Sculpture by the sea and indoor picnic

This current bout of rainy weather in Sydney is enough to drive the most hardened optimist spare. We're fast approaching Summer but it looks like rain is _still _on the agenda. So when we planned a week ago to go to Bondi's Sculpture by the Sea and have a picnic there, we didn't really count on torrential rains.

Sculpture by the Sea is a fabulous free outdoor sculpture exhibition starting at Bondi Icebergs on the main drag at Bondi and meandering around and up and down to the end at Tamarama beach. Not only is it a gorgeous walk but to see sculptures in this setting is truly one of the reasons why I adore Sydney so much and despite the insane real estate prices, I couldn't live anywhere else.

At 12noon when we're supposed to be enjoying a picnic, its still raining so we do a quick improvise and eat at my parent's place which is on the way to the exhibition. We feast on vegetarian rice paper rolls made by Aiyana which are very healthy with plenty of mushrooms and fresh mint from her garden.

My contribution was mini bread rolls filled with prawns and thousand island dressing and a vegetarian version with cheese, grilled capsicum, grilled eggplant and Melitzanosalata (a garlicky greek eggplant dip) which I assembled just before serving and some homemade chocolate dipped strawberries as well as fresh ones to dip in the King Island Creme dessert toffee caramel that I had sampled in Woolworths that morning only to snatch up a tub and buy it straight away. Its rich and thick, like the thickest creamy custard and the flavour is unmistakedly toffee caramel.

Later in the day at about 6pm we emerge from a movie to find that the rain has stopped for a while and that the sun has burst gloriously through the clouds. With daylight saving on our side we make a quick decision to go and see the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition and high tail it over to Bondi.

I leave you with some fabulous pictures from the exhibition. If you want to see more, you can take a look at my husband's flickr page (username: ilikeprivacy). I'm afraid that we don't know the name of the pieces or the sculptors as the stand selling programmes was shut by the time we got to the Bondi end and the website doesn't offer much information about them but I hope you'll find them as fabulous as we did!

Sculpture by the Sea runs from the 1st-18th November and starts at Bondi Icebergs on Campbell Parade Bondi and ends at Tamarama beach. Picnic tables at the Tamarama end.