Day 7 Victoria, Australia – Annual Sand Sculpting Australia Exhibition at Frankston Waterfront #BeckyinOzzie

Here’s my Travel Tuesday post for this week. Very apt timing for me to post on this as I was just back from my Sandsculpting competition trip to Cherating last week – (Post HERE ). Click & see if you haven’t! I sculpted a tarantula!

When I was in Frankston, Victoria, I stared at these sculptures in awe & wondered how is it possible to crave such marvels of sand.

Hence while I was sweating buckets under the sun sculpting my little masterpiece with my team at Holiday Villa Cherating, I realized sand sculpting is serious business.

As you can see, our tarantula was nothing like the ones I saw in the Annual Sand Sculpting Australia Exhibition at Frankston Waterfront, Victoria! LOL!

This was on day 7, when we left Mornington Peninsular & headed back to Melbourne, passing by Frankston Waterfront. The Annual Sand Sculpting Australia Exhibition at Frankston Waterfront is apparently a major & popular annual event.

By now, I have had my fair share of long journeys getting around during my 10 days Victoria, Australia trip. Strangely enough; I barely felt the hours. I noticed too, throughout my trip, I have been exposed to literally every landscape of Australia; from the city life of Melbourne, to the mountains of Dandegong, the island of Philip Island & the peninsular of Mornington.
The beach & the sea along Australia’s coastlines are beautiful by nature, and somewhat looks cleaner (in comparison to Malaysia!). It helps too that the weather was very brisk & cool.
Yes, travelling by road in Australia wasn’t such a pain as I’ve feared it would be. A 4 hour drive whizzed past “faster” than a trip from KL back to Penang would. I attributed much of the reason to be the weather.

My view looking out of the car…

Rainer, our guide parked & we hopped out of the car to stretch our legs. This year’s Sand Sculpting Australia’s Exhibition’s theme was  “Creepy Crawlies” and for the price of AUD10.00 (RM31.00) per adult, we were taken around in an enclosed venue that housed these spectacles of sand.

Roaches, bees, ants, spiders, milipedes etc, it’s creepy crawlies of your nightmares in huge detail!

Ingenious! A roach motel. Your worse nightmare come true ;p

Fascinating.. Egyptian themed with spiders…

Close -up shots of detailing in the sculptures…

Of course, all of these are craved by professionals in the trade, and they came from all over the world.

For example, the Roach Motel.

Each sculpture has this little board that imparts some info on the sculpture itself, namely the name of the sculpture, the carver & from which country, and also a titbit on the particular insect/animal featured in the sculpture.

The signboard above belongs to this sculpture (below). Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite! (sounds familiar huh? )

Farmville!!  There’s no limit to your imagination really!

SO CUTE!

This is another intricate piece of work. Does the characters look familiar to you??

Haha.. compare this lobster to the one craved by us in Cherating! ;p

The one by team Advertlets. Yup, sandscuplting is an art!

This one is astounding! I went around it a few times trying to count the number of frogs in this sculpture.

I think even this simple looking one deserves a mention. I can imagine the hours that goes into this!

While I was there, maintenance works were on- going on as the unpredictable weather & sudden downpour (it was unusual for that of the year) had actually “ruined” some of the sculptures. Some were badly affected, so much so that the sculptures lost its shape while some just needed a bit of cosmetic touching- ups.

The extent of the damages:
The surfaces of these sculptures were sprayed with some chemical to ensure that they remain shiny & smooth. The rain has “seeped” through & chipped away at some of the detailing work on these.

The sculptures were touched-up, or even re-sculpted to its original shape by the original craver if possible.

Hhmm… I don’t see why we don’t have something like this in Malaysia. But I’m guessing that the humid weather is a deterrant. It’s a tourist attraction really, for there were busloads of people, not just tourist but even citizens of Australia but from different parts of the region that came visiting.

Some of the activities around the exhibition, you get to play with some of the machineries used to build these sand sculptures!

Finally, an ice -cream to cool the day off.

All that was at: The Annual Sand Sculpting Australia Exhibition at Frankston Waterfront, Victoria.
For more info on sandsculpting, click HERE !

Just for recap, my 10 days trip covers the Melbourne’s South East Touring Triangle of Yarra Valley & The Dandenong Ranges, Philip Islands & the Mornington Peninsular as depicted by the map below. All thanks to Tourism Australia & Tourism Victoria!

All pictures are: