. Photo: Belinda Jackson |
Chances are you’ve seen a tour group standing outside Movida
restaurant on Hosier Lane, camera phones working overtime, two fingers
up in the “victory” salute.
Melbourne has claimed its position as
one of the world’s premier street-art cities, rivalling Berlin, Sao
Paulo, Paris and New York, but the city’s top street artists say it’s
time street-art watchers moved out of the city centre and looked
north-east for the hottest talent on Melbourne’s walls…
Click here to read my article on Melbourne’s new streetart heartland on Fairfax Media’s Traveller website.
See also: How to do the best of Melbourne in three days
See also: Six of the best Melbourne laneways
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| Bathurst Island Lodge. Photo: Belinda Jackson |
Crocodiles and canvas make for a potent mix in the Tiwi Islands.
The speed boat tears down the broad brown river, and I feel 1000 non-human eyes watching us from the
primordial mangrove-lined banks.
“Can you smell the flying fox?” asks Kathy. It’s the first time I’ve been asked the question, and it distracts me from the earlier statement that a sneaky, opportunistic little croc lurks around the boat ramp where we boarded.
Thick and shining, the river cuts deep into Bathurst Island. Together with its much larger neighbour, Melville Island, and nine little uninhabited islands to the south, they make up the Tiwi Islands 15-minute flight or 2 1/2-hour cruise north of Darwin. Once, they were part of the landbridge that linked us to the
super-continent, Gondwanaland. Now, they’re broken and fragmented: a giant’s lonely, lovely footprint in the Timor Sea.
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| Melville Island airport. Photo: Belinda Jackson |
The Tiwis are but a blip on the tourism radar. Until now, barramundi hunters and football selectors have been pretty hushhush about their fertile hunting grounds, but a new culture tour has lured our party of five onto the islands. We fly over from Darwin in a Cessna 402C: the plane is so small that we all get a window seat, and you can count the number of seats on two hands, pilot included.
From above, the land is low, flat and surprisingly large; Melville is our largest island after Tasmania. The airport, however, is not large. But the first thing I see is a sign that the Essendon Football Club proudly supports the Tiwi Bombers. It’s unsurprising, given Kathy’s brother, Michael Long, is a Bombers’ legend, while her son, Cyril Rioli, is a Hawthorn midfielder.
The second most striking feature of the airport is the small concrete block that is the main building. Actually, it’s the only building. It is painted in wildly beautiful yellow, black and red Indigenous designs that sets the tone for the next few days: the Tiwi art scene is strong and all pervasive. The whole building is about the size of a small public loo. No ticket collectors, no customs officials, no taxi stand. Just the humidity and silence, broken only by the arrival of our minibus and the
departure of our plane. Welcome!
Art is everywhere, on the public building walls and in the burial grounds, where carved ironwood totems hold the spirits of those who have died.
Traditional art is even worn in the supermarket, where the older Tiwi women sport rainbow-bright prints designed and woven by the town’s “spiderwomen”, a dwindling number of weavers and printers who now find themselves head-tohead with cheap Chinese imports.
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| Woodcarver and artist Mario Munkara, Tiwi Designs. Photo: Belinda Jackson |
A quick drive through the town of
Wurrumiyanga (called Nguiu until 2010) reveals an orderly society. There’s Meals on Wheels, a small hospital, Asian takeaway, school and the social club, where all the island gossip is exchanged and the only public place you can buy a drink. There’s a pool for croc-free swimming, opened by Olympic swimmer Leisel Jones and her mum, a church and Ngaruwanajirri, the Keeping House, a “bush cathedral” with a curved ceiling covered in a glorious riot of the Tiwis’ distinctive, geometric mulypinyini pwanga (lines and dots).
This art hub is where disabled artists meet to sculpt, paint, print and sell their wares: carvings, batik silk scarves, lino block prints and paintings using natural ochres. This morning, a group of men sit outside, carving elegant, long-necked birds from dense ironwood which they’ll then paint and sell to keep theplace going, essential now its limited funding has been cut.
“We started this program 20 years ago, but we’ve been unfunded the last three years, so I’m now a volunteer,” says John Naden, a former art teacher who runs The Keeping House with his wife Joy, also a dedicated teacher. There’s a
small display room and the art is priced cheaply to keep it turning over and to keep the artists busy. After all, who wants to be a starving artist, recognised only in death? The prized artworks are sent out to be celebrated across Australia and abroad.
Nearby, the town’s art stalwart, Tiwi Designs, is now in its fourth decade. When we enter, we’re ushered past racks of painted canvases and stacks of sculptured birds, past the silk printing tables and woven baskets, and out the back to a small
fire, which is smoking with green eucalyptus leaves.
“Obviously, you ladies are from the mainland. We don’t know what spirits you bring,” explains Vivian Warlapinni Kerinauia delicately, waving thick smoke over us with a leafy branch. A group of men and women dance around the smoking fire, telling of their totems or dreaming group of crocodile, shark, warship, turtle or buffalo. The men jump and twist, the women are more subtle, elderly hands graceful and evocative.
“Now you have a good spirit,” says Vivian. “It will guide you, give you an open mind.”
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| Artist Alan John Kerinaiua at Tiwi Designs Photo: Belinda Jackson |
After we are cleansed by smoke, the artists return to their tasks. Shy and calm, Alan John Kerinaiua sits back down by his large canvas and picks up his fine brushes, his plastic
pots the trinity of the Tiwi palette – red, white and yellow ochre mixed with PVC glue, a fixer for flexibility and longevity.
The tour’s pace is slow, there is no dashing in and out. We drink tea and eat hot, fresh damper, graze from spectacular lunch boxes, chat with the artists and watch Tiwi Designs
manager Steve Anderson and gentle Vivian handprint a spectacular, nine-metre fall of gold
silk for a Byron Bay client. After lunch, it’s our turn, and Vivian and I imprint a drop of red cotton with a beautiful print by senior artist Jock Puautjimi. It’s my souvenir, it’s my new heartthrob.
There’s plenty to love: Tiwi art is an absolute crowd pleaser, whether you like wood carvings, sculpture, hand-printed fabric, ochre and acrylic on canvas, or tunga, delicately woven bark baskets. Pinned up on the walls are photos of famous admirers of Tiwi style, including Whoopi Goldberg and Boy George, while the art world’s admirers include the British Museum, which hangs several of its most celebrated artists, such as Jean Baptiste Apuatimi, who worked here for many years before she died in 2013.
It’s another short plane hop to the larger Melville Island, and once again, the Tiwis’ inherent artistic nature greets you at another extremely modest airport.
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| Photo: Belinda Jackson |
The men’s and women’s loos are hand-painted in the local style: ladies with their dilly bags, men with their spears. At Jilamara Arts & Craft Association in Milikapiti, the happiest man on Melville Island, Brian Farmer, endures and answers our questions with a massive smile through his grey beard, felt cowboy hat stuffed firmly on his head.
“Every artist tells a story passed on by our forefathers,” he says. ‘‘Their country, the stars, the universe … You know the stars
guide us when we’re in the dugout canoe. We follow them back to our campsites. It’s all written there,” says Brian, who also runs a weekly school program about the dreaming, passing it on to the local schoolchildren.
“If you lose that, you lose your identity,” he says.
The light, airy gallery is full of weavings and bark paintings, canvases including one of the Tiwis’ best
known artists, Kitty Kantilla (Kutuwalumi Purawarrumpatu). Each work is stamped with the artist’s name, their skin and their dance – where they fit in close-knit society. For every item of artwork sold at the Tiwis’ art centres, the bulk of the money is returned to the artist and the remainder is put back into the operations of the Tiwi Art Network.
Over lunch at the nearby Melville Island Fishing Lodge, there are croc jokes a-plenty. A Johnny Horton fan in Milikapiti has named a local croc Bismarck, and Bismarck is ‘‘into dog control’’.
There are plans to launch a new tour that takes you to the islands’ freshwater pools (where you can definitely swim without crocs) or a spot of spear fishing (where you’ve got to be ‘‘cautious,’’ says local master of the understatement, Junior Guy). The big fellas are respected
for their cunning and their sheer power.
On the journey home, I unwrap my printed fabric from Tiwi Designs and a card falls into my lap. It is a stencil of a crocodile. Simple, sparse lines convey his lethal, sinuous curve. In both nature and danger, there is beauty.
The art is in capturing it.
FIVE OTHER ABORIGINAL ART TOURS
1 ROCK ART Kakadu-born Sab Lord and his knowledgeable indigenous team take you into Gunbalaya, Arnhem Land, to view its ancient rock art at Injalak Hill and the rich Injalak Arts & Crafts centre. Day tours from Darwin cost $270 adults, $195 children, (08) 8948 2200, lords-safaris.com.2 SOUTHERN WONDER Guests staying at Longitude 131, overlooking Uluru, can take a rare, exclusive Ernabella Arts Tour into the APY lands of northern South Australia. The full-day tour costs $1000 per person, maximum 4 guests, (02) 9918 4355,
longitude131.com.au.
3 GO BUSH NSW’s Kur-ring-gai Chase National Park has more than 1000 Aboriginal Heritage sites. Visit them by land and water, with a 2.5 scenic cruise, a Welcome to Country ceremony and bush-tucker inspired lunch, $199 adults, $149 children, (02) 9099 4249, sydneyoutback.com.au.
4 GALLERY OF STARS View magnificent rock art galleries on tiny islands off the Kimberley coastline on the Kimberley Ultimate tour on the luxury True North
cruise, from $17,995, (08) 91921 829, northstarcruises.com.au.
5 BARK ART Journey deep into Maningrida, in Arnhem Land, to see woven sculpture, painted hollow logs and bark paintings. Costs from $789 a person, based on 4 sharing, including flight from Darwin, (08) 8985 3266, artconnections.com.au.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION travelnt.com
GETTING AROUND The
three-day Ultimate Tiwi Island Tour runs until 11 September 2015. Costs from $2425 a person, including SeaLink ferry transfers or flights from Darwin, scenic flight to Melville Island, accommodation, meals and non-alcoholic beverages and all tour activities (art workshop with local artists, walking tour, wilderness adventure cruise, fishing options, turtle tour, and a museum and art centre tour). A three night/four day Tiwi Island tour costs from $3225 per person. Day trips to the island run Thursdays and Fridays until December 1, cost $319, Phone 1300 130
679; see sealinknt.com.au.
VISITING ART CENTRES Jilamara
Arts & Crafts Association is in Milikapiti, Melville Island, see jilamara.com. Tiwi Designs is in Wurrimiyanga, Bathurst Island, see tiwidesigns.com, a short distance from Ngaruwanajirri (‘helping one another’) at The Keeping House.
Belinda Jackson was a guest of Sealink NT and Northern Territory Tourism.
This feature was published in Sydney’s Sun-Herald newspaper’s Traveller section.
FOOD: Up is down in the Maldives
The Maldives likes to turn
everything on its head: take, for example, Subsix, the world’s first
underwater nightclub. The club, which is 500 metres out to sea and six
metres under water, can be found at Per Aquum Niyama resort, which has
also just opened Nest treehouse restaurant. Dining pods are suspended
above ground, with wooden walkways linking the tables amid the jungle.
The restaurant serves Asian cuisines. Niyama is set on two islands in
the Dhaalu Atoll, named Play (think adventure sports and kids’ club for
12 months-12 years) and Chill (think spa). Other ‘‘altered reality’’
experiences in the Maldives include underwater restaurants (Conrad
Maldives Rangali Island, Kihavah Anantara) to overwater spas (pretty
much everywhere) and even government cabinet meetings (OK, that was a
one-off publicity stunt). See
peraquum.com
.
GEAR Lather up for Sydney
Ease homesickness for expat friends
by sending them a little piece of Sydney. These new shower gift packs
hail from our northern beaches, and comprise a body bar, a soy candle in
a tin and loofah in three of the company’s best-selling fragrances;
French vanilla, vintage
gardenia and coconut & lime.
Palm Beach products are Australian made and owned by a local family
company. Shower gift packs cost $24.95 each. See palmbeach collection.
com.au.
AIRLINE Fly north for winter
Southerners chasing the sun will
welcome the news that Tigerair is increasing the number of flights from
Sydney to the Whitsunday Coast Airport at Proserpine. The north
Queensland town is a key jumping-off point for travel to Airlie Beach
and the Whitsunday Islands, including popular Hamilton Island. The new
Sunday service departs Sydney at 9.10am, and returns from Whitsunday
Coast at 11.15am with
a flight time of 2 hours 35 minutes.
The service starts October 25, priced from $89 for a Light fare, which
includes 7kg carry-on luggage. The airline has also increased flights on
its Melbourne-Gold Coast route, adding new Friday and Sunday services
from
September 18, just ahead of the term
three school holidays, with tickets from $79. The additional services
come as Tigerair cancels its Melbourne-Mackay route from September 7,
due to low demand. Tickets for the new services are on sale, see tigerair.com.
Sydney Harbour has been voted
Australia’s most family-friendly destination in the newest edition of
Lonely Planet’s Travel with Children book. Sydney’s ferry rides,
picnicking on Fort Denison and catching the super-cat to Manly for a
surf lesson all add up to a top-notch staycation, says Lonely Planet.
Others in its top
10 top family-friendly destinations
include the theme parks of the Gold Coast and Canberra’s Questacon and
the National Arboretum Playground (nb: they also encourage knocking out
somersaults on the immaculate grass dome of Parliament House.) Tassie’s
ghoulish ghost tours get a guernsey, as does Brissie’s Streets Beach and
the kids’ activity rooms in
the Queensland Museum &
Sciencentre, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art. The new
edition helps you take the brood to more than 80 countries, from Austria
to Zanzibar, with advice and tips for fun family travel. It costs
$29.99. See the new Lonely Planet Twitter and Facebook pages and lonelyplanetkids.com.
PICTURES In the frame
Celebrate Australian and
international photography at the month-long Ballarat International Foto
Biennale, which runs from August 22 to September 20. Central Ballarat
will host exhibitions by the 21 invited artists, with another 118 events
(and rising) in the fringe festival across the city. The festival’s
founder and creative director, Jeff Moorfoot, travels the world to bring
photographers’ work to the biennale. Those on show can be established
or emerging artists – the only criterion is that their works have not
yet been shown in Australia. Seven heritage buildings in the city centre
will host the major exhibitions, so you can skip between the Ballarat
Art Gallery and Mining Exchange to smaller galleries and bars for
projection projects and workshops, which cover subjects from light
painting to visual storytelling to Photography 101, from $79 to $475.
For the full program, see
ballaratfoto.org. For more photography festivals in the Pacific Rim, see
asiapacificphotoforum.org.
Wolf Hall, Poldark… Britain is on a
roll with silver-screen adaptations of some of its best loved
literature, showcasing its cities and villages. The latest is Thomas
Hardy’s romantic tragedy Far from the Madding Crowd, now in cinemas.
Filmed around Dorset, the novel is
set in the village of Evershot,
which Hardy renamed Evershead in his novels, a four-hour train journey
from central London. Hardy was also an architect, and in 1893 he
designed the drawing-room wing of what is now the Red Carnation’s
five-star Summer Lodge Country House hotel. Stays cost from $680,
b&b, double. Otherwise, wake from slumber in a four-poster bed to a
full English breakfast at the 16th-century Acorn Inn, mentioned in
Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Costs from $565 a night, double. See
summerlodgehotel.co.uk, acorn-inn.co.uk and visitbritain.co.uk.
The Takeoff travel news column by Belinda Jackson is published every Sunday in Sydney’s Sun-Herald newspaper’s Traveller section.
