Peter Rodgers took me on a very enjoyable extended walk around some of the beaches and coves in the Sydney Harbour area.

This is Camp Cove, Port Jackson, where the First Fleet landed on January 21st, 1788. By all means disagree, but I thought it was rather a nice shot.

This is the nearby Camp Beach. From this distance, it looks like an impossibly idealised photo from a holiday brochure.

While it is actually a perfectly nice beach, when you get a bit closer you find it is also covered, somewhat unhappily, in dead fish. Here's a not atypical close-up view that you won't find in many holiday brochures:

Our walk also included Lady Bay beach, which is famous for a single, solitary reason: it's the only beach which allows nudity. The sign says it all:

As my vacation was about trying new experiences, and since I had no idea when this chance might present itself again, I decided I should take advantage of this rare legal opportunity and sample the joys of strolling around on a beach in my birthday suit. If you want to see the photographs, just click here.

Although it is delightful to walk along the beaches and cliff heads, one always needs to be careful. There is the ever-present danger of straying too close to the cliff edges, parts of which can be unstable. I thought the graphic artist commissioned to convey this danger did an absolutely superb job. I defy anyone to capture the essence of an idiot falling off a cliff with greater elegance or linear economy. The angles of the arms are just perfect:

Here are the kind of problem areas they are referring to:

One the subject of signs, I snapped this one near Gap Head. Neither Peter nor I had a clue what the fourth symbol, resembling a castle turret, was supposed to either permit or forbid:

Naturally, our informal tour included the world-famous Bondi Beach. Sadly, as this was very much out-of-season, it was largely  deserted and really not looking its best. I've tried tweaking these photos every which way to boost the charm level, but there are limits to what one can do with an empty beach on a blustery day. That having been said, on the second photo, I did like the rather impressively bad-tempered cloud formation.

It just wasn't a very good day for healthy, vigorous outdoor pursuits. These people were going through the motions of a surfing lesson, even though it was fairly clear there wasn't going to be any actual surfing today. It was, frankly, the sort of day on which 'surfing' really equates to 'sitting on sand on a piece of wood getting cold'.

Similarly frustrated was this young chap attempting some sort of para-gliding or beach-wind-surfing or beach-para-wind-sailing. Whatever he may have been trying to do, it wasn't going well, and he simply watched the unfurled canopy flop along the grass like a big red slug trying to find a comfy spot for a nap.

Back on the subject of signs, I thought this depiction of a surfer was fairly good, but not nearly as good as the 'Idiot falling off a cliff' masterpiece featured above. I realise you may think I'm obsessed by signs. I'm not, but I do tend to notice the work of these unsung and unknown graphic artists, especially when they have been lumbered with strange or challenging assignments.

Yep, one more sign (go on, complain, see if I care). This is only sign I have ever seen stipulating that alcohol is forbidden during certain months. I've seen 'No drinking' signs to do with hours of the day, or even days of the week, but never months of the year.

To create a sculpture of someone surfing, or running into the waves, must be rather challenging, both technically and artistically. After all, to state the blindingly obvious, water is rather fluid and a piece of copper or iron is rather not. I thought this sculpture was a real triumph: