SHOULD I GO OR SHOULD I STAY?

You should always expect the unexpected! Gerard is teaching in Alice Springs till the end of the year. I had considered going up in December and driving home with him. The Northern Territory school holidays start this week and Gerard was planning to come home for my 50Th birthday. So with a change of plans, I will now be taking my land skin on that long train trip. The Ghan travels from Adelaide to Darwin, taking in the outback. My trip from Adelaide to Alice Springs takes 25 hours, that's a lot of reading and stitching. We have had the flu here again and I really don't have the spare time for a trip like this, but you only turn 50 once, so it is a wonderful way to celebrate. Last night I read Zandra Rhodes beautiful book, The Art of Zandra Rhodes. I bought the book in the 1980's when it was first published, it is a fabulous source of inspiration. It was interesting to read her response to Ayers Rock, Uluru as it is now known by it's aboriginal name. I also bought the book about Olive Pink, an unconventional anthropologist and advocate for Aboriginal rights, a while back at a second hand book shop, it seems the perfect time to read it now. There is a garden in Alice Springs named after her and they say that she still haunts Alice Springs.
So I plan on taking lots of photo's and spending time drawing.
I had bought some good quality white cotton clothes at the op shop, shorts and T shirts. Luckily I had dipped them several times in a soy then ash mordant months ago, so over the weekend I dyed them with onion skins and dried mistletoe, so now my clothes match the colour of the dreaded outback dust!