This morning we visited John Murray's art gallery. The gallery displays both John's original paintings and prints, and Viki Murray's photographic work. It is a relatively new building following the devastating fire which destroyed the original gallery in May 2017. However it was fortunate that many locals were alerted to the fire which began in the adjacent newsagent and were able to remove most of the original artworks before they were damaged.

We were familiar with John's work having seen several examples on our trip last year which took us through Gulargambone and noted emus were a popular subject. On a wall around the corner from the gallery and adjacent to a petrol station, John has painted a mural featuring several "kool" Emus. Several pieces of wall art are also displayed in front of the gallery and Murray's "Are We There Yet" featuring an airborne caravan is a popular one amongst the Grey Nomads!

A storyboard in the foyer of the gallery told the story behind "Stanley the Emu", an 18m tall sculpture which we'd passed on the Castlereagh Highway just before the turn-off into Lightning Ridge. At that stage we were unaware that it was a John Murray artwork, but we suppose being an Emu should have been a hint. It is constructed from more than a tonne of scrap metal, three Volkswagen bodies and a pair of rusting satellite dishes.

Apparently Murray's original idea was for it to be located in Birdsville, but as he said in a Sydney Morning Herald article, "the tyranny of distance made it too expensive to truck him into Queensland. The bloke in Birdsville wanted to call him Big Bird and put him out on the Birdsville Track in XXXX colours. I wasn't too keen on painting my bird yellow and red, but even less enamoured about having my work used to promote beer. So the Ridge got him."

Lunch was a boiled egg and with our cup of tea we shared an apple turnover which we'd picked up from the bakery opposite John Murray's gallery. It was delicious and we wished we'd bought one each! We spent the rest of the afternoon around the caravan park, enjoying the warmth of the Sun. It was around 24°C - just perfect with no wind and we could only imagine the summertime temperatures as high as 50°C which our tour guide Nat told us about yesterday.

Yes another trip, but no change to our Sunday pizza routine. Tonight's topping was ham, sundried tomato, olives and cheese on a tomato base.