Pataua 2016

It's our third year camping up at Pataua. The place just doesn't get boring, each year I seem to find new things to sketch. This year I had the Moleskine landscape watercolour book from the Singapore Symposium. It's great to sketch in, the heavyweight watercolour paper soaks up miles of colour and the landscape format works really well for widescreen beach sketches like these.

Cyclone Victor passed us by early in the week leaving us with some pretty large surf.  It was fun getting blasted by the big waves and watching boogie boarders 'going over the falls' time and again, but they seemed to come up smiling every time.

There was no way I was going to try and catch such big waves on the paddleboard, so we spent a lot of time paddling up the estuary disturbing the odd stingray visible in the clear water, jumping off the bridge and platform. A harvest session picking pipis and cockles gave us a tasty lunch one day.