First visit to Yeppoon followed by a second visit.

Back in 1999 I attended a ten day painting workshop with  a long time friend. We travelled by car from Mackay to Yeppoon staying at the centre at Cooee Bay. A great venue with accommodation included though bunk style bedrooms with adjoining ablution block.
This happened to be the 25th anniversary of the groups meetings at the same date every year. We shared two tutors between approximately thirty artists. My first tutor was Joe Furlonger and we were doing lino printing.The second half the tutors swapped over groups and Bela Ivanyi concentrated on acrylic painting on paper or canvas.
Without going into detail I came away very overwhelmed but knew that large groups of people wasn't for me. To this day my friend is still attending and I have moved on to further my interest in printmaking, drawing , bookmaking and watercolour.

This is an acrylic painting and I now look at it and wonder where my artistic psychic was as I am not a figure or landscape person in my own work and this is not the sort of abstract I like. Hmmm......

Mixed media on paper here and again figure in the landscape though I don't mind this one and have reused the image.

Anyhow I really do appreciate my learning curve from the adventure and have kept my notes and artworks as reference material.

The second visit to Yeppoon was under different circumstances. My man had never been to Yeppoon so as his treat on the way home from Hervey Bay we stopped a couple of days and it was a chance for me to reacquaint myself with the other end of Yeppoon, Farnborouh and Byfield area. We found great accommodation at Beachfront 55 and I went for an early morning walk as you do and here are a couple of photos as a result.

Early morning raincloud approaching the mainland.

Early birds catching worms.

We visited two local galleries, The Mill Gallery which is housed in an old post office building and the Paint Pot not very far away in an old church. Morning tea in town across the road and after lunch we enjoyed a drive through the country passed the state forest to Cooberrie Park Wildlife Sanctuary where  I'm told they breed their own koalas.

 

and have two white peacocks

as well as many lizards reptiles, birds and a fox, sleeping ....

We said goodbye to them all and continued even further on into the forest to here...

Now this is dangerous territory as some wonderful pottery, hand blown glassware, jewellery,tiles, and artworks situated on beautiful property offering a relaxed atmosphere.

It was hard to depart but we had to move on as time to go home.