The Illawarra Bonsai Society is one of the largest bonsai societies in Australia with many members, and a large number of which are very experienced artists. As such I was expecting a high quality exhibition and equally high quality bonsai.

One of the issues at many bonsai exhibitions is the quality of the lighting but this problem was solved at this exhibition by the inclusion of additional lights which really improved the scene.

This stage lighting did the trick and made all the bonsai easier to see, not perfect mind you, but much better.

But onto the main event, the bonsai. Firstly a few exotics:-

Now for a few of the Australian native bonsai:

 Probably the tree of the exhibition was this banksia below that was in full flower.

 All in all a good exhibition that was improved by the extra lighting provided but there were a few disappointing aspects in my opinion, and they were the very poor backgrounds which distracted from the bonsai on display, and the very busy area around the Australian native bonsai which was also visually disturbing.