OzCloggie

It’s that time of the year again. Time to nominate that favourite beach, in the Keep Australia Beautiful Clean Beach Challenge.

What reminded me was
David Haworth’s capture of Pambula Beach, on redbubble.com.

When I saw it, I had one of my many senior moments and wondered what I’d written about it but when I realised the location, I knew that I had not assessed it for the Keep Australia Beautiful Clean Beach Challenge, as I had not been allocated either the far north or the far south coast of N.S.W..

From 2002 until 2007, I was very relieved and pleased to be invited every September to visit a certain number of beaches, which had been nominated in the annual Keep Australia Beautiful, Clean Beach Challenge.

As though it was meant to be, I was not asked last September, which happened to be the month when I was preparing for my first ever, solo exhibition, to celebrate my 65th birthday.

It would have been impossible to do both. Assessing the beaches nominated, involves a preparatory in-service day, followed by making arrangements to meet up with the people who nominated the beaches, during the official weeks.

And after the beaches have been visited the writing of reports takes up quite some time too. It would have been impossible.

As an assessor, I was simply a volunteer, interested in beaches ( and in keeping them beautiful! ). Fellow assessors (at first called ‘judges’) came with a range of expertise and interests.

I was always determined to point out that, like Sergeant Schultz, I knew nothing, about how beaches are managed, hoping to represent the ” average ” beach-goer, who likes to be safe and comfortable on a beach, in order to enjoy it and relax.

I did feel that, of course, I had a perspective.
I was particularly keen to see if visitors who cannot read (English) and who are not so young any more (like me) or who might be bringing very little children, were being correctly catered for.

Obviously, being given so much information, every year, did tend to build up a knowledge of what does go on (or not).

Walking on and around the beaches, made it very hard for me to record things, on paper. It became my particular habit to record everything that I saw and/or was told, using a small, light camera (capturing the good and the bad).
Quite a few of those photos are still around.

I had not realised that the young lady who was also in the Tap Gallery, most of the time that I was there, during the week of 6 to 12 October, 2008, was seriously creating videos for Youtube.
TAKE A LOOK!!

There was such a wonderful variety of friends, family and their friends present, including virtual friends, from the redbubble.com Australian section.

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