FORMIDABLE SNOWMAN
Ten-foot creation chills out in Sydney neighbourhood
Giant snowman chilling out in Sydney neighbourhood.
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you snow on the first day of spring, you make a snowman, of course.
That’s just what R.J. Gillis built with his nephew Vincent Gillis — a giant snowman, actually — that can easily be seen casting a shadow over Sydney’s Rockcliff neighbourhood.
The creation, which is unnamed, standing more than 10 feet tall, was built during Monday’s snow day when an unexpected 25 centimetres of snow interrupted the first day of spring.
“This is the first time we’ve tried it, actually,” R.J. Gillis said during an interview at the base of the snow creation.
“We were trying to have a competition with my brother and that’s what we came up with.”
The snowman has your typical three-snowball format — the biggest ball on the bottom, your medium-sized one in the middle and a smaller one to make up its head.
Not so typical is an enormous bottom base that likely weighs about 1,000 pounds. The middle section is not much smaller, which made for some pretty creative thinking when piecing the project together.
“We just rolled the snow balls as big as we could do them and then combined them around the bottom and started filling it with a shovel and snow,” he said.
Raising the second and third large snowballs took some creativity.
“They were heavy. It took some time but we lifted them and hoisted them and we had a ladder that we would roll it up. We just took it bit by bit.”
The head is topped with a bucket wrapped in a black garbage bag that now looks very much like a top hat.
Tree branches make up the arms, while various vegetables complete the snowman’s face.
Once all the pieces were in place, they added some red and blue food colouring to make their snowman even more eyecatching.
The hardest part, according to Gillis, was getting the head in place.
The best part without a doubt was the quality time spent together.
The project has become quite the popular community addition as evident by the many people snapping photos as they drive by or stopping to pose for a picture and ask questions about the work.
“I’ve built snowmen but never like this,” said one passerby who couldn’t help but snap a photo despite some freezing rain and windy conditions.
A second snowman sits in the same field. It’s just as big but not yet complete. The neighbourhood children expect it to have a Hawaiian theme when they are done.
Both were caught up in Tuesday’s freezing rain and now are covered in an inch of ice, so they will most likely be standing for a while.