QPuzzles - Twelve Apostles Sunset 260 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

The Twelve Apostles at sunset, on 260 pieces and 48 x 34 cm finished. Australian made, from the photograph to the cut, and small enough to finish in an evening.

What you are looking at

The limestone sea stacks off Port Campbell on Victoria's Great Ocean Road, photographed in the last of the light. Two of the tallest stacks stand out in the water on the left, with a smaller one closer in, and the surf runs in long white lines up a curve of wet sand. On the right the mainland cliff face catches the low sun full on and turns deep orange, while the headlands stretching away behind it stay in cooler shadow. The sky is a clean gradient, pale gold at the horizon lifting into blue.

There are seven, and there were never twelve. When the formation was given its name there were only ever nine stacks. Before 1922 it was known as the Pinnacles, and as the Sow and Piglets, with Muttonbird Island as the Sow and the stacks as her Piglets. The name was changed to draw visitors, and it worked: the site now pulls around two million people a year. A 50 metre stack collapsed in July 2005, leaving eight, and another went in 2009, leaving the seven that stand today.

And there are five more, standing 50 metres underwater. In 2016 sonar mapping of the sea floor found a line of drowned limestone stacks about six kilometres offshore, in front of a submerged ancient cliff. They were formed by the same wave-cut process as the ones above water, are thought to be roughly 60,000 years old, and were swallowed as sea levels rose. It was the first time sea stacks had been found preserved below the sea.

The rock is Port Campbell Limestone, laid down in the Mid to Late Miocene, somewhere between 15 and 5 million years ago. The base of each stack loses about 2 cm a year to the water. That is the same process that made them and the process that will take them, and it is also why new ones keep appearing as the headlands are undercut.

What it is like to build

Start on the sunlit cliff at the right. It is the only part of the picture with hard edges and real tonal steps, all those horizontal strata bands running orange into shadow, so it gives you a spine to work out from. The sea stacks go next for the same reason: each one has a distinct silhouette against flat water.

The wet sand is the trap. It reads as one colour and it is about six, from dry pale gold at the top through damp pink to the grey-blue sheen where the last wave has just pulled back. Sort those pieces by how light they are, not by what colour they look.

Leave the sky until last and sort it by gradient rather than by shape. Lay the pieces out in order from the pale horizon up to the blue and the row will mostly build itself.

At 260 pieces nothing is ever far from a known edge, so this is an evening rather than a project. It is a good one to hand to somebody who says they are no good at puzzles.

Why QPuzzles

QPuzzles is an Australian owned and operated manufacturer at Ashmore on the Gold Coast, and the puzzles are cut and boxed there rather than outsourced. The photograph is by James Dormer, their production manager and a working photographer. Eco-friendly board and kid-safe inks throughout.

An Australian landmark, photographed by an Australian, cut in Queensland. On the Great Ocean Road that is worth something more than a licensing deal is.

Specifications

A little context

A 260 is an unusual size and it is a genuinely useful one. It is large enough that the picture holds detail worth looking at, and small enough to finish in a sitting on a normal dining table, which a 1000 is not. If you build with somebody who loses interest after an hour, this is the size that keeps them at the table. It is also the right size for a caravan or a holiday house.

More like this: our Australian puzzles, the Scenery and Landscapes range, Cities and Landmarks, and everything from QPuzzles.

Stock is real and it is in Sydney. Free shipping Australia wide over $150, and free same-day delivery inside 6 km of North Bondi with no minimum.

Built it already? Use the Questions section below and tell us how you found it. Which part fought you, how long it took, and whether you would send someone else to it. We answer every one.