Manta means landscape in Pitjantjatjara.

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A dirt road circles all around Ayers Rock, or Uluru as the Aborigines refer to it. Angangu are the traditional caretakers of Uluru and Kata Tjuta and the surrounding landscape. In this sketch Kata Tjuta can be seen in the distance shrowded in blue mist. Like Uluru it juts up from the otherwise flat landscape. It is far more eroded than Uluru having multiple spires. These two monoliths has always been a special place for the Angangu. It isn’t only a rock, but it is a living place that creation beings have left their marks upon.

30 years ago Uluru was officially returned to aboriginal ownership. The ceremony, performed in the shadow of the immense rock, remains one
of the most significant moments in the Aboriginal land-rights movement. Under the terms of the handover agreement, the Anangu people leased
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to the Australian Parks and Wildlife
Service for 99 years, ensuring the public’s ongoing access, as well as
continued funds to the local community. In 2003 the Mititjulu Foundation was formed which raises funds for local Aboriginal communities. Guests at the Ayers Rock Resort can donate to this foundation and the resort matches contributions dollar for dollar. The projects funded include, renovations to a youth center, materials for local schools, a mountain bike program, sports and musical instruments and assistance for women’s health screenings.

At this roadside overlook, an elevated trail brings tourists out to several viewing platforms.  As I did this watercolor, flies gathered on the pages to suck up the moisture. I worked quickly to keep from going insane from all the buzzing. A local joked with me saying that the Australian salute was the act of whisking away flies from your face. I had on a mesh over my head, and flies walked on it inches from my face. Had I sketched one it would have looked like a monstrous giant. I liked the reddish tint that dusted my hiking boots as we walked the trails around Uluru.

Ayers Rock shares its magic.

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The rusty red road cut through the sage brush and an orange cloud rose up behind our rental as we drove to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to Ayers Rock. The plan was to wait for sunset when the golden hour would light up the rock a deep crimson. It was a cloudy day however and that crimson flash never appeared. Next to the road side parking lot people lined up along the barbed wire fence with their cameras poised in anticipation. Children played in the red dust. I noticed that tiny red stones would stick to the magnetic clasp on my art bag. I’m not sure if the photographer with the tripod ever got his picture.

Flies came out in swarms. Tourists flicked them away  from their ears and face, but the flies would simply circle around and dive bomb into peoples ear canals. I wore a fine green mesh over my hat. The flies would crawl in front of my face, but they couldn’t get to me. I also put two erasers in my ears which kept the high pitched drone from pinching my nerves. Terry hiked down the line of tourists hoping to get a better view. Colors slowly faded to grey as night set in.

When my sketch was done I waited at the car for Terry to return from her hike. It began to rain very lightly. I stashed my art bag under the rental to keep it dry.  Next to me several tourists were cooking their dinner over a camping stove. Their VW Bus was converted into a makeshift camper. They were roughing it through the outback. I started to get concerned that Terry might have gotten lost. She eventually did show up in the darkness. We were one of the last cars to leave the lot.

When Terry and I got back to Sails in the Desert Resort, we relaxed over a fine meal at Ilkari Restaurant. We were told that the desert bar was complimentary, but we sampled the ice creams so often that a charge was added to our bill. All the food has to be driven hundreds of miles across the desert to this isolated resort so ice cream is a real luxury. Just having air conditioning is a luxury.

Flying to Ayers Rock, Australia.

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Ayers Rock is located far north of Melbourne in the midst of Australia‘s vast “outback” or desert. Flying within Australia is incredibly easy. There is no customs and no security check points. Australians have the innocence of not feeling that they are a target for terrorist attacks and thus there are no full body scans, no removing your shoes and belt. You just board your plane and enjoy the flight. There was a short delay. I joked with Terry as we boarded that they might have to hold the plane together with Duck Tape. Amazingly my tray table was Duck Taped to the seat in front of me. Scrawled on the Duck Tape with a sharpie, I was informed, “TRAY INOP DO NOT USE.” Flying over Australia is very different than flying over America. America is cut up into a definite grid with farms and cities sprawling  out in a checker board pattern. In Australia there was only an occasional road stretching off into the infinite distance. The entire country outside of the coastline seemed to be an endless expanse of rusty desert.

When the plane approached Ayers rock, it was the only landmark we had seen the whole flight. The size was hard to distinguish since it was unclear how high the plane was flying. The airport was a bit larger than a shed and the heat assaulted us when we walked off the plane onto the tarmac and then inside.  The only features inside the airport were the luggage claim area and a car rental counter. We rented a car so we could explore the area a bit. About a quarter of a mile from the airport was the only civilization in the area, the huge Ayers Rock Resort. We stayed at Sails in the Desert which was a very environmental friendly resort. Solar panels supplied the power and water was conserved. The bright yellow buildings glowed against the blood red desert. The central resort area seemed like an unlikely oasis with its pool and palm trees.

I ordered some room service and relaxed while Terry explored the resort. Flies are abundant in the outback. The best investment Terry made was in two nets that fit over our hats. I felt like a geek at first but without that net, I never could have sketched because flies know how to bug people by flying in their eyes and buzzing in their ears. Within a minute it is maddening. The next day we would head to the Rock.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for April 11th and 12th.

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Saturday April 11, 2015

8am to 2pm Free. Second Seconds. The Carousel Emporium 2000 Alden Road Orlando FL. Monthly antique Flea Market.

6pm to 8pm Free. Brewery Tour. Orlando Brewing, 1301 Atlanta Ave, Orlando, FL.

7pm to 9pm $5. Second Saturdays. 202 S Sanford Ave, Sanford, FL. Live music event featuring 2 stages, drink specials and more.

Sunday April 12, 2015

1pm to 3pm Free. Script Reading Workshop. Sleuths Mystery Dinner Show, 8267 International Drive, Orlando, FL. Read and workshop plays.

6pm to 8pm Free but get a drink or bite. SHUT YOUR FACE! Poetry Slam by Curtis Meyer! La Casa De La Paellas 10414 E Colonial Dr Orlando FL. The only current ongoing slam in Orlando officially certified by Poetry Slam Incorporated, IE. Send a team to Nats as well as poets to The Individual World Poetry Slam & Women of The World Poetry Slam! $50 to the winner! If you’ve never seen or been in a slam before, it’s definitely worth checking out!

INFO: curtisxmeyer@hotmail.com

9pm to 11pm Free. Comedy Open Mic. Austin’s Coffee, 929 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL. Free comedy show! Come out & laugh, or give it a try yourself.

The Golden Mirror Carousel at the Melbourne National Gallery of Victoria is hard to resist.

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We parked the Prius in a parking garage under the National Gallery of Victoria. Along the way, we had picked up a third passenger who is a choreographer. We ordered a bite and coffees at the museum cafe before exploring the exhibits.  When the women went to see the Jean Paul Gautier fashion exhibit, I decided to sketch The Golden Mirror Carousel. It was installed by Carsten Holler and it would only be up a few more days when the Melbourne International Art Festival ended. The Festival is a celebration of dance, theatre, music, circus, visual arts, multimedia, outdoor and free events held for 17 days each October in a number of venues across Melbourne, Australia.

The carousel looks like one of those fast paced swing rides you would find in a carnival. With that ride, the chairs would lift up off the ground and the centrifugal force would make it seem like you were flying. The catch is that it moves at an agonizingly slow pace. A passenger might make a full rotation every 5 minutes or so.  This made sketching tricky since I would sketch passengers when they came around on each turn. Even though the ride moved at a slow pace, tourists and locals couldn’t resist getting on board. It was a relaxing ride. The fact that every facet of the ride was gold made it seem opulent and excessive.

Terry explored the fashion exhibit right until the closing time for the museum. The couture fashions were on manikins that had faces projected on them much like you would see in Disney’s Haunted Mansion. This gave the exhibit a surreal edge. Another area featured the manikins walking down a runway, just like in a fashion show. The entrance to the museum is a glass wall that has water cascading down its surface outside. Kids can’t resit touching the wall of water and interrupting its flow to catch a glimpse inside. At one point there was talk of removing the water fall but locals got up in arms and started a petition. They saved the wall of water so that another generation of children can experience its wonder.

CERES in East Brunswick Australia proves that living a sustainable lifestyle makes sence.

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One of Terry’s high school friends asked us to take one of Melbourne’s trolly’s out of the city to it’s terminus. There she met us at the station. She suggested we go for a walk and get some lunch. Along the way, we met a man who was busy picking berries from a tree. He looked a bit like a hippy and invited us to try a couple of berries for ourselves.

Our destination was CERES (Cnr Roberts and Stewart Streets, Brunswick East, 3057) which is a not for profit educational organization located on 4 hectares of rehabilitated landfill in East Brunswick, Melbourne. It used to be a quarry and it was purchased and turned into a community gardening project. Terry’s friend has been on a waiting list for years to get a plot to tend. CERES was absolutely amazing. There was a gardening shop, cafe and an open market with fresh vegetables and vintage clothing. Children played in the dirt lanes and chickens scurried across our path. This seemed like the Eden that we had lost. What a shame that Orlando doesn’t have a similar large community project.

We stopped for a coffee and a muffin at the cafe.  Oscar Jimenez was entertaining the crowd on guitar. I did a tiny sketch to be sure I was done quickly. Everywhere I looked in CERES I wanted to sketch. There was a huge community bike shop which had a geodesic dome made entirely of bicycle wheels. Wind turbines and solar panels provided energy making the community self contained. Water barrels conserved water for the gardens. CERES is deeply committed to a reduction in resource use. Technology and efficiency are drivers for this reduction. They match technology with education programs for both adults and school
children to encourage widespread behaviour change leading to large
reductions in consumption. Some of their demonstrations, such as the Environmentally Sustainable
Design principles embodied in the buildings are widely applicable. Other
demonstrations are experimental, part of their aim to support cutting
edge initiatives. The electric vehicle conversion program, aquaponics
and biogas plant belong in this category.  All CERES Green Technology projects are designed
to be working demonstrations or on going research projects, and can be
viewed on site, or during guided tours. In America we seem to waste everything but Australians conserve and optimize their resources.

I was sorry we had to leave.  Terry’s friend showed us her apartment which also had solar panels. When she conserves energy and only uses solar, she is paid by the energy company because her energy feeds the grid. We all decided to head back to Melbourne to go to The National Gallery of Victoria. Fashion designer, Jean Paul Gaultier was having a show and Terry was excited to see his contour dresses on display. We drove an energy efficient Prius back to the city.

Federation Square in Melbourne Australia is party central.

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In the morning, Terry and I hopped on the free trolly that circles Melbourne Australia‘s central business district. This rectangular grid of real estate stretched 10 blocks South West to Port Phillip Bay and four blocks North and South. It is offset from the rest of Melbourne grid of streets at a forty five degree angle. The trolly circled the business district which made it convenient to explore the city with ease. A bridge crossed the Yarra River to the South and we walked through the botanical gardens and parks. Terry had a memory of being pushed into a lake in the botanical gardens and we tried to find the site of the crime. Finding the exact spot was difficult considering it had happened so long ago when Terry was a high school senior.

As we walked back at the end of the day, we entered Federation Square. Across from the square is the Historic Melbourne Station which is always full of hectic travelers. By the time the sketch was done, he was gone. I spotted a young woman sitting on the ledge of her hotel room window three stories up sketching the station. That must have been a great vantage point for taking in the architecture. Terry had to get dressed for her reunion so she rushed back to the Windsor Hotel and I stayed behind to sketch. A Bollywood film was being shown on a big screen in the square. People sat all around Federation Square watching the film. Two star crossed lovers were working together as wedding planners. They worked together to plan a huge opulent wedding  and in the mad rush of preparations they began to realize that they should always be together. Bright yellow and crimson gowns sparkled and flowers bloomed on every table. In the end the boy took the girls hand and they danced in a glistening choreographed dance scene. Soon everyone was dancing with them in unison. Destiny had been fulfilled.

In the square, I sketched the only aboriginal man I had seen on our trip. He sat on a stone retaining wall and once in a while he would talk to passer’s by. I wondered what Dream Time tales he might be telling people. Workers were busy setting up barricades in the square. I asked one worker what they were setting up for. The next day the Square would be home for Diwali, the Indian Festival of Light. This Hindu festival is celebrated in autumn every year. The festival spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness. Terry and I returned the next day. Food trucks offered an endless variety of sweet savory Indian dishes. The scents were intoxicating. The crowd was so dense that we had to hold hands to keep from being separated. A short walk down the Yarra River there was an Oktoberfest Festival. Women dressed in Tyrolean dresses and men wore Liederhosen. All the German beer vendors were at the top of a large grass hill. One couple in costume rolled down the hill together. These two festivals intermingled in the middle since they were both so large. Busty Tyrolean dresses pressed their way through the crowd of sparkling Indian Saris and Anarkalis. As the sun set large canisters burst over the crowd sending colorful confetti everywhere. A gust of wind lifted the confetti and sent much of it towards the train station. I’ve never experienced a festival so large and so uplifting. Melbourne offers endless possibilities for sketching events. Federation Square is party central.

Melbourne Australia is alive with culture.

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From Sydney, Terry and I flew to Melbourne Australia. Even the taxi ride from the airport to the Windsor Hotel was exciting. Melbourne has to be the most modern city I have ever visited. I craned my neck looking out the taxi window to see modern skyscrapers that were vibrant works of art. One was covered with colored panels that must have functioned as shades for the glass structure beneath. the panels created yellow, lime green and Orange waves. Just driving through the city you could feel the way art influenced the public spaces. I was told that there are more events in Melbourne than there are days in the year. There was opulence and excess everywhere with changes clearly still under way.

The Windsor Hotel built in 1883, was right across the street from the historic House of Parliament (no, not the Parliament House). A historic trolley station was right in front of the hotel. The entire trolley car had been painted by a local artist thanks to a city commission. Both the Parliament and the Windsor were architectural gems, build from gold rush money at the turn of the century. The Windsor is notable for being Australia’s only surviving grand 19th century city hotel and only official “grand” Victorian era hotel. The Hotel Windsor has a 5-star rating and is considered one of the grandest hotels in Melbourne. It is renowned for it’s long list of dignitaries and celebrities who have stayed there over the years including the Duke and Dutchess of York, Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep,  Anthony Hopkins, Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Basil Rathbone, Lauren Bacall, and Douglas Fairbanks, I didn’t see any of them walking the halls.

After a full day of travel, I decided to just sketch our hotel room before getting some sleep. Terry checked her social media, but my phone remained off for the duration of the trip. My tablet that I sketched on, also doubled as a way to check e-mails where the hotels had Wi-Fi. So I wasn’t completely “off grid”. There were several Theatres just a block from the Hotel. Her Majesty’s Theatre built in 1886, was performing Les Miserables, and The Princess Theatre was presenting the hit musical Once about a song writer and his muse. The smash hit new musical (based on the movie of the same name) stormed
the Tony Awards in 2012 taking home eight, including Best Actor, Best
Book and Best Musical. I hadn’t seen this show before so I was thinking of going alone on the night of Terry’s reunion, since I wasn’t invited to that. Even sketching the theatre’s opulent exterior at night would have made for a great sketch. I was excited to dive in and start sketching this cities rich cultural scene.

A beach nap on the drive back to Sydney Australia.

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From Eden, Terry and I had a seven hour drive back to Sydney Australia. Our ultimate destination after a flight was Melboune where Terry was going to a reunion. Her senior year in high school, Terry was an exchange student and she spent the year in Melbourne going to Lauriston Girls School. Half way up the coast, we stopped at Malua Bay. We ordered lunch and ate it on the beach. I had a fish and chips. A couple sat contemplating the waves.  Terry took a nap while I sketched. Gorgeous yellow flowers bloomed all along the dune’s edge. This is what a vacation should be like with some rest and relaxation.

The nap was short lived however because we had many hours to go on our drive back to Sydney. Eden is more than half way down the coast towards Melbourne, so it would have made more sense to drive south to Melbourne. But car rental rates skyrocket if you drop a car off at a city other than the one you picked it up in. Apparently a plane flight was cheaper than the increase in the rental rate. The drive back seemed so much longer than the drive down. There wasn’t and sense of discovery. We had already traveled these roads.

By the time we were approaching Sydney, the sun had set and the stress lever rose as the traffic got faster and more aggressive. I must say however that Australian drivers are much better than Florida drivers. I drove at the speed limit and was only passed once or twice during the seven hour drive. There are signs on all the highways that insist that divers get some rest to avoid becoming a fatality. By this point, Terry and I were both used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Once or twice we each turned into a wrong lane but that’s when a side seat driver’s warning is appreciated. I scrapped up the hub caps on the car pretty good because I like to park snug to the curb. When I had an SUV, the tires were so big that only rubber bumped the curb. But the little rental and my gas saving Prius have tiny tires with hubcaps that look like they came from a war zone. I only scrap the tires on the passenger side, so as the driver I never actually see the damage. Out of sight, out of mind.

Thar she blows!

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Terry and I took a walk along the beach in Eden Australia to go bird watching. We were looking for a trail that cut off into the woods. Her birding book said this was a great spot to see local birds. We had seen Goffins Cockatoos and other parrots right at the apartment at Eagle Heights. I looked out at the ocean and spotted a column of mist. It was a whale, actually a mother and child. They were no more than 100 yards off shore. Excited, Terry got out her binoculars to get a closer look. It was a cold and very breezy day. After I took a quick look through the binoculars, I found a tree that cut the wind a bit.

I knew Terry was in her zone, when whale watching, so I did a quick sketch. We guessed that the mother must have been teaching the child how to feed in the bay’s relatively calm waters.  In town, the siren sounded, announcing that whales had been sighted. We were proud that we had spotted the pair before the experts. We had visited a spotting station manned by a volunteer on top of a cliff. He keeps track of all the nautical traffic that enters and leaves the bay. It was raining when we were there, and he was nice enough to invite us up into the tower to look at the vista. To pass the time, he scanned the ocean horizon for whales. He claimed that he could spot whale blows from miles away. He would see one and then hand me his binoculars to look. When I looked I wouldn’t see a thing. Spotting these two whales so close to shore therefor was quite rewarding. Whales don’t make great models however. They submerge and stay hidden under water far too long.