I’m in Batemans Bay with a spare hour or two, and I strike it lucky. Sculptors from around Australia have set up pieces along the Mara Mia Walkway, a foreshore transformed since I worked from an office in the Bay ten years ago. They are sited in a beautiful place looking out over the river as it becomes the estuary and finally meets the ocean. It’s only 9am so the sun’s a photographic menace.
I ramble around happily, enjoying the incredible range of materials and subjects, obeying without much difficulty injunctions not to climb on the sculptures, and circling each one like a predator seeking the best angle of attack. It’s hard to photograph them without a background clutter of bridges, boats, other sculptures and shopfronts, too many of them empty, but at least I’ve finally resigned myself to the presence of people.
The last one I come to invites me to sit down for a cuppa.
