As our house sit comes to an end, we just wanted to say thank you to Toby for being a great little guy to mind. We have loved your cuddles and tender little nature, you are a very easy boy to love and care for. Toby is the dearest little 16 year old Havanese, that we have been looking after in Milsons Point. We also loved how much joy you gave to everyone who saw you in your poochy pouch as Kevin carried you around on your walks. We will miss you. Lots of love treasure.
We didn't set out that day to find Nutcote, but we'd seen signs of May Gibbs along our walks, little reminders of her stories are to be found in the plantings and sculpture around the area.
I noticed this building as we were pulling up in the ferry, some houses just seem to have a story to tell, don't you think? Well, turned out that we'd stumbled across, Once Upon A Time.
This is certainly the land of the stairs this area. But somehow, this ferry stop seemed a little bit magical.
I had to find out more...
Once Upon A Time. Former home of William Alfred Leopold Crowle, its entrance gates are presided over by a stone lion ( formerly two) supposedly bought from the London Houses of Parliament after the WWII blitz. Nearby are verses from Goethe, including (in German) “When someone makes a journey they have a story to tell”. This is a house with a journey and a story to tell.Crowle was a Sydney importer, businessman and inveterate traveler and collector. In 1935-36 he had designed and built Wyldefel Gardens stepping down a hillside in a ‘V’ to the waterfront at Potts Point. This townhouse development with its flat roofs and modern styling was a radical innovation for Sydney. At the water’s edge, he built his own house, Once Upon A Time, the bottom floor being the boatshed for his yacht. Returning in 1940 after three years of traveling, Crowle found that the navy was about to acquire his estate for the development of Captain Cook Graving Dock and to connect Garden Island to the mainland. Rather than lose his house, he had it dismantled and bought across to Kurraba Point on barges for reassembly. Crowle died in 1959 and his enormous collections of artifacts and books were auctioned off. Once Upon A Time is now three apartments. ~ Information from May Gibbs Neutral Bay Walk
How fabulous to live in a house called Once Upon A Time, how fabulous to have called this house that. I think I want a house called Once Upon A Time.
It was such a beautiful feeling to have discovered those words at the top of the stairs. One of the delights from just wandering... Anyway, walking on a little way, we noticed a sign to May Gibbs home, Nutcote. So we followed the sign and found a wonderful little place, one that has the feeling that lives have been lived there, with many happy memories.
"Once upon a time, on the beautiful Sydney shoreline, was a house called Nutcote and in that house lived a remarkable woman called May Gibbs who turned gumnuts into tiny people and banksias into villains." ~ Angus Stewart
Little Toby the darling Havanese we are minding, looks to me like he could be one of May Gibbs little characters.
"This is May Gibbs. At the moment I live in a house in Neutral Bay, Sydney and it's a dear little place with a long, long garden. I'm very fond of it. The first books that I ever did were the flower books or the Boronia Babies, Wattle Babies, Gumnut Babies and I think another baby - Flannel Flower Babies.""I used to walk about the garden, weeding the garden and loving it," the recording continues, "with a book in my pocket and a pencil and that's where I got all my ideas. I used to think of them when I was gardening." ~ From the video in Nutcote.
Well Nutcote exudes happiness.
Visit inside May Gibbs home online: May Gibbs.com.au Click Here
I'd heard about the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at the Art Gallery of NSW, and was delighted if not a bit surprised to see Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith being shown as well in this exhibit.
“Preston and Cossington Smith, like O’Keeffe in America, have long been recognised for their central role in the development of modern art in Australia. The three artists are connected by their choice of subject, their experimentation with light, colour and form, and their commitment to presenting alternative ways of seeing the world,” says Dr Michael Brand, director, Art Gallery of NSW.
"Larger than life and created from highly polished steel, Michael Parekowhai’s The English Channel is an arresting sculptural presence. The figure, with flowing topcoat and ponytail, is the British navigator Captain James Cook. But this is not Cook as he is seen in the many historical monuments that bear his name – or in the famous 1776 portrait painting by Nathaniel Dance which is one inspiration for this sculpture. Resting on a sculptor’s working table with his feet suspended above ground, this Cook seems to be reflecting on his legacy in the contemporary world."
Then on to view the O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism exhibit... if you have a chance to see it, do visit.
"It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or a tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint." Georgia O'Keeffe.
After winding our way around the gallery it was time for a lunch break...
These cheeky little sausages were addicted to the sugar packets and kept trying to steal them from the lunch tables. Kevin pulled one back from it, and it nipped him! Can you see that look in it's eye? They were funny as a circus to watch.
A final wander through the gallery and a stop off to see Brett Whiteley's work... again, this could come and live at my house.
