New Years Eve At The Woodford Folk Festival

As our time at the festival was coming to an end we were running on our energy reserves.  So we decided that we would take it a bit easy and not try to rush from venue to venue filling the day with one thing after another.
The weather was cooler and it was a bit overcast so it was quite nice to just wander through the festival.

We had been trying to get to one of the circus events all festival and finally we got to see one.  It was one of those performances where you find your self holding your breath.

Then we took some time out chilling in the Chai Tent.  It was a great place to just sit and people watch while enjoying a few hot beverages.

Then it was off the sit in the orchard for Tim Finn.  We got there early but everyone else wanted to see him too.  It was fantastic.

Then it was off to have an early drink to celebrate new years eve.  The staff at the bar we went to were also getting in the mood.

For a bit of a change of pace we decided to join in with a game show "Festival of Fortune" which was supported by the musical stylings of Barry Morgan on the organ.  Basically there are 10 teams competing in a variety of challenges and these teams do not have to be made up of people who know each other, in fact the point is to meet new people.  So you have to be early to get on a team and basically you sit your self down at a table where as a team you work out a team name (we were Pigs in Space) and a team chant and then the games begin.

It was so much fun and we spent the entire hour and a half laughing till we could hardly breathe.
We made fashion out of rubbish bags, wrote bush poetry full of cliche's and had men from our team dressed in leotards dancing on stage.

It was the fantastic start to a great night and for the first time in a couple of years we saw in the New Year.
We have lots planned for this year and it felt great to be kicking things of in such a great place.

Day 4 At The Woodford Folk Festival

By Day 4 we had seen a lot of great music so we spent a lot of the day just soaking up the atmosphere.

It is a huge festival with more than 20 performance venues, 50 food vendors, hundreds of performers and this year the visitors swelled to over 120,000.
The festival has been running for 28 years and every year lots of work is done to improve the site to cater for all the people.  There are heaps of permanent toilet blocks on the site each with at least 14 cubicles in each one so there were almost never queues.  To me this is a sign of the great planning that has been done in the past.

One of the performers we saw was Mo Kenny a fantastic performer from Nova Scotia Canada.  She has an amazing voice and I was really tempted to buy her album.

Uptown Brown was a one man bad extraordinaire and just one of the many street performers who kept us entertained.

All of the bars are dressed up for the festival.  The orchard bar comes complete with an apple orchard with giant apples.

The orchard bar

And the Pineapple bar is well shaped like a pineapple.

The pineapple bar in the background, you can just see the roof
poking up

We chilled out in the afternoon to the sweet voice of Rachel Sermanni before treking up to the amphitheater to check out a bamboo sculpture that had been built at the festival.

This sculpture was made by a group of volunteers led by Wang Wen-Chih and you can read more about it here.

The sculpture was huge and it was really quite a work of art.

Here is Hubby about to enter the Dome.

And this is looking up inside the dome.

One of the things the festival organisers are working on is re-vegetation of the property.  The festival site used to be a 500 acre farm and so every year trees are planted out after the festival.  The walkway from that car park has been planted out with lots of different types of trees that attract butterfly's and is called the butterfly walk.  And there were lots of butterfly's fluttering around our heads as we walked to the festival each day.  The trees are all sponsored by visitors to the festival and for just $5 you pay for a tree, tree guard and some fertilizer to get the tree started.  There was evidence around the festival of last years sponsored trees.

It seems the wildlife appreciate all the new trees being planted too.  I wonder if they all run for cover when the festival starts up each year or make the most of their free passes to an amazing festival.

Day 3 At The Woodford Folk Festival

Things got a bit busy here so the last of this series of posts is a bit delayed.

Day three and the prediction was for hot hot hot.  We were hoping it would not get to the 41 degree temperature predicted but we were not so lucky.  Thankfully we were able to find some shade during the middle of the day and we took the opportunity to have a nap.

The peoples band was out and about on the streets.

The traditional clans of the Pormpuraaw and Injinoo showed off traditional dances, songs and legends.

Everywhere people relaxed and soaked up the atmosphere.

Since the day was so hot we sought shade where we could, even if that meant we could only hear and not see the bands.
We really enjoyed The Basics who are a band of three brothers one of who is Gotye.  It was great music to chill out to lying on the grass in the shade.

Hubby is having a good laugh to himself here as he poked his tongue
 out in the previous photo and I didn't notice

During the festival we managed to get to a number of interesting presentations.  Like many other people we were happy to lie in the shade and listen to the presentation on the speakers on the outside of the venue.
This one was "A trip through the supermarket with a nutritionist".

After the heat of the day the burst of rain we got was a welcome relief and we were treated to a double rainbow to boot.

Then the skies cleared and the crowds flooded back into the streets.

There were lots of workshops available to participate in, including basket weaving, rag rug making, life drawing, pottery, weaving, mask making, body painting and a heap of other things.

The festival is a celebration of folk music but it is so much more than that.  There are so many interesting ways to participate and even with 6 days there we still did not have time to do everything we wanted.

Day 2 At The Woodford Folk Festival

Day 2 and today it was just Hubby and I.

We kicked off the day with a high energy band - Ben Caplan and The Casual Smokers

Then we took some time to chill out and enjoy a cuppa in the shade where we shared our table with some other friendly festival goers.

We then headed off to see one of the acts I had really been looking forward to, The Whitetop Mountaineers.  Imagine the type of music that a stereotypical american hill billy would play and you are in the right area.  I have a secret love of banjo music and this one ticked all the boxes for me.  Martha also did some flatfoot dancing while playing the fiddle that was really impressive.  It was so great to see a something that is such a big part of their Appalachian culture.

Kim Wempe entertained us in the afternoon.

And the streets were alive with action.

One of the things that you can do at the festival is listen to guest speakers talk on a range of topics.  I have been to a couple already and plan to post about them after the festival.
There is so much to see and do it is a challenge to see it all and I know we need to manage our energy levels to get through the week so on night 2 we had an early one and were home at 7pm.

Day 1 At The Woodford Folk Festival

Day one and Hubby, my best friend Sandra and I headed off to the festival for a nearly 16 hours of festival activities.
It was hot and we prepared ourselves for the heat with hand held fans, water spray bottles and all manner of sun protection.
Here are just a few snapshots of our first day.

The children's festival is a festival within a festival.  Filled with all sorts
of fun things like circus skills and puppet shows.

There is plenty of entertainment on the street and the entire festival is a
cacophony of sights and sounds

 Some of the musicians we saw during the day were

Wes Carrs lastest offering - Buffalo Tales was a fantastic and I might even go and see him play again.

 A young lady by the name of Minnie Marks who had amazing guitar skills and a totally unique husky voice.

During the afternoon there was a thunderstorm and as we ducked for cover we ended up in a venue listening to a group from Brisbane called The Poachers who were really good and made an interesting change of pace.

Later in the afternoon we sat in on - Mulberry Bend who were great performers and really connected with the audience.

As the evening rolled in it was time to get our dancing shoes on and this time it was Busby Marou who got us up and dancing.  They are another group I would see again.

We tried not to have too late of a night as there are 5 days to go.  So it was home to bed only 10 mins down the road and a shower to was the dust off.

Merry Christmas To All

As we head into the Christmas season I want to wish you all a safe and happy festive season.

This year we have been really busy so we have paired things right back including the tree which is normally a real one that Hubby cuts down.  This year that was too much work so we opted for a bunch of fallen gum tree branches.

There is now a grand total of 4 gifts below the tree. One for my brother in law, one for our dog Jessie, one for my Mother in Law and one for my best friend.  We do not go crazy with the gifts.  My family are in NZ so we do not buy for them, and with Hubby's family we pick names out of the hat and all buy for one person.  My best friend and I buy for each other and Hubby and I do not buy each other gifts (although Santa usually leaves us a packet of our favorite chocolate in our stockings) as we choose to do something together instead.

This year we are spending the week following Christmas at the Woodford Folk Festival.
We live nearby and we are really looking forward to seeing the huge range of performers, there will be everything from circus and burlesque, comedy and educational speakers to music from Australia and around the world.
I will be reporting back on some of the great stuff we see and am looking forward to sharing it with you.

Do you have anything planned for after Christmas?