Australia

Black Swans Surfing

“Only in Australia”

Thanks to Brian Moore for alerting me to the video clip below:

Four black swans seen riding waves at Kirra Beach on the Gold Coast (Queensland) in Australia.

#Only in Australia

This post shows two photos I took at Kirra Beach last summer. (Not the video clip, which may have been taken in winter). My family spent Christmas 2016 in Coolangatta and we visited the surrounding beaches. You can see the high rise buildings of Surfers’ Paradise in the background of the featured image I took of the surf.

Mark hugging a tree on Boxing Day 2016

January 24, 2015 2 comments

Art Australia Nature

Dolphins at Tamarama

If any creative person deserves to be discovered it is Paul Atroshenko: Artist, Photographer, Video Maker. Have a look at his website displaying his eclectic works of art, including symbolist paintings, and his excellent travel photography. He has also created amazing videos of walks around Sydney. And check out this recent one of dolphins playing in the waves to classical music at Tamarama Beach! The Sydney Morning Herald has placed it on their website.

And don’t forget to visit the 2014 sculptures by the sea from Bondi to Tamarama!

October 24, 2014 0 comment

Australia Writing

Ocean Baths and Swimming Pools

I love the part in the “Life of Pi” movie where the hero explains how he came to be called ‘Pi” from the French word for swimming pool (piscine). Swimming pools have always been an obsession with me too: from the rough ones built into the Clarence River bank at South Grafton when I was a kid when immersion in water was a necessary counter to the cruel humid summers. To the sparkling unreal turquoise of the first modern pools I experienced in Sydney visits as an eight-year-old.

And then there are Wylies’ Baths on the Pacific Ocean at Coogee where I live as an adult. Timber ramparts reach out from the cliffs like a modern-day fortress. You pay $6 to use the facilities and lounge on the timber decks with spectacular views, or descend down a timber staircase into the waters for a swim from the cement. In summer a masseuse sets up her table on the timber floor of the upper deck. Downstairs there are shallow paddle pools for the kids, but it’s all quite natural as well. No chlorine or even sand. And you find shade underneath the timber deck and buy food and drink and make a day of it.

When we returned to live in Coogee recently after a two year “harbour change” with views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and visits to the North Sydney Olympic Pool, it was like coming home. Not only because our daughter and two grandchildren were still here. How could we ever have left such an environment? There’s the beach at our doorstep and cafes galore to choose from. And then there are the pools, four in all: one at each end of the beach, and two on the southern foreshore of the Ocean. Wylies’ is the large one further to the south.

But the interesting one that I have started to frequent more recently is the Women’s Baths, a little retrograde oasis in a modern more politically correct universe. The local council has allowed it to exist at least temporarily.

For just twenty cents that you throw through the iron grill door into a plastic tub, when no-one is on duty, you can swim and bathe in a deep rocky pool in the ocean, then sunbathe topless on the private grassy banks or scramble down onto the large expanse of rocks that leads to Wylies’ in the distance. Young Moslem women in scarves, heterosexual women, and gay women of all shapes ages and sizes are drawn to this pool, because of its privacy. It is monitored on a volunteer basis.

Wylies, why not? (idswimthat.com)

October 13, 2013 0 comment

Art Australia

Sculptures by the Sea 2012

no return

Every year at the end of spring, there’s a council sponsored exhibition of sculptures by local artists displayed along our beach front walk between Bondi and Tamarama Beaches. In 2012 I went on a week day to avoid the huge crowds that follow the routes on the weekend. Some of the best works this year were humorous ones, (black humour), like the female skeleton doing a tightrope walk on a high post that ran out towards infinity in the sky entitled No Return by sculptor Ken Unsworth. Everyone is entranced by images of death, which begins for children it is said, at seven years of age.

capital tension

Another humorous entry reflected a comment on current stock market fluctuations with two huge beasts in rusted metal, a bear and a bull, facing off against each other with the name tag: “capital tension” by Joanna Rhodes.

teepees-with-man

As I continued on the walk around the clifftops, the sculptures were positioned on the rocks overlooking the ocean below, as if trying to compete with the beauty of nature.

Sometimes the spectators added to the spectacle as they interacted with the sculptures in their different ways.