Author: jeanettewoods

Exploring Victoria to the north of us.

I have just returned from a fourth ‘little break’ this year. It has been the year of exploring closer to home and I have to say that Victoria is endlessly interesting, mostly in ways I don’t expect. (Confession: I still read the Saturday Age travel section and hover over any pics I see of Tuscany or Provence – the pull of Europe is still there!)

SAM was the attraction for this expedition to the north of us. Shepparton Art Museum has the privilege of hosting the 2026 winners of the Archibald Prize for Portraiture, so off we went.

I associate Shep (as the locals call Shepparton) with fruit growing and canning (SPC) and also as a welcoming rural town that has taken in many asylum seekers and refugees. Unlike some of our politicians, I love all things multi-cultural, and especially the delights of diverse ethnic food.

Four years ago, on a brief day visit to Shepparton, we stumbled on Nedal’s Syrian restaurant in the Main Street, and the aroma and taste of his wonderful dishes had stayed with us. So we searched maps and found him on the first night and showed him a photo of the memorable meal we had eaten last time He reproduced it for us with great delight.

We are happy to know that his business has survived and he is well integrated into the town. His young adult son lolled on a couch with his mate as they scrolled on their phones. He undoubtedly has fitted in to his new country.

Having settled in to our surprisingly spacious apartment, and eaten and slept well, we were ready to tackle SAM.

The Archibald prize has a long history (it began in 1921) and is the most prestigious portraiture award in Australia. The finalists are sometimes frequent awardees, and are sometimes debut artists. There is much controversy over the choice of winners, but the array of skill in the finalists’ exhibition is breathtaking. We will always be proud that Peter’s entry was selected some years ago for the second round exhibition, the Salon de Refuses.

There is also a People’s Choice award from popular voting, but we missed that by a day. I have read since that the vote went to one of my favourites, Nick Stathopoulos’ red themed painting of Margaret Fink, who produced My Brilliant Career and other films in the seventies. She is in her nineties now and defied the artist’s request not to wear stripes by wearing an elaborate patterned outfit!

John Owen, of Wayside chapel
Winner of People!s Choice

I am not an art critic, but thanks to living and travelling with an artist, I have upped my game over the years. I am often drawn to hyper realism, but appreciate many other styles. This exhibition seems to feature a lot of great hands as well as faces. The prize was awarded to Melbourne artist Richard Lewer for his portrait of an elderly Pitjantjatjarra woman. It is pleasing, but not in my personal top list.

My favourite

We must learn to think ahead and book eating places! Both the gallery cafe and the popular Lemon Tree cafe were full, so we just went home and had a sandwich. The next day we booked and returned to The Lemon Tree for lunch and were rewarded with a superb, healthy and very pretty dish of prawns on sourdough with avocado, corn and salad. Worth waiting for!

With some persistence, we then found the Bangerang Cultural Centre. It has the distinctive of being the first Aboriginal owned and operated keeping place (I love that name) in Australia, and the first outside the capital cities. https://bangerangculturalcentre.com.au/

The exhibition is housed in the round, and our eyes adjusted to the low light, then opened wide! What a display!

Artefacts from all over the country, historic photos and amazing dioramas. These 3D displays were made by George Browning (1918-2000), who is known for his dioramas at the War Memorial. It felt as though the figures in the windows could move and come alive, and it was hard to tell where the great painted backgrounds started. So much to see and so much to learn.

The best part was meeting Uncle Kev, who took great delight in showing us around and telling us stories (there was no-one else there). Kev has curly hair and twinkling eyes and was surprisingly positive about growing up on a Mission. There are wonderful photos of his early history and family, including his mum with 14 siblings!

Staying in theme, we returned to SAM and saw the Heartland exhibition, which has a wonderful range of indigenous paintings.

Then downstairs the Kaiela arts and craft display, which had beautiful platters in subtle coloursmade by children at a workshop. https://kaielaarts.org

As we and our siblings age, we feel the need to see each other whenever possible. So our next expedition was to meet Peter’s sister: we drove to Glenrowan as a halfway point and she drove down to meet us. So that’s how we spent time with Ned.

After our catchup, which was fuelled by the biggest scones with the most cream I have ever seen on a scone, we had a look around this tiny town famous for the bushranger, Ned Kelly.

I have not been to Glenrowan for decades, back when the highway went through the middle of it. We showed our small children the larger than life sculpture of Ned, and they cried with terror!

Today it is a small cluster of cafes and Ned-themed places, with startling gunshots every half hour as the siege is re-enacted at the dedicated museum.

Looking for a loo took us to the stunning modern Ned Kelly hub, which houses excellent displays and interactive digitised material. https://www.nedkellydiscoveryhub.com.au/While I have never been a fan of a thief and murderer, I do admit that the issues are more complex and nuanced than I had realised. I was also impressed with Ned’s literacy, seen in the quotation in the photo.

With a little more time to relax and binge watch, we worked our way through Dustfall and Blue Lights, and finally watched the last episode (ever) of Up on SBS. We felt as if we have grown up with this cohort of people who have been part of a documentary made mainly by Michael Apted every seven years. He wanted to see if the seven year olds in the first one would follow a predictable path or not. In many ways, they did, but there were surprises. This last episode was quite emotional as we farewelled them in their seventies. We have shared their lives with ours and feel as if know them. We had a few discussions about the meaning of life, the influence of our faith and what has shaped us as we processed what we saw.

Then it was time to hit the road and come home. I asked AI to plan a trip for us that avoided the Hume Highway and Monash freeway (it was Friday arvo), to find a halfway lunch stop with something interesting and gentle for this senior couple to look at. Well, AI did very well!

It brought us home via the mountains, with a lunch stop in Yea. Like so many Victorian country towns, Yea has a huge wide main street, with lots of trees, shade and parking. We chose one of the AI suggestions, the Yea Bakery, from where we could see at least two others!

After a good old pie and sauce to stay in theme, we then followed AI’s instructions and found the Yea Wetlands Discovery Centre. Opened in 2023, it was modern and attractive, with great information and the mandatory gift shop. https://yeawetlands.com.au/discovery-centre/ It is so encouraging to see these restoration and conservation projects.

We were ready for some forest washing, so set off on the well marked paths, in spite of snake warnings (Peter later saw one sunning itself in the carpark). It is hard to describe the array of greens and foliage, the sounds of running water and birdsongs, and the pleasure of a breeze rustling through the bush on a perfect day. There is excellent signage and info boards, and the paths are beside and around the Yea River. In no hurry to return to the city, we rambled and looked and listened to the incredible birds, and felt deeply refreshed. God’s creation never lets us down.

There was one more thing that AI could not have known. I lived in Yea in 1951, when my parents were the Salvation Army officers there. We tracked down the building, long closed and we found it. It has been converted (good pun) into a home with attractive cladding and a garden at the front. But the rusted corrugated iron roof is clearly original, and the annexe where we lived at the back is still there.

I do have some memories (including when I stole the grapes from the harvest festival display) and it was strange to reflect on how many years have passed since then – most of my life.

This year of taking short breaks and exploring our home state has been amazing; so far we have been east, west and north. It is obvious where we have to go next! Looking forward to more discoveries.

My place in the mud

A colourful garden is my happy place: flowers all year round, with a mix of natives and hardy perennials. That’s why the drab, olive-green of the monochromed local mangroves has been slow to attract my attention. I have lived or worked on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia for twenty-five years. I have walked the Hastings foreshore countless times; Warringine Park and the Bittern Coastal Wetland Boardwalk feel like my front yard. Wanders and rambles, buckets and bikes with grandchildren, husband jogging, rehab walking after surgery. Little ones afraid to fall off the boards in case something lurks underneath in the dank swamp.

When the grandchildren were small, we loved to go to Jacks Beach when the tide was out, equipped with gumboots, towels and snacks. Down across the sand we would creep in the gluggy mud. Then it was a game: how far can we walk without water or mud getting inside our boots or sinking and screaming for help? It felt a little dangerous and not something they were usually allowed to do, but as they grew older and more confident, we could wade right out to where the mangroves ended, and the sea took over. We would get quite close to the old wooden piles from an ancient pier, rotted but surviving the salt and waves. The children cautiously skirted the holes in the mud, wondering what creatures might emerge from them. Confirming their apprehension, tiny crabs scuttled in their sideways fashion as we squelched towards them.

I explained that these plants were mangroves, and that the pencil-sized upright growths were their roots seeking oxygen. They found little sprouted seedlings floating in their green split pockets and we began to explore. The mangroves at Jacks Beach are relatively small but were taller than the children and felt shadowy and threatening; we tried to teach them to respect the environment. When Covid lockdowns penned us into a small radius in Melbourne, Jacks Beach was fortuitously included in my area and walks down there saved my sanity through that nightmare.

In my Geography studies at Melbourne University in the sixties (yes, last century), we did some field work at Corner Inlet, to the east of the ‘neck’ of Wilson’s Promontory. Squelching then, as we do now, we waded through the mudflats, mapping the vegetation of the coastal tidal area and the mangrove swamps. We learnt how to record and sketch the vegetation profile along an imaginary line, to be drawn and later researched from our photos, hoping to accurately capture the ecosystem that we had explored and documented. No internet then.

I particularly enjoyed hand drawing the swamp vegetation, using pens on tracing parchment, followed by research and detailed labelling of species. Computers and mobile phones had not even been imagined, but the wetlands had always been in this remote corner and were already ancient. That excursion is a long time ago, but I have retained a sense of relationship with mangrove swamps, despite the mystery they encapsulate. Even as a youthful uni student, eco-geography appealed to my view of the environment and its interaction with human development – my sense of place.

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A beach holiday in winter is a special joy. Just five nights of bracing, salty wind, gazing out to the horizon and admiring the hardy souls out on their boards is real renewal. We have had mini breaks mainly in the east, closer to home, but decided to brave it to the west side of the bay and hit the surf coast. We chose Bells Beach for our stay, feeling that as a world-renowned venue for surfing competitions, there must be some waves to watch. We would explore the Surf Coast in low season!


As always, the further we get from home, the more we relax into uninterrupted conversations and comfortable silences with a background of ABC FM classic. Going east, we are usually in the country within minutes. This western adventure was more challenging, with a route taking us an hour to the CBD and then out the other side.

The first decision, and a good one, was to choose ‘No tolls’ in Google maps. It only added a few minutes and saved us $37 on the return trip – that’s a fish and chips meal! More than that, it took us through suburbs we don’t always see, including a lovely drive by Albert Park Lake before we finally hit the freeways. The western side is now an incredible new labyrinth of roads, and by the time we reached the services at the start of the towering Westgate Bridge, we needed lunch. It was my first experience of a Pieface purchase – actually a very nice pie with free sauce (it’s funny how a small sachet of tomato sauce felt so generous).

Bypassing Geelong reminded me of our frequent trips in my childhood to see family there. It was a different drive then that went right through Werribee with its famous stinky smell (we would see how long we could hold our breath), and then the long approach through Corio industrial area. On the way home, we would buy chips (couldn’t afford fish for eight people) and make them last all the way home. This time, however, we sailed around the edge at 100kph, gazing at the new developments on the fringes.

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With all that was happening before and during a spring road trip up the coast last year in 2025, I did not manage to capture the highlights, nor even the lowlights, in my blog diary. The memory has blurred a little since 2025, but the feelings and photos remain with me and need to be written about before too much more post-trip time elapses. Some already has, of course, and will colour the memories, but that’s true of all of life’s retrospectivity.

The click of the front gate, the closing of the car boot, the last look around to make sure we were not doing any serious senior forgetting (a daily occurrence). Water bottles, Google maps and audiobooks loaded as we backed out of the driveway and pointed the trusty Mazda to the northern sun.

We had Levi’s squishy pig on board and he promised to send home photos of his exploits to our grandson.

A driving holiday is so much easier than flying to Europe as we have so many times and involves much less adrenaline. No panic about negotiating freeways in time to the airport, no fear of forgetting passports and documents, nor worry about booking details and weighing of luggage. I am fortunate or mad enough to have done seven trips to Europe and not having to steel myself for a long haul flight suddenly felt deliciously refreshing even before we turned out of our street. This was the great Aussie road trip!

Unlike the claustrophobic panic I feel when the exit doors are closed on a plane, I knew that I could stop the car and get out any time I wanted to. Peter had polished said car so that its ‘crystal soul’ red duco gleamed and was rearing to go. We were off and running!

We planned to head east, then north, over the border, hugging the coast, taking three days to get to Jervis Bay; then to take the trip back slowly.

I love country motels, with their beige decor and unpainted brick interiors. Often there is still a flap in the door where they used to insert an ordered breakfast. Once on the road it is all we need, and helps us to focus down and leave complex life demands behind.

Orbost was far enough from home for our first motel stay and by the time we were ready to find dinner, the main street was very quiet. Undaunted by the bad experiences we have sometimes had at Chinese takeaways in country towns, we were ever hopeful, and found Leon Palace, an Asian place where we were almost the only customers – should we have been worried?

Before we knew it, we were conversing in Indonesian with the surprised and friendly female cook from Timor and enjoying great food. In just a few hours, I already felt liberated from cooking and the unwinding had begun. We slept so well – far enough back from the main road not to hear the trucks thundering all night.

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Although haiku has changed with modern times, it originated in Japan in the 17th century as a reaction to the elaborate poetry of the time.

Classic haiku is written with seventeen syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern, which means that every word is important. It was usually connected to a season (known as a kigo) or a little moment that evokes an emotional response. It aims to ‘express much and suggest more’ and features simplicity, intensity and directness – a bit like a bonsai in words. Focusing on nature, these short form poems aim to include a kireji, or ‘cutting word’ that is an invitation to be surprised or to reflect.

Peter’s latest exhibition, Bella Italia, was held at the Oak Hill Gallery in Mornington, Victoria, in February 2025. It beautifully captured the memories of our incredible trip to Italy in 2023, visiting Sicily and Tuscany. (You can see my travel blog from then https://jeanettewoods.com/2023/08/ready-set-fly-europe-23-1/#more-739). His images inspired me to write for each painting, and, for the first time, we exhibited together: a fusion of paint and words, Italy and Japan! Those who visited the exhibition felt that the combination of each oil painting with a 17 word poem evoked new multi-faceted perspectives to the experience. These are some of the pieces from the exhibition. (Some are still available for sale. If you are interested, contact Peter for a catalogue at petersbwoods@gmail.com)

Sunset, San Quirico, Tuscany

Perfect orange orb

Slides behind the evening hills

Gone except for gilded touch.

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Human nature has been sold short. Humans have a higher nature which includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well. (Abraham Maslow)

My current writing commission has taken me into the world of work and welfare, and it has been quite a dive into the deep end. Westgate Community Initiatives Group (WCIG) has 38 years of history, and as it looks to future directions, wants to capture its origins: how does its DNA from the past shape and inform its current form and vision?

With a change of leadership, and emerging from the challenges of Covid-19, WCIG is searching for its stories. ‘Strategy story’ is a well-known business tool for exploring the past to inform the future, and that is the essence of my commission. As part of the project, WCIG wants a book written that will capture the origins of the organisation, trace its history and developments and highlight the values that have remained over the years that drive it today. Just a small project!

WCIG is a community-based, not-for-profit organisation committed to improving lives through practical responses to unemployment and disadvantage, and is one of many employment services competing for government contracts and partnerships that will provide openings for people who find it hard to get a job. There are all sorts of reasons for this: health, discontinued employment experience, lack of qualifications, mental challenges, physical disabilities, language challenges and age and many more. These factors all make it more difficult to find meaningful jobs.

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