If you’re a regular beach-faring type, you’ve probably already noticed that painted on the side of the iconic Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club is a giant cartoon red king prawn.
Now, I like prawns as much as the next person who grew up near the beach, but do I ever feel the urge to randomly paint one on the side of my wall? To my landlord’s great relief (and my local paint store’s disappointment), regrettably I do not.
But there is actually a legit reason for the big boi crustacean making its mark at Tama (this summer only) – and the answer lies on your feet.
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Turns out Havaianas must be pretty big fans of the Aussie summer fave, because they’ve decided that Tama just needed a little more prawn over the hot months ahead, and were key in bringing the mural to life. There is an actual reason they’ve decided to do so, and it’s actually pretty solid of them.
They’re chucking a big ol’ donation Tamarama’s way, to go towards the gigantic redevelopment planned in the near future with the aim of helping it transform into a whizz-bang lifesaving education and training centre. And the prawn itself? That’s for your attention, coz you can donate too if you’re keen.
It took four painters over 50 hours (and about 130 litres of Dulux paint) to create our new best pal, the prawn, so you can have a gander when you’re off exploring the Sculptures by the Sea and pretending like you’re a fancy cultured art aficionado.
Then once you’re done that you miiiiight even be able to cop free ice-cream and Havaianas, coz two big Volkswagon Caddys in thongs are doing a sweep up the east coast til January dishing out chilly treats, towels, beach bags and water bottles – just for summer. You won’t know where they’re gonna pop up so keep an eye out, pals.
That is, except for the very first one, which is hitting Tama SLSC today. From October to January they’ll be slinging 60,000 FREE ice-creams (using 3000 litres of ice cream) to make your summer sweet as.
Plus if you head on over to the Havaianas Facebook you could enter a comp to win one of 20 gift packs (incl. a pair of Havi’s each, two prawny beach towels and two matching calico beach bags) just by telling them in 25 words or less what your fave thing about summer in Australia is.
So sure, the prawn may seem a lil’ random at first, but it’s weirdly cute, a symbol of summer and it makes me want to be best crustacean friends with it a lá Ariel and Sebastian from The Little Mermaid.
And yes, the prawn is wearing thongs on its little feetless legs. We’re not sure how that works, but we’re not mad at it.
