weekly drawing: Sea cave

Walking the coast to Wes and Narelle's place, I became quite keen on investigating a dark and mysterious sea cave. Every time I walked past it, my imagination ran wild. I'd somehow managed to convince myself there must be pirates treasure hidden or at least a secret passage way.

So the next time it was low tide, I took my torch and I had a look around. However it wasn't what I'd imagined. Instead of vast riches, I only discovered a small group of bats who wished I'd stop shining my torch so they could keep on sleeping. I didn't find what I was hoping for but I hadn't ever seen wild bats in a cave before, so I was still pretty excited it was a bat cave.

Weekly drawing: Night buskers King St Newtown

A few years ago, Bec and I were walking home along King street at around 10.00pm.
We could hear this amazing music echoing down the street. It was coming from three buskers disguised in lycra suits grooving out in front of a crowd on the steps of the Newtown Post office.

It was incredible. I never discovered who they were, but I wished it would happen more often. Good live music is magical and should be encouraged in every city and country town.

Pig Lane - Hay street car Park Liechhardt opening

Originally Hay street car park was a place were people walked through as quickly as possible just to get to Norton street. However over the last few months it has been transformed by the Leichhardt Council into a food garden and sitting area called 'Pig Lane'. The name is a tribute to the sites historical past, when it was home to at least one piggery owned by a Leichhardt Council Alderman Charles Hearn in 1872.

It's great to see by redesigning an area people are in less of a rush to get through the area and they're starting to use the area to sit on their lunch breaks. Also The Food, Wine and Design School now harvest food for classes from the garden. I think it's great that the Piggy history has somehow brighten the future of this once bleak eyesore.

Thanks to Bronwyn Tuohy the Leichhardt Public Art Officer, I was fortunate to be involved and asked to design the metal garden pigs, a retro lamp post and signage plus the etched pavers such as the trailing pig tracks. 

It's been great to be offered such an exciting creative freelance job while being a stay home Dad. I had worked with Bronwyn on The Hawthorne Canal community artwork (my largest piece of art at 25 metres). She has an amazing ability in seeing a disheveled public place and making it shine.

A stray Joel garden piggy

Some more Joel garden Piggies

Joel Piggy tracks etched into the pavers

Joel retro lamp post and signage design

Bronwyn with a real little Piggy at the opening

once there was nothing but rubbish

Weekly drawing: The Broadhurst's great tree swing

Kate Broadhurst and me play on the swing

The Broadhurst's had the best tree swing in the world. As kids we were amazed by it's design "How could someone throw and tie the rope at such a height?" Well, I never really worked that out. So instead, I visited as much as possible and concentrated on enjoying it and pretending be Tarzan.

Weekly drawing: Blackberry picking

Sometimes we'd walk the long way down to the beach, to pick berries. 

But because blackberry is an invasive weed these vines were only edible 

for a limited amount of time before they were sprayed. 

Part of me wished they wouldn't spray them, so we could enjoy the free food. 

But another part of me wished I knew more about bush foods.

So I could find lots of free food which wasn't classified as a weed.

Weekly drawing: Wind and rain monsters

As a kid some monsters seemed more honest and friendly then some of the adults who pretended they weren't monsters. This is a drawing and poem too the honest monsters who would walk through the bush on stormy night. I enjoyed their Muppet appearance and Wild Things ways.

The wind and rain monsters

I can't sleep.

The wind is wild,

The rain is insane

The trees are alive

like never before

I want to see more.

But I have school 

in the morning.

                         by Joel Tarling

Weekly drawing: The big tree in playground

In Bermagui public school there is a grand old tree growing in the middle of it's playground. I have always loved this tree, it reminds me of the kind of tree that would grow in Tolkien's Mirkwood forrest.

When I was in year three, Scott and I played cars at it's base. We made camouflaged Batcave's for our cars by placing sticks between buttress roots and covering them with leaves and soil. In the company of this grand old tree, we were lost in our own imagination and a thousand miles from the school yard politics of footy and kiss and catch.

Weekly Drawing: Singing to the cows

This drawing is an illustration of something I mentioned in the blurb of Weekly drawing 53 

"We lived 5km out of town along the coast and my sister and I were the only kids at our school bus stop. However this didn't seem to bother us. While we waited we made a hand ball court by sweeping the clay, so there was a smooth area to play. And the property over the fence was dairy farm, I would sometimes amuse my sister by singing to the cows "Da do ron-ron- ron". To our amazement they would all huddle over to listen. These were magical days."

Weekly drawing: Message in a bottle

My big sister, Dan Scollay and I, inspired by a combination of The Police song 'Message in a bottle' and Robert Louis Stevenson's story Treasure island, decided to make our own messages in a bottle and cast them into the ocean for passing ships to find.

Our hand drawn messages were placed in old lemonade bottles and we clambered down a goat track to a small beach, only accessible from Eileen's property.
However when we tired to send to bottles out to sea we couldn't get them past the breakers. Not even our Dennis Lillee styled bowling methods helped that day. Every bottle floated back to us.
I was left feeling I would really need to practice bowling in case I was ever stranded on a desert island otherwise I wouldn't have much chance of survival.

My message was a treasure island surrounded by sharks

Weekly drawing: At the tip with Dad

Bermagui tip collecting yellow bricks

There were lots of good things to salvage at the local tip. Our best score was a pile of yellow bricks. We used these to make a windy yellow brick path to our front door through the spotted gums and burrawongs.