Chinese Painting in a Day – a great form of relaxation

Today I did a Chinese painting class at the CAE – a beautiful way to spend a Sunday. Teacher Thanh Duong took us through the techniques of Lingnan Chinese painting, which uses brushes of animal hairs to combine ink and paints on rice paper using a freehand style to produce an expression of the artist’s life energy.

We learned techniques of working with water, ink and colour-mixing as well as several ways to hold the brush and do the stroke work. I was inspired by the results of all of our small class (only three of us), in such a short time.

I’d like to do some more sometime soon.

What do John Travolta and Longreach have in common?

They both have old Qantas 707 planes. Longreach’s 707 is at the Qantas Founders Museum. John Tavolta is a flight enthusiast and Qantas ambassador. We learnt this piece of trivia when we spent most of today at the Museum. They had a much larger 747 that we were shown in detail.

Before going to the Museum, we visited the Longreach School of Distance Education, where we saw a class in action. The school has 147 students scattered over a classroom that is larger than the state of Victoria.