Sea sight

Sculpture by the Sea is not a Sydney exclusive - there's one every second year on Waiheke Island in Auckland that's (shhhh) better, I reckon - but this one's been running for years and certainly has a dramatic setting. It starts at the southern end of Bondi Beach and the artworks continue to Tamarama along the coastal walkway.

The cliffs themselves are sculpted by wind and water - some might say even more artfully - and there was plenty of the former in evidence today, whipping the turquoise sea into foaming breakers that rolled into the beaches, blowing the bushfire haze back into the interior and making the clifftop walk really quite exciting - so exciting, in fact, that the path was closed shortly afterwards to prevent people from being blown over the edge.

There was a wide selection of sculptures, most of them pretty ephemeral and clinging on quite impressively in the blustery wind, but the sphere above was my favourite ('Horizon' by Lucy Humphrey). I might have voted for the steps, if it weren't that I'd seen them before:

Left: Waiheke Island, Auckland, 2005                           Right: Sydney. 2013