Written mainly by Sheryl

Upside Down World: Exhibition at the new wing of the New South Wales Art Gallery

Many of our family and friends emigrated to Australia but we had never visited. Almost did in mid-March on World Cruise 2020, but then COVID hit! Anchored in Sydney Bay for 3 days, we were finally sent straight from harbour to airport, home to Cape Town.

This time, in Melbourne from 1st January 2023, it was a moving experience reconnecting with close friends from school, university, 1980s years on Kibbutz Tuval and the fortuitous reunion of Ray’s family from New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. We vicariously experienced Melbourne’s distinctive, ubiquitous barber shops, tattoo and beauty parlours and directly enjoyed its coffee shops! Monet & Friends exhibition at the Lume was exceptional: Visitors move around a huge hall experiencing continuous loops of early 20th Century Paris films arranged on multiple huge screens, its music, and especially the Impressionists art and role in world art. 

In Sydney dear friends hosted and looked after us in all ways. Sandy guided us through the Sydney Jewish  Museum, also its powerful, interactive initiative: “Reverberations, A Future for Memory” where recorded footage of Holocaust survivors answer questions in real time that you ask about their lives and opinions. The impressive NSW art gallery newly opened wing has an enormous upside down world map wall hanging –  with Cape Town at the top of the world! Made of heavy thread including barbed wire, its theme: movement and role of migrants throughout the world. A trip to the Blue Mountains, spectacular Sydney Opera House, Harry’s signature Tiger pies, beaches and precious time with my Sydney based Edelstein cousins.

Shabbat Dinner with my vast Sydney Rabinowitz family was a wonderful “tumult”, reminiscent of rich family gatherings on Shabbatot and Chaggim  experienced during my childhood before all the emigration!

We barely skimmed Australia’s surface. By far most special was time with family and friends in and from Mildura, Mount Martha, Melbourne, Sydney who, through the nature of our relationship over decades, are all pretty much like family. How sad it is the consequences of the South African situation that has caused us to live so far from one another!

Friends of Monet Exhibition at the Lume

The Ubiquitous Melbourne Barber Shops Check Sheryl taking the Photograph