For want of something better, the pic is called “Beach Games”. The juxtaposition of the small child’s brightly colored truck and the rather scary representation of a crocodile emerging from the sand was what we found fascinating. We thought we could have called it “What really goes on in children’s minds and imagination?” or something along those lines
Des calls it the dude, what would you call this?
The bloke in this picture is âwormingâ, i.e. out to catch beach worms for bait. You can see he has a bag on the end of a piece of string. In the bag, which he is swishing back and forth across the sand as the tide comes in, he will have put some some berley, very smelly fish â which is why the bag sometimes goes by the very elegant name of âstink bagâ, the smellier the better to entice the worms. He will also have a piece of bait in his hand and a pair of worm pliers to take hold of the worm that sticks its head above the sand and fastens onto his bait. Some people use a nylon stocking rather than a bag.
If the fisherman is an old hand at this he has probably discarded the pliers and just uses his fingers to get a grip on the worm and then haul it out.
Not a pasttime for the impatient: Des read where one keen fisherman declared he had taken two years to develop the necessary skills. But ask anyone who fishes off the beach and they’ll tell you the beach worm is the best bait of all.
This huge log washed up on the rocks in a big storm a couple of years ago on the southern end of the beach at Rainbow Bay. It has been fascinating to see it weather and change color and texture over that time. Obviously there have not been big enough seas since then to wash it back out to sea.
It would be wonderful know it’s story from when it got dislodged somewhere up the river. We think it has probably come down the nearby Tweed River, into the bay, out into the sea before the force of the sea rolled it onto the rocks.
At the Swell sculpture festival at nearby Currumbin Beach we saw, and loved, this work, titled Fiddle Sticks, by Col Henry.
We think the name might not translate universally. The âsticksâ relate to a game Suzie says is called Pick Up Sticks and Des recalls being Fiddlesticks. This is a game where you throw down a bunch of colored sticks and then use the black stick to lift other sticks off the pile successively. When in the process you make another stick move you lose. Points are scored on the basis of the colors of the sticks you have retrieved.
The term âfiddlesticks!â was sometimes used by our parents’ generation as a socially acceptable expression of disbelief in some other person’s utterance with which they disagreed strongly: nicer than âwhat unmitigated rubbish!â or some other, more vulgar expression that might spring to mind. That usage seems to go back to at least the 18th century – http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-fid1.htm
The artist of the sculpture, Col Henry, clearly has the game in mind. He says the sculpture âplays with the concept of unpredictabilityâ.
“It is not always an east task to create a piece of artwork to look enjoyably simple. But there’s enjoyment in task”- Verner Neilsen the artist of Sangdgroper
This sculpture is part of the annual Swell Sculpture Festival at Currumbin Beach. This is an ironic play on words: a sandgroper is aburrowing insect found in Western Australia and the term is used by other Australians as a nickname for people from Western Australia.