Sunday 13th September – Swell Sculpture Festival 2020

Coronavirus Lockdown Day 175

1,149 cases: 0 new, 30 active.

Tamborine Mountain Scarecrow Festival

Bronwen and I got up early—leaving home before 7:30. We stopped for fuel on the way, and were at Tamborine Mountain, looking for scarecrows, shortly after 8 AM. There seemed to be fewer scarecrows this year—presumably many had died from the coronavirus pandemic—but we still spent five and a half hours driving around photographing them and were quite scarecrowed-out by the end of it.

Swell Sculpture Festival

We left Tamborine Mountain, and the scarecrows, around 1:30, and drove down to Currumbin Beach. We managed to find parking almost immediately which was nice considering everything was totally full. We then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around taking photos of the sculptures. It was definitely smaller this year, but still quite good.

01 Giuseppe Filardo / Lobsterarri / ... 02 Guy Cooper / Guardians of the Gold Coast / $10,000 04 Brian Bertram / Swamp Hens / $18,000 06 Christopher Trotter / Foreigner / POA 07 Mari Hirata / Sentinels / $5,000 08 Stephen Newton / Can you Hear its Tender Frame, Screaming from Beneath the Waves? / $18,800 09 Clayton Blake / Contortion / $30,000 10 Jasmine Mansbridge / You / Me / Sky / Sea / $13,000 11 Hooman Jaffar, Taylah Jardine, Cole Neuper / #LIFEBRIDGE / $16,000 13 Dion Parker / Ohhh Snap / $9,000 14 Luke Zwolsman / Unity / $43,000 15 Claudia De Salvo / Critically Endangered / $11,000 16 Phillip Piperides / Images 2 / $35,000 17 Philip Darnton / Anomaly / $5,500 18 Jacqueline Damon / Sorrow / $15,000 19 Daniel Clemmett / Moribund but LIT AF / $15,000 20 John Nesirky / Fluid Air / $5,500 21 John Anthony Forno / Totem / The Fragile 2020 / $5,000 22 Monte Lupo / Caged Birds / $8,000 ($3,000 Peacock, $2,500 Parrot, $2,500 Black Cockatoo) 22 Monte Lupo / Caged Birds / $8,000 ($3,000 Peacock, $2,500 Parrot, $2,500 Black Cockatoo) 22 Monte Lupo / Caged Birds / $8,000 ($3,000 Peacock, $2,500 Parrot, $2,500 Black Cockatoo) 23 Andrew Cullen / Dilli Gent / $6,000 23 Andrew Cullen / Dilli Gent / $6,000 24 Robert Guenther / Ragnar V Moby / $25,000 25 Aaron Chapman / Turning In / $4,500 26 Village Bike Inc / Femme Fatale / $2,500 both, Femme Fatale $1,500, Man-tis $1,200 27 Karl De Waal / Monument to the Road Builders / $10,000 28 Sheree Audet / The Labyrinth / POA 29 Alexander Piperides / Stacked Chairs / $8,000 30 Simon McVerry / Julara – The Mullet / $3,300 31 Courtenay & Connor McCue, Eduardo Knox (District 23) / Umbrella Effect / $5,000 32 Ian Haggerty / Local Heroes / $22,000 34 Ivan Lovatt / Men of the North / $8,500 35 Christian Newton / Five Fathoms Deep / $2,850 35 Alyssa Ikefuji / Natural Predator / $1,000 36 Pam Walpole & Yanni Van Zijl / Vortex / $300 - $600 37 Miles Allen / A Walk in the Forest / $2,500 38 Dragons Abreast Gold Coast / The Good Ship Awareness / NFS 39 Gabriel Rosati / Adam and Eve / $35,000 40 Barbara Licha / Touch / $6,600 Share photos not germs #swellsnap2020 — Be Covid Safe

Coolangatta

After finishing at Swell Sculpture Festival we drove to Coolangatta to have a look at the QLD/NSW border and the roadblocks. To our surprise there was nothing stopping us from driving into NSW. We stopped and had a chat to some police and SES people, who told us they don’t mind if people walk across the border, and that a lot of people drive across by accident and freak out and turn up at the roadblocks trying to get back into QLD, and that they usually just let them through.

Burleigh Bongos and Fire Twirling

After failing to quarantine after our short entry to NSW we drove to Burleigh and watched a large group ignore the coronavirus health directives while dancing wildly to the Burleigh Bongos and twirling fire.

Then, quite tired, we drove home—via Coles for some iced coffee, which unlike in Brisbane, is open until 9PM on a Sunday down here.