Zeinab

This is baby Zeinab with her mother and her mother's friend Helen having a coffee in Rockdale. When I showed them the picture they were so delighted. Zeinabs mum has a round and happy face. Helen (with the cap) said 'Oh, I'm glad you didn't draw my big nose". I didn't think her nose was big at all ... and I have looked closely at a lot of noses!

Coffee in Rockdale

I didn't have much room for many summer clothes in my luggage after packing my prints, my painting kit, my lightweight easel and some winter clothes for Hamburg where I am headed in April, so I have been buying T-shirts at the sales in nearby Rockdale.

I am growing to like Rockdale. In the walking street there are a row of coffee shops. None of them is trendy but all of them serve good coffee. I sit and paint the patrons. In the mornings they are mostly elderly men and I feel for all the world as if I am in Serbia, or Armenia or Italy - somewhere where the older folk sit around the town square and solve the world's problems.

Rockdale

Banksia is, I have discovered, just a 10 minutes walk from Rockdale. If Australia is a melting pot then Rockdale is close to the center of the melt. It is very multicultural. As I walked to Rockdale today I heard Chinese opera coming from a unit which was right next door to a large white building called The Macedonian Cultural Center. Groups of Indian youths walked past and a man in an Arab sweet shop sold me a slice of ricotta cheese with syrup. In the shops you feel as if you are in Asia one minute and Armenia the next.