made in nowa nowa

hole 3: musical cave shell
buchan. w tree
heather johnson
Heather Johnson has worked as an
artist for 30 years. Sculpting has
been her passion from early days
and has now worked professionally
in this field for many years.
Of snails she says ‘I loved the beautiful
shell form, the spiral markings and
their whimsical little faces. I was
known as the snail lady because
of the snail-like pots I produced.
All these years later they have reemerged
as a full scale sculpture.
To support her ‘habit’ as an artist,
Heather works as a tour guide at
the Buchan Caves - the famous
limestone caves - highly decorated
in beautiful crystal formations and
shell fossils embedded in the stone.
The Musical Cave Shell incorporates
a history which goes back 400
million years, when Buchan was
flat and covered by shallow seas.
Limestone formed under these seas,
the sedimentation of crustaceans and
shells. Later through earthquake
movement the land was raised up
and limestone was pushed up into
folds. The mountains and valleys
were formed and caves created
underground as water flowed
through the earth and stone.
The Musical Cave Shell tells the
story of the shell, a shelter for living
creatures, and its wonderful musical
powers. Play with it and listen, look
carefully at the limestone rocks, find
a beautiful spiral shell fossil.
The challenge of this golf hole is to
hit as many chimes as possible, and
to have the ball land on the shell
fossils.