Bendigo...

My birthday was last month and my gift from DH was a trip to Bendigo to visit the Art Gallery there which has been showing a Marilyn Monroe Exhibition. It closes in July, so with no time to waste, we headed off from Brisbane on Thursday morning...

In Melbourne, we picked up our hire car and headed for Bendigo...the car had NSW plates this time! 😉

And today was the day for seeing the exhibition but I had to wait patiently till 11.30 am as that's when our tickets were for. So plenty of time to take photos of the giant statue of Marilyn in a lovely park just down the road from the gallery. 

There is a statue of Queen Victoria is in that park; some how I don't think she would 'be amused' by this more recent (but temporary) statue...

Here's a closer look at Marilyn...quite a big statue isn't it??

While we were waiting for our 11.30 session at the gallery, DH took the opportunity to take some photos of the historic trams doing tours of the city...

But soon it was time...

And the last opportunity to take pictures before we went in...

To be honest I never really was a great fan of Marilyn Monroe as she had died long before I became a movie goer, but I did see some of her movies in my teens when they were shown on TV's midday movies during school holidays. But I love costumes so that's enough for me to want to see the exhibition. 

Well I wasn't disappointed! The costumes were magnificent! Many of her costumes are in private collections now and have been loaned by these owners for this Exhibition. 

But there were also clothes and accessories on show from her private life and they were beautifully made and were very classical in style; not showy or revealing in any way. On show was a loose 

shirtmaker frock that she wore during her pregnancy in 1958; she later miscarried. We saw makeup that she used in her off screen life, her books, records and some jewellery. I learned that she was quite an astute businesswoman, who renegotiated contracts with the studios who had been 'ripping her off' financially. She set up her own production company; the first woman to do this in Hollywood. There were lots of snippets of her movies showing in various places in the exhibition...a huge variety of roles...not just blonde bombshell type roles. I was quite impressed in fact.

What a great birthday gift!