On Friday March 1 Ms O’Donnell and I began NHSPA's first Melbourne Art Tour for our Year 12 Visual Arts students. Meeting at the airport at 6am, we then got set and ready to fly to Melbourne. 

Melbourne turned on its best weather just for us as we had a glorious sunny day when we arrived. After dropping our bags at the hotel, we walked to ACCA - the Australian Center for Contemporary Art to view the exhibition 'From the Other Side' which brought together nineteen Australian and international artists, integrating historical and contemporary works, alongside key new commissions that draw upon horror’s capacity to transgress and destabilise forms of power and subjugation. 

Day 2, we were hungry and ready for more art so the best way to start this was with a good breakfast. Brunetti's is a Melbourne institution so you can't say you've been to Melbourne without getting at least coffee (and some breakfast) at Brunetti's! 

We were keen and eager to get the art day started and it began at the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square. This gallery soon became some students favourite as it offered so much such as Wurrdha Marra, which is a dynamic exhibition space showing works from the NGV’s collection of First Nations Australian art and design, and Watercolour Country: 100 works from Hermannsburg. This exhibition brought together one hundred watercolours made by Aranda, Western Aranda, Eastern Aranda and Kemarre/Loritja artists working at Ntaria/Hermannsburg, across generations; and finally, a huge range of artworks from the international collection.

After this, we went back to the NGV to see more of the artworks that we missed from yesterday. The NGV is so big, it's hard to see it all in just one day or even two.  

Day 3, our last day in Melbourne. The weather was a little cooler but there was no rain forecast, so we headed over to Brunetti's for another perfect breakfast and coffee and then over to wait outside ACMI to meet our artist guides for the Street Art Walking Tour. 

After splitting into 2 groups our guides took us firstly to Hosier lane, ACDC lane and then into some of the lesser known laneways to show us more street art and begin conversations about why do we make art, what is the art's meaning and why make street art? 

Not forgetting our artist guides are also practising artists, we caught the tram back to Blender Studios where we got to see their working spaces and how they have a fine art side to their art practice as well as making street art. 

After lots of walking, it was finally time to go back to the hotel, collect our bags and wait for the shuttle to take us to the airport. We were very fortunate, our flight was pretty close to time and we all picked up our bags at Sydney at about 7pm and went home where I am sure everyone's head hit the pillow quickly.