GREECE:
THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN CONSCIOUSNESS
Heraklion, Santorini, Nafplia, Olympia, Delphi & Athens with Christopher Hartney

6 - 22 NOVEMBER 2009
17 DAYS / 16 NIGHTS
from $9,500 pp (land only plus air travel)

For 17 days revel in the glorious atmosphere of Cretan, Mycenaean and Classical Greek culture as Chris Hartney takes you into a stunning investigation of the myths, religious practices, art, architecture and philosophy of the founders of Western Civilisation.

Dramatists, artists, philosophers and historians may have made Greece the envy of the Classical world, but they also relied heavily on their neighbouring civilisations. This tour reinvestigates the debt the Greek world owed to the Egyptians, Mesopotamians and their ever-present ‘barbaric’ enemies the Persians.

From the great temple at Knossos on Crete we trace the rise and fall of the Mycenaeans and the legacy of these groups on the development of Greece. We spend four days submerged in the glories of Athens, her battlefields and stunning acropolis and conclude at the religious centre of Delphi. The motto of this famous centre for oracle pronouncement was appropriately ‘know thyself’ which serves as the very fitting theme to this tour.

Tour Leader:
Dr Christopher Hartney
BA, PhD

Dr Christopher Hartney is a lecturer in the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney where he teaches Art and Religion. He is currently preparing a book on the Australian sculptor Ken Unsworth and is also a visiting lecturer at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He is a passionate student of Greek history, classical literature and classical language.

View a detailed itinerary of the tour (PDF 835 KB)

CHINA: EMPIRE,
REVOLUTION, RENEWAL AND BEYOND
Beijing, Xi’an, Guilin, Shanghai & Hangzhou
with Linda Jaivin

17 OCTOBER - 3 NOVEMBER 2009
18 DAYS / 17 NIGHTS
$5,950 pp (land only) or $7,490 (including air travel and current taxes from Australia)
Single supplement $1,450

With five thousand years of recorded history, sixty years of revolution and reform, and one-fifth of the world’s population, China is the country of the past, present and future. It is a land of authentic palaces and palaces-as-themeparks, of Great Walls, great art, and great food. In the last one hundred years it has experienced imperial rule, republican revolution, foreign invasion, communist revolution, repression and reform – not always in that order. This 18-day, tour to Beijing, Xi’an, Guilin, Yangshuo, Shanghai and Hangzhou will include visits to historic, religious, scenic and cultural sites with significance from classical times to the post-modern. Along the way, Linda Jaivin, well-known author and public speaker with a specialty in Chinese culture, will deliver talks on such diverse subjects as make-up regimes of the Tang Dynasty, the Cultural Revolution and its cultural legacy and Chinese art, literature and film.

Tour Leader:
Linda Jaivin

Linda Jaivin is a fluent Mandarin speaker, translator and specialist writer on Chinese culture as well as the internationally published author of five novels. Her China memoir/biography of a Chinese dissident, The Monkey and the Dragon (Text, 2001) was named a ‘notable’ entry by the judges of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize. She is a popular speaker in the Gallery’s Art After Hours program.

View a detailed itinerary of the tour (PDF 1400 KB)