SCULPTURES AND SHIPWRECKS

Did you know that 1,400 ship wrecks lie off the Western Australian coast? Admittedly it's the longest coast of any Australian state but the cause is a combination of challenging reefs and the westerly trade winds. Can you imagine all those Dutch ships in the 17th century hoping to find the Spice Islands but never quite knowing when to turn northwards after they'd rounded the Cape of Good Hope because they didn't have an accurate way of measuring longitude from a ship? Get it wrong and it's bang smack onto the WA coastline.

There's a great museum in Fremantle that explores this history and in April, it also hosts part of the Bathers Beach Sculpture Exhibition. The other part is on the beach itself with some pieces capturing the essense of a shipwreck. The are pieces dug into the sand, others measuring the tide, some pretenting to be brilliant coloured seaweed under a jetty, some capturing the sea breeze, some perched out on the water, some sheltering on the grass behind the dunes. There are pieces made of wood and dried flowers, wool and steel, plastic and porcelain. Susan and I spent a fascinating Easter Sunday morning exploring both the Shipwreck Museum and the sculptures. 


One of the most tragic stories in the Museum was of a preacher,  Gijsbert Bastiaenz, who was shipwrecked along with his family when the Batavia  was wrecked in 1629. His family was murdered, a daughter forced to be a sex slave, but by the very act of surviving, he was found to be at fault when the remnants were finally rescued. He was charged with not doing enough to turn the mutineers to follow God's will and even though he was found not guilty, he wasn't allowed back to the Netherlands.

It was a relief to leave such tragic stories and get back into the whimsy of the beach sculptures.







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