A crowd of 40 gathered in the oldest town in the Riverina to celebrate the creativity and craftiness in the amateur 2023 Bush Sculpture Competition.

The annual event attracted a wide and varied array of creation, both large and small. This year’s event attracted 27 entries with the Oswin family taking a clean sweep of both categories. Father and son duo Charlie and Edward Oswin were winners of the large section with ‘The Big Yabbie’ and Olive Oswin winner of the small section with ‘The Things We Keep’.

Materials to build the sculpture were plentiful on the farm at ‘Parkleigh’, located between Moulamein and Swan Hill, with Charlie an avid collector of anything and everything.

“Olive’s materials came from about a three-metre radius of my 30 by 30 metre shed,” said Charlie.

“Scrap is valuable on the farm; trucks come in and they don’t go out, basically,” added Charlie with a laugh.

Olive constructed her entry after school and Edward’s was a rainy day job.

“It was going to be a lobster. I was sick of it. We had some tins crushed up for the spikes and Edward said ‘Maybe we should make it a yabbie’, and I said I’d be interested.

“The sculpture competition was a bit of a calendar highlight for a Saturday afternoon.

“I think what we’re going to do is take a supporting role from here on in. 

“We’re happy to hand the baton on from now, I don’t think there’s any point on standing on the pinnacle for too long.”

Olive’s design evolved as well. “I was just going to make a normal tree, cutting up a bunch of leaves with a grinder, but it was going to take too long,” said Olive.

“I didn’t want to miss school, so I did it in two afternoons after school.

“I thought it would be cool to use things out of an old box that we keep for no reason.

“Getting the win was very exciting, I didn’t expect it.”

Both the Oswin sculptures were sold on the day, with ‘The Big Yabbie’ to remain at the gallery.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 15 June 2023.