THE BEACH- SYDNEY FESTIVAL

Something new and exciting also took place during Sydney Festival and that is Barangaroo partnered up with Sydney Festival for 2017. This will suit anybody’s budget because it’s FREE. The event is called ‘The Beach’ and getting there was fairly easy, walk north from east side of Darling Harbour and pretty much follow the crowd. It is opened from 10am to 5pm – closed on Mondays but what makes this beach special compared with other beaches? You don’t get wet. Yes! You read it correctly. This beach is a 60-metre wide shoreline made up of 1.1 million recyclable polyethylene balls and sand-free. The set-up is so amazing, the Beach is full of bubbles, with lots of happy faces and fun to be had by all. There are mirrors around the beach that makes it look bigger than what it really is, with floating beach balls to play, deck chairs if you wish to relax and absorb the magic in front of you and free storage boxes with marked numbers on them to store your valuables. It is highly recommended to store your valuables in these boxes to prevent you from losing your items in the beach, there is a good chance you will not be able to find them amongst the plethora of balls. You may leave your details with staff, in the hopes that they may be able to recover your items when they clear the balls out – that will be on 30th January 2017. However, I did find that it’s not practical for young children, I have seen a couple of children sinking below the balls – it is about one metre in height. Lucky for the sinking children I had witnessed, they had the aid of their watchful parents to drag them out before disappearing under those balls and saved from potential suffocation. It was rather hot in there and not any better when you are surrounded by plastic balls, it would have been a great idea to have mist sprayed upon the people every so often, just to cool them a little. I have also noticed a few people limping, due to minor accidents or slips – it can be dangerous when you’re not careful. You do have the ‘shallow end’ between the flags, there more for smaller children and people with disabilities and/or in wheelchairs. Having stated that, please do not assume that strollers or prams are acceptable, they must be left outside – the area is not too big to begin with and there were a lot of prams and strollers in the line-up, they were instructed to leave them on the side before they were permitted to enter. Having prams and strollers would have caused a lot of clutter and discomfort for others. Their system worked well, to avoid ‘The Beach’ to be overcrowded, they only allowed same amount of people to enter with the same amount of people exiting, so you can truly enjoy your experience, however the waiting time in line-up was an hour and a half – it is recommended that staying at the beach should be no more than 45 minutes. Even standing in line could have been a little better, my suggestion was to have music playing or displaying events for the Sydney Festival on digital television. The waiting in the line would not have been so painful when distracted with ads or music. Oh… before I forget to mention, if you have little ones who are just toilet trained or you have weak bladder, I have not-so-good news for you. Toilet facilities is located outside, where you were lined up. Should you need to go to the toilet and want to get back to the beach, you need to line-up again – there’s no ‘pass out’ cards. Not worth another hour and a half waiting in line again.