Some quick things before my main attraction. I made a full Indian dinner, well almost. It was red lentil dal, curried potatoes/ cauliflower/ beans and naan. I was particularly pleased with it because I made it all from scratch. My first time for the curried veggies and this particular naan. The best part was having left over naan dough which made great breakfasts today.
For the last month or so I've been meaning to get to Bondi Beach to check out the Sculptures by the Sea exhibit. Last time I was in Sydney I totally forgot, and I nearly did the same thing except for a miraculously timed email from my mum that reminded me. This was the last weekend of the exhibit and lucky for us it was also the nicest one in a very long time. As the weather man noted, the perfect day to go to the beach. It's a bit of an long journey to Bondi from Drummoyne, about an hour all up. And that's not including the traffic from everyone else trying to get there too. Tom and I opted for the bus, which gives you a great tour of the city. Thanks to this I've already picked my next exploring destination, Paddington. According to Tom it has some of the most expensive stores, I did note a lot of very nice looking ones. But it also has some beautiful buildings and possibly a decorative arts museum. I have to double check that.
Our expedition to the beach started out easily enough, we bused to the city. Checked out a few things to kill time before the next one. Then I realized that the flats I was wearing (some very cheap ones I got for the holiday house) were way too warm, starting to wreak havoc on my baby toes and increasingly becoming flip-flops. I could hardly walk in them due to the pain, and since we were in the city anyways I thought I may as well get some proper summer shoes. It turns out that some of what we call summer flats in Canada would be called "winter shoes" here. It gets so hot that you really need to wear very light weight sandals or flats, other-wise your feet get really warm and blisters become a huge issue (as I learned that day). So with my shoe problem solved we set out again, just made the bus and settled in for a the long ride.
The beach looked amazing, as you can see... oh wait no you can't.
There we go. This is the busy Bondi Beach. I couldn't believe how many people just didn't wear clothes. That is, they walked around in bikinis and swim trunks. Most beautifully tanned, some with surf boards just hanging out mostly nude. I started to feel a little over dressed. Tom and I followed the steady stream of people to the coastal walk where the sculptures were.
On the way is a swimming recreation center, with an ocean-side pool. When ever a decent sized wave rolled in it would splash in over the people in the end lanes. Good thing they were already wet.
So I have a new car entry today. This is the first sculpture on the walk. Tom and I waited for ages before there was a gap in the line of people.
Here you can get idea of what the path looked like, totally jammed with people who'd stop and start while taking pictures. It was very beautiful and the rocks were incredible.
Time for some art! The water made the sculptures look very dramatic. It also had an incredible effect on how the viewers reacted to the art. Most of it was very contemporary sculpture, there were no explanations on what the art was about. However unlike in a gallery where people are left to ponder and perhaps getting turned off the work because they don't understand it. Everyone was able to find the work beautiful because of how it interacted with the landscape. So rather than serious faces, which I'm used to seeing in a gallery setting, everyone was smiling and laughing as they walked through the exhibit.
These ceramic pieces had some funny characters on them and were very intricately decorated.
Some lawn furniture.
This one reminded me of some other metal dogs I know of in Ottawa. I also enjoy how when placed on a cliff they look like a pack of wild pugs.
The sandstone cliff had some amazing shapes making it a sculpture in it's own right.
If you click on this (or any) picture you can see it enlarged. This is Bondi Beach from afar. The right most point is the very end of the land and from there it's all ocean.
This work was engraved metal, it was very beautiful and reminded me of traditional Indian or Middle Eastern decorative art.
I really loved how the middle of this one framed the view behind it.
A small detail. I wanted to get a picture of the full piece too, but a crowd moved in front of it. So no luck.
The clouds start to move in.
The foremost cliff in this picture is the the other side of Taramara Bay which is where the exhibit ends. Tom and I didn't make it all the way to the end partly due to the threat of rain and partly because of my feet.
I like to think the splat would make it all the way to the beach and make everything red.
This was right near the beginning but I completely missed it as I was coming from the other direction.
More rock formations that I loved with the added bonus of some rock sculptures.
This is probably the second or third sculpture I saw, but it didn't get my camera's attention until the clouds rolled it. Then it became an Aztec God.
These guys were a crazy. Here they're watching some sort of accident get sorted out, which included yelling at the cops as they drove by. Then they sat themselves down to do some people watching.
The bus ride home from Bondi was exactly as I remembered. A chaotic race for the bus when it pulls up then a stamped to get on it while the driver tries to prevent people from pushing. There's such a huge crowd waiting that the driver lets everyone on with out having to pay because it would take too long. This could probably be solved if the buses came more often, waiting for another 20 -30 minutes is so undesirable that everyone gets a little desperate. We didn't make it on to the first one but did manage to be the very last people allowed on to the next one. I should mention that we were about 3 feet from the bus the enter time, however with everyone rushing in it took a while before we could squeeze on. Being last was not bad though we were right by the door and didn't have to put up with more squishiness. We left around the time everyone else wanted to, so the bus drove for about 2 minutes then got stuck in the same spot in traffic for the next 15 minutes which sums up the traffic for most of the way. It was a long crowded ride home, which is the reason we don't often make the trip. But I had a lot of fun spending the day by the ocean soaking up the sun and looking at art.
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