Every year at Bondi Beach the Australian Kiteflyers Society hold the Festival of the Winds to celebrate kite making & flying and all things relating to wind energy.  Incredibly this event has been going for 45 years starting out back in 1978

Last year we saw them setting up on the Saturday but missed the event as it was Dani’s First Communion on the Sunday (see that post here). This year we went down to the beach on the Sunday (last Sunday to be exact – where did that week go?) to see what it was all about.

The main kite flyers had their very large kites in a fenced off area of the beach. It’s hard to call them “kites” really as they are more like giant inflatables. But kites they are. The larger ones needed a more basic parachute shaped kite to be flown first, in order to rise them high enough to maintain flight.

There were quite a few stalls set up to sell much smaller kites to the many visitors. And there were plenty of them being flown along the grass bank facing the beach. Not to be outdone we bought one for $15. A small orange octopus (apparently) although it looked more like a jellyfish. There were quite a few of them in the sky already.

After several failed attempts we did manage to launch the octopus. Tricky enough but once up high enough to catch the wind it is possible to fly even these most basic kite designs quite a way up. Some people had their kites almost out of sight they were so high. 

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