Turns out we were not quite done with Brisbane. We had seen ads for a Disney exhibition at the Queensland Museum, and Sarah really wanted to see it. So we all went! It was a beautiful and captivating exhibition about Disney’s animation movies, the technique, the art, the artists. We were handed out drawing boards at entrance, clearly encouraged to measure our drawings skills against Disney’s artists.

The exhibition was chronological, from the first Mickey Mouse films to the recent digital films. I thought the first part was way more interesting – maybe because of my age? The work on the artistic concepts, the colours, the style, the storyboard, how they worked from the voice recording to the animated movie, all supported by sketches and drawings.

After a quick lunch break along the South Bank, we went to a guided tour of the nearby Art Gallery, taking us through Australian masterpieces of the last 150 years or so, and beautiful aboriginal art from the last 50 years. I understand (but maybe I misunderstood) that Aboriginal Australians only started painting on canvas in the 70s, pretty recently, really. We learnt that, although it looked like abstract art, it’s not – the artist tells a story, a story they own.

We finally left Brisbane, and headed to Burnleigh Head where we meet James, Nathalie’s brother, who lives there. Under a pouring rain, we drove to our next destination, Brunswick Head. We had dinner at Chris Olsen’s, who I hadn’t seen for 20 years. Nothing compared to the 36 years since I had last seen her daughter Nel, who happened to be here as well!