Bus Trip to Maryborough-Hervey Bay

or The Artists equivalent of a Pub Crawl

Bright and early a small group from Gin Gin, Bumdaberg and Mount Perry gathered at the Gallery awaiting the arrival of the bus to take us south. At Childers a stop was made to collect more keen artists from Biggenden and Childers. 

To help pass the time, Lesley Perk had devised a word puzzle involving using the word 'up' at the beginning and end of a word. There was lots of chatting and scribbling on the way to Maryborough.

First stop was at the lovely old Maryborough Town Hall for the Annual Art Exhibition.

Everyone really enjoyed the extensive range of artworks and all made several circuits of the hall to make sure nothing was missed.

There was lots of gesturing, discussing and more than a little close-up examinations.

Next a quick stop of at the Maryborough Art Society Gallery then on to the Gataker's Art Space gallery housed in a heritage listed refurbished warehouse.

Some of the group waited in the sun outside the gallery for everyone to catch up.
A detour via a quirky art book shop with great restraint show by all because the books were delicious!

Our next stop was the Alpha31 Gallery where we met Monica Bayer, 'Artist in Residence' and her sister Inge. 
The working studio and gallery contains artwork from a select group of local professional artists.

The main attraction here was sculpture and our two male travellers asked lots of questions and definitely had glints in their eyes, not to mention twitching chisel fingers.

The next place the whirlwind touched down was the Hervey Bay Regional Gallery which was showcasing work by Queensland senior secondary visual arts students and an installation of ceramic sculptures by Gympie artist Sally Spencer, inspired by symbols from the ancient world.

Everyone decided that we were all starving and voted for a trip to Urangan jetty and fish 'n' chips!

 At 4pm we started back with mad scrambles to finish the 'up' word game. Now I'm not saying there was cheating going on but the noise level and laughter was - well suspicious! And there were lots of words that we can't print here, greeted with even more squeals of laughter.

Said goodbye to a large portion of passengers at Childers and they were responsible for most of the noise as the bus became very quiet.

We arrived back in Gin Gin just after sundown with visions of pastel, acrylic, oil, sandstone and other wonderous creations swimming in our heads.

Thanks Lesley for organising a great trip. Can't wait for the next one.