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| Sand sculptures at Christies Beach -- late November, 2013 ... beautiful! |
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Christies Beach is also the perfect venue. For a start -- check out the beach. And the weather...
Note: the beach is empty. Imagine if this were Europe.Woo hoo! |
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| It was also perfect boating or fishing weather ... loads of boaties were out, with a line in the water... |
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...but we were here for this: the Sand Sculpture Exhibition,
with the theme of "Under the Sea." |
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If you're wondering how the work is done -- read this!
Might even have a go myself... |
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| Sand sculpture really is art, even if it's sadly temporary... |
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The work in progress. This artist is working on the "Santa Clause House, which unfortunately
wasn't finished till after we'd left... |
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| ...and this will give you an idea of the scale of these works. They're big. |
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| Time for a dip, to cool off? The day was absolutely perfect. So -- |
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| A walrus ... sculpted in sand. This is so cool. |
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I was so impressed with the detailing in the sculptures. The artists came from Canada and Europe for
this event; Sandstorm Events stages them in many places... |
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| Here's the flag carrier, displaying the "Under the Sea" theme... |
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| Raptures of the Deep -- sculpted in sand. So pretty! |
Perfect weather and beautiful sculpture came together to make this a terrific display -- and they were
very lucky with the weather. Days before, November had been much more like September: inclement would be a kind way of putting it. But summer came to South Australia almost without warning, and it was a day for hats and sunblock! Here ... "for those who came in late" ... we're at Christies Beach, which is a metropolitan beach on the west side of Adelaide, which sprawls north-south along the east side of the Gulf St. Vincent. Okay, now you know where you are!
If you're wondering how sand sculpture is done, do take a moment to read the billboard, which explains the process. You might have to view the image at full size to be able to read -- but it's interesting.
The scents of frying sausages and onions were tantalizing, wafting along the foreshore from what we call a "sausage sizzle" ... a barbecue set up in a pergola, with lashings of all the food that's probably very bad for you, and smells so divine in the open air. They set up these barbecues to torment you. They do it deliberately ... also to raise money for charity and local groups.
So we had a fine time, took about three hundred pictures of which you're seeing a tiny fraction in these posts (but the
right fraction), and then went for coffee to the Blu C Cafe, only about two hundred meters away ... which I didn't get a shot of, because we'd left the big cameras in the Millennium Possum, down on the waterfront. So -- Ma Google to the rescue here. Again. I did have my phone with me, though, and the two-year-old Samsung Galaxy has a 5MP camera built in. So long as you stay away from the digital zoom, which tends to turn images to soft, grainy crap, you can get very nice pictures. So, when the coffee arrived, how could I resist, especially when it looked like this:
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| Monjava cappuccino at the Blu C Cafe ... now, that's pretty! |
Oddly, though, the coffee wasn't startlingly good on the tongue: it's Monjava, which doesn't have that knockout richness we've come to demand, and expect (and before anyone says anything: it's some folks' favorite, so ... each to his own, right?). It was nice, though -- and the cafe is very pleasant, just a short walk up from the beach. So --
Tomorrow I'll share the "food-fight" which took place on the Saturday, about three days later. See you then!
