A Sand Safari

There is always something interesting happening in our part of Australia - especially in Surfers Paradise. Once again there is a sand sculpting competition - which will last all this week so I will be able to return and take more photographs to share.
The weather is against these talented sculptors though. This morning there were very heavy coastal showers so for most of the morning what had already been created would have been covered with plastic to save it from being washed away. I did not get to Surfers Paradise until after lunch time and by looking South you could see the clouds building up and threatening yet another fall of rain. I was with the grandchildren - who both have very short attention spans - so they were happy with the fly-past of the sculptures.

We did not get a chance to see this sculpture before it was covered with plastic. I just hope that when it rains  it does not rain hard and come accompanied by wind because the plastic that was being used to cover the sand was really thin. It looked as if it would tear really easily!
A couple of the sculptures were well advanced and I will share pictures of them - others are still in the very early stages and although the shapes are revealing, they are not yet ready for plastering on the Internet!

The theme of the sand competition is "Sand Safari" so most of the works are of an "African" nature - but there are a couple that have looked "outside the box" and those I will share another day.

This lion cub and the picture that follows are both  of the same work. This artist is obviously a faster worker than the others and his piece is more involved too'

The sand that is used for the sand sculptures is not beach sand. Beach sand does not bind together well enough for this sort of sculpting. The papers advised that the good sand that was used last year came from Bundaberg but this year the sand had to come from somewhere else. Bundaberg is still trying to recover after severe flooding. Their quarries are still filled with water. So everyone feels they are dealing with inferior sand - BUT! They all have the same handicap!
Seeing what these artists can do with a pile of sand is really inspiring and my two little grand-daughters enjoyed an hour of sand sculpting themselves down on the edge of the sea!
Here is a turtle almost made by the eight year old.

By the time she finished it had four legs and patterns on the "shell" as well as a dry moat and a wall all around it.
It is so sad - while we were down on the edge of the wet sand near the sea a bunch of people who were about to have a surfing lesson came walking past us and I had to stand between my granddaughter and them to prevent them from marching over the top of her and her sand turtle as they dragged their surfboards behind them. They were so one-eyed that they could not see in front of themselves.
All pictures here were taken with a six year old point and shoot Samsung NV3.
AJ