BRISBANE FESTIVAL 2018 & THE TWEED VALLEY ART, MUSIC AND THEATRE SEPTEMBER 20-23, 2018 TOUR LEADER: DR MATTHEW LAING

Overview In the last five or so years the Brisbane Festival has been steadily raising its profile and is today one of Australia’s best. It features world-class ensembles yet retains the friendliness and intimate scale of smaller festivals. The festival takes place in venues around the city, but mainly in the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and adjacent Queensland Conservatorium of Music, arguably the two best performing arts venues in the country. This new tour allows you to attend the Brisbane Festival with like-minded people. Over four days you will attend at least three festival events, including the semi-staged production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, the performance highlight of this year’s festival. We’ll also be making curator-led visits to the Queensland Art Gallery, the highly-regarded GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art) and the William Robinson Gallery, dedicated to one of Australia’s finest living landscape artists. On the final day of the tour, we’ll travel south to the wonderful Tweed Valley Regional Gallery in northern New South Wales. The gallery features a full-scale reproduction of Australian artist Margaret Olley’s Sydney studio. It’s a major homage to one of Australia’s leading female artists and gives a wonderful idea of the artist’s life and works. The tour price includes three nights’ accommodation and breakfast at the newly-opened Novotel Southbank, a 4.5-star hotel close to Brisbane Festival venues and the major galleries, best available tickets to at least three events at the Brisbane Festival and curated visits to three leading galleries. The Brisbane Festival is progressively announcing its line-up for 2018. This itinerary and our website will be updated as details come to hand.

Your tour leader Dr Matthew Laing is a historian with a strong interest in the performing arts. His Ph.D is from the Australian National University and for several years he has led Academy Travel’s performing arts tours to New York, as well as historical and cultural tours to the USA and Europe. Matthew has worked as a lecturer and research fellow at the Australian National

University, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and now at Monash University in Melbourne. He is an accredited ADFAS lecturer and frequently holds public lecture series in Melbourne.

Matthew’s tours strive for intellectual engagement and to reveal the stories, both big and small, that can bring history to life. A voracious reader and traveller, Matthew strives to be a generalist and draws upon a wide range of subjects – from politics to architecture – to develop his understanding of a place.

BRISBANE FESTIVAL 2018 & THE TWEED VALLEY

Tour dates: September 20-23, 2018

Tour leader: Dr Matthew Laing

Tour Price: $1,880 per person, twin share

Single Supplement: $330 for sole use of double room

Booking deposit: $500 per person

Recommended airline: Qantas

Maximum places: 20

Itinerary: Brisbane (3 nights)

Date published: May 24, 2018

Enquiries & bookings

For further information and to secure a place on this tour please contact Jamal Fairbrother at ADFAS Travel on 9235 0023 or 1800 639 699 (outside Sydney) or email jamal@academytravel.com.au

Detailed Itinerary Included meals are shown with the symbols B, L and D.

Thursday 20 September Arrive

The group meets in the lobby of the Novotel Brisbane Southbank at 3.00pm. From here we walk to the Queensland Art Gallery, where a curator discusses the current exhibitions, focusing on glass art and contemporary indigenous artist Tony Albert. There will be time to see these exhibitions and view the permanent collection before heading to a pre-theatre tour welcome dinner and a performance at the Brisbane Festival. Details available mid-June 2018. (B, D)

Performance details Venue: QPAC or a Brisbane theatre Program: To be announced June 2018 Performers: To be announced June 2018

Friday 21 September Modern art and Performances

This morning we visit one of Brisbane’s key cultural attractions, GoMA, the Gallery of Modern Art. Opened in 2006, it has played an increasingly important role in highlighting the contemporary art of the Asia-Pacific region. This now culminates in the Asia-Pacific Triennale, held at GoMA every three years. A curator will take us through the permanent collection. This afternoon there are two options. One, if available, is a performance at the Brisbane Festival, most likely a chamber music concert. If this is not available, then we will travel to Fortitude Valley to visit the leading Brisbane art dealer and patron, Phillip Bacon. A member of the gallery staff will take us through the current exhibition of the artist Tim Storrier. This evening has been set aside for our next Brisbane Festival event, most likely a play or dance performance. Details available mid-June 2018. (B)

Performance details Venue: QPAC or a Brisbane theatre Program: To be announced June 2018 Performers: To be announced June 2018

Saturday 22 September Landscape, Theatre and opera

This morning we stroll across the Brisbane River to the William Robinson Gallery, housed in the former government house, now on the grounds of the Queensland University of Technology. The gallery is dedicated to Robinson’s magnificent landscapes, many of them set in the rugged border ranges between New South Wales and Queensland. Today Robinson is Australia’s most expensive living artist, so QUT, which runs the gallery, has also made a very wise investment! This afternoon we will attend a matinee theatre performance from the Brisbane Festival, with details available in June 2018. This evening we attend one of the Festival highlights, a semi-staged production of Benjamin

Above: Tony Albert’s Sorry, a part of his Visible exhibition in the Queensland Art Gallery. Tony Albert is one of the most exciting young Indigenous Australian artists working today; and the striking Queensland Gallery of Modern Art Below: a detail of William Robinson’s William, Josephine and others, 1982-83, a part of the exhibition William Robinson: The farmyards

Britten’s searing drama Peter Grimes, considered one of the masterpieces of 20th-century opera. The work, set in a fishing village on England’s Suffolk coast, established Britten as the major composer of his generation – at one accessible and innovative. The title role is interpreted by internationally-renowned tenor Stuart Skelton. (B)

Performance details Venue: QPAC theatre Program: Britten, Peter Grimes, opera in three acts Performers: Stuart Skelton (Grimes), Sally Matthews (Ellen Orford), Mark Stone (Balstrode), Rory McDonald (conductor)

Sunday 23 September Margaret Olley’s studio

After checking out of our hotel, we travel south to the attractive town of Murwillumbah in northern New South Wales to enjoy a curator-led introduction to the Margaret Olley studio. Prominent Brisbane art dealer Phillip Bacon arranged for the celebrated artist’s Sydney studio to be recreated within the Tweed Heads Gallery. It’s a fascinating site and provides great insight into Olley’s life and art. At the time of our visit the Gallery will be hosting an exhibition of figurative art as well as responses by four prominent Australian painters to Olley’s studio (Monica Rohan (Brisbane), Guy Maestri (Sydney), John Honeywill (Brisbane) and Lewis Miller (Melbourne)). We will have lunch in the Gallery’s café before continuing to the Gold Coast airport at Coolangatta, where the tour ends. Alternatively, you may choose to stay one or more nights on the Gold Coast before travelling home (B, L)

Hotel The Novotel Brisbane Southbank opened in 2018. It is a 4.5 star hotel with large rooms and excellent facilities. Best of all, it is a comfortable walk to the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and the major art galleries of the city.

Above: internationally-renowned tenor Stuart Skelton Below: the attractive town of Murwillumbah in northern New South Wales; and Margaret Olley’s home studio recreation, a part of the Margaret Olley Art Centre (MOAC) in the Tweed Regional Gallery

Tour Price The tour price is $1,880 per person, twin share (land content only). The supplement for a single room is $330 per person. A non-refundable deposit of $500 per person is required to secure a place on the tour.

Tour Inclusions

Included in the tour price

• Three nights’ accommodation at the Novotel South Brisbane

• All breakfasts • Three meals, including wine • Best available tickets to at least three performances at

the Brisbane Festival • Airport transfers at end of tour • Private coach travel for all excursions

Not included

• Air travel to and from the tour • Airport to hotel transfers on arrival • Meals not included in this itinerary • Travel insurance • Personal expenses

Air travel In order to enjoy the full tour you should plan to arrive in Brisbane by midday on Thursday September 20. If possible, you should book a return flight from the Gold Coast Airport at Coolangatta after 4.30pm on Sunday September 23.

Enquiries & bookings For further information and to secure a place on this tour please contact Jamal Fairbrother at ADFAS Travel on 9235 0023 or 1800 639 699 (outside Sydney) or email jamal@academytravel.com.au

Weather Expect sunny and mild weather in Brisbane in September. It will of course be a little more humid that southern cities and towns, but not uncomfortably so.

Fitness Requirements of THIS tour

GRADE ONE

It is important both for you and for your fellow travellers that you are fit enough to be able to enjoy all the activities on this tour. To give you an indication of the level of physical fitness required to participate on our tours, we have given them a star grading. ADFAS Travel’s tours tend to feature extended walking tours and site visits, which require greater fitness than coach touring. We ask you instead to consider carefully your ability to meet the physical demands of the tour.

Participation criteria for this tour

This Grade One tour is appropriate for travellers in good health with good mobility. You should be able to comfortably participate in up to three hours of physical activity per day on most days, including walking at an easy pace, sometimes on uneven terrain, climbing stairs and standing in galleries. You should be able to: keep up with the group at all times walk for 2-3 kilometres at a moderate to slow pace with

only short breaks stand for a reasonable length of time in galleries and

museums negotiate stairs and bridges get on and off a coach, ferry or boat with steep stairs

unassisted move your luggage a short distance if required

A note for older travellers

If you are more than 80 years old, or have restricted mobility, it is likely that you will find this itinerary challenging. You may have to miss certain activities and may not get the full value of the tour. Before submitting your booking form, please contact ADFAS Travel to discuss your situation and the exact physical requirements of this tour. While we will do our best to reasonably accommodate the physical needs of all group members, we reserve the right to refuse bookings if we feel that the requirements of the tour are too demanding for you and/or if local conditions mean we cannot reasonably accommodate your condition.