Somewhere Else

The beach – it’s a key part of Australian culture. But it seems to be a dangerous place, since there are always plenty of warning signs. The one above is at Perth’s popular Cottesloe Beach and even seems to warn you that there is water at the beach!

But that’s not the best sign at Cottesloe Beach. At present you can see this one, which gets smiles from everyone:

It is one of the artworks in Sculpture by the Sea, which is currently on display at Cottesloe. The amazing collection of mock signs is the work of West Australian sculptor John Hutchinson and is titled “because I said so”. Our favourite sign (below) was on the other side and seems to perfectly sum up a day at the beach.

Yesterday we commented that “Australia seems to have more than its fair share of mazes”. In case you weren’t convinced, here is another maze which is also in the state of Victoria. You will find it in Bendigo Botanic Gardens.

But at this point we have to be a little bit more accurate with terminology. This is not really a maze at all – it is a labyrinth. In common usage, the two words have the same meaning. But to a fan of mazes and labyrinths, the two terms have very different meanings.

A maze is like a puzzle. It has many forks in the path, so you have to choose the right path to reach the destination – typically getting lost along the way. By contrast, a labyrinth has only one path and you can’t get lost. It’s just a long, circuitous walk to the centre. In medieval times, walking around a labyrinth was considered to be a mini-pilgrimage. That’s why you find labyrinths in some cathedrals in Europe, most famously at Chartres in France.

Right next to the analemmatic sundial that we mentioned yesterday, there is another of our pet interests – a maze (above). Australia seems to have more than its fair share of both mazes and sundials, so we see quite a few in our travels. But we especially like seeing them next to each other, since they both seem to hark back to medieval times.

This maze is in the park beside Lake Guyatt at Sale in Victoria. It is an educational maze which teaches children about the wildlife in the wetlands.

We always enjoy looking at sundials, and in May last year we described the analemmic sundial at Mt Annan in Sydney. With this unusual type of sundial, your own shadow tells the time. The “analemma” is a figure 8 pattern on the ground which indicates where to stand in different months of the year.

Although analemmic (or analemmatic – the terms are synonymous) sundials are quite rare, we have found a second one in our travels. It is shown above and is located in the Victorian town of Sale, about 210km east of Melbourne. You can find it in the grassy parkland next to Lake Guyatt Wetlands.

If you are a fan of vintage caravans in Australia, you will have noticed that most caravans of the 1940s and 50s were built of wood. Aluminium became the most common building material in the 1960s and thereafter.

But there are exceptions. The Viscount caravan above was built in 1955 and it is made of aluminium. It belongs to Mark T of Perth, who is only the second owner. Mark acquired it from the family of the first owner, who were happy to tell him the history of the caravan and give him photographs of the caravan when it was still new.

You can read more about this nostalgic piece of caravanning history in the March 2010 issue of Caravan World magazine.

Here are some more photos of the pre-exhibition set up activities for Sculpture by the Sea, which is now under way at Cottesloe Beach. Somehow all the “work” going on around the works of art gave them an added dimension of interest.

We normally imagine sculptors with their hammer and chisel, chipping away at a block of marble. But at Cottesloe on Wednesday they were mostly using shovels, hammers, drills, welding equipment and the like.

Thomas Edison commented that, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration”. The sculptors setting up their works of art at Cottesloe would undoubtedly agree.

The annual “Sculpture by the Sea” exhibition returns to Cottesloe Beach today, and runs through to March 23. This popular mix of sun, sand, surf and sculpture is always amusing, so go along for a look if you’re in Perth while it’s on.

This year we cheated – we went along yesterday, to see the sculpture being set up on the beach before the exhibition started. When they are in place, you forget that these sculptures are rather heavy and take quite a bit of moving to put them in position – and setting them up requires foundations and on-the-spot building and excavation operations.

In fact the beach looked like a strange cross between a building site, a crime scene and a wrapped project by Christo. Some of the sculpture was still in packing crates, others were surrounded by yellow “scene of the crime” tape, some was being moved by crane, and others were being manhandled into position.

Meanwhile, beachgoers continued swimming and sunbathing, ignoring the unusual activities going on around them.

A few days back we went to trendy West Leederville in Perth, with two goals – to have a milkshake and to see a movie. We were thwarted on both fronts; our favourite milk bar was closed and the movie was sold out.

But the visit wasn’t a complete waste – we checked out the local street art instead. Facing the car park we saw the amusingly quirky felt-tip pen mural above. And in a side alley off Oxford Street there is the mural below.

As promised, here is the solution to the crossword we posted on the weekend.

Sometimes bushwalks have surprising destinations. If you follow a gently rising bush trail out of Kilmore in Victoria, you eventually come to this impressive bluestone tower surrounded by forest.

The tower is now a monument to the pioneering exploration of Hume and Hovell in this area. But it wasn’t originally built for that purpose, or at this site. In fact the tower was part of the Kilmore Gaol (below) – or Old Kilmore Gaol as it is now known. The gaol was built in 1859 and still stands on a rise near the town centre. However today it has no prisoners and is used as a site for markets.