Dragons, a mermaid with a drinking problem, turtles, jellyfish, angry bird, sunbakers, hairy nostrils and monsters all competed for the attention of the judges and the crowd, which was estimated to have topped 2100. There were also some sandcastles.

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“Just the biggest, happiest and most bizarre ever,” Broulee/Mossy Point Association’s superlative-prone sandcastle supremo Marie Zuvich said.

“We had 71 teams and about 400 sand-modellers persuading our very compliant sand to assume new shapes.

“The temperature was hot and so was the competition. It was wonderful to see so many people enjoying the event.”

The competition has attracted quite a following with many seasoned sand sculptors travelling huge distances to compete.

Dirk Romeyn, a carpenter from the Blue Mountains, was competing for the third time.

His goggle-eyed fisherman, landing an improbably large-mouthed and foolish fish with just a piece of seaweed, won second in the open division.

First-timers Anna Baker and Tom Allan, from Melbourne, confessed to a practise session the day before for their “train steaming out of a tunnel”.

Young newcomers Oliver Dunn, six, and Harper Smee, six, of Canberra, were delighted to win the Junior “fully sick” award for what Oliver described as a “monster with fangs and a funny bottom”.

Older sisters Charlotte Dunn and Kirby Smee won the Junior “brilliant” prize for their rather hideous hairy nostrils.

Fresh from victory in 2011 and runner-up in 2010, Broulee’s Margax McCarthy, Ruby Lyttle, Laila Harvey, Meg Phillips, Bree Phillips and Oliver Kennedy picked up 

second in the Junior competition with two enormous ice creams.

Sue Foster, of Canberra, bravely shaped a man-eating octopus halfway through a meal.

A hybrid Moruya Heads/Melbourne team of the Hicks and Owen-Jones families fashioned a rather benign and dopey-looking dragon.

“It looks a bit like my dad,” team spokeswoman Bronwyn Hicks said.

Winner of the open section was the Gallagher family from Canberra with an extremely voracious depiction of a food chain.

“We’ve had the competition for over a decade and it’s always fun,” Ms Zuvich said.

“There is a real buzz around the event as shown by the quantity and quality of entries and by the support of the local businesses which generously provided a wonderful assortment of prizes.”