Out and About Town

My last weekend in Tennant....
Yesterday we went for a drive to the lookout next to the watertank...wow, you forget how vast this land is when you hang around town all the time...
One photo shows a dirt track stretching off into the distance...the next city from here is Alice Springs...which is 5 hours drive away, grin!
The other photo is of a lone cloud on the horizon seen from up there...took me a while to realize it was smoke from a bushfire...no wind, not even a breeze, which is why it was it was just collecting there in one huge smoke cloud low on the horizon.

Today, after a long lazy breakfast checking my emails, i wandered down the main street to see if any shops were open...past the serpent winding along the wall of the emporium sports store, where the local kids all buy their baggy shirts and shorts...and found a little Aboriginal art gallery called "Desert Rose 21".
It's run by a delightful woman called Jenny, who works in the local schools during the week, and opens her gallery to whoever drops by on weekends....
Its full of local art works of all kinds, and we got talking about the different pictures.
Being a painter myself, i was particularly fascinated by one artist who seems to be combining traditional dot style painting with many layered colours and swirling patterns which create such a feeling of life and movement...( and of course ive forgotten the artists name now...)
Anyway, we got chatting about Tennant Creek and the problems here, and eventually she invited me out the back for a cup of tea...seems she tends to have groups of women drop in for tea and talk on saturdays...
jenny has spent many years in both health promotion and teaching, and i was impressed to find yet another passionate strong woman working on helping her people.
We ended up chatting about the blog I'm writing of course, and she was really excited about the concept, so i ended up spending an hour or so helping her to set up a blog for the gallery, so sometime soon, you'll be able to see some of the amazing paintings she sells there, as well as read the stories of the various artists!

Her Blog is here: http://desertrose21.blogspot.com

I came away with some lovely printed fabric she gave me, and the lovely feeling I'd made a friend....

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