Queensland

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From Sunny Goa to Sunny Brisbane

It took us a long time to get from Goa to Brisbane. First we got a lift with the owner of our guest house in Baga, Captain Marvin. Dad hoped he was a better driver of ships than cars but he got us safely to the airport and we flew to Mumbai. We spent ages waiting for our flight to Sydney but met up with Ronan Martin, the fiddler from Skye - we thought it was amazing that 2 Ronans from Skye could be on the same flight! Because our flight was delayed we missed the connection to Brisbane but caught the next one and were picked up and taken by bus to the Woodford Festival. The whole journey was over 30 hours and I only slept for about 8 of them so was pretty tired when we got there.

Woodford Folk Festival

The Woodford festival is massive and claims to be the biggest folk festival in the world. It might be because there was over 100 000 people there including 3500 performers and 500 organisers.
It is like a huge tented village which is erected specially for the festival each year. They start building it in October for the 6 day event over new Year time. There were stages, cafes, shops and an absolutely massive accommodation area. There was loads of music, theatre and street events. My favourite was the foot bus street event and Ronan really enjoyed the kids festival which was organised in its own special enclosure. Events ran from 6am till well after midnight so there was lots to choose from. Even thought it was good fun we were glad to get away after 5 nights of what mum called madness! She met up with cousins that she hadn't seen for years; Jenny since 1969 and Ross since 1978 and it was great to "take in the new year" with them. Dad and Ronan were sick though and they missed out on a lot of things including the special 3 minutes silence at 11.30 on hogmannay when everyone was quiet and we all held candles. It was very special. On the final night there was a massive fire and lantern event with great music and dancing. We all enjoyed it but didn't really understand the story but the beginning was great as an aborigine started the fire using sticks!
I got a henna tattoo on my leg and went to both a block printing and bag making workshop and really enjoyed the band Kaya who I made friends with.

Cotton farming

We went to stay with David in Bowenville, Queensland. He helps farmers with their crops. On our first day Mum. Dad, Ronan and I went to a farm with David. He showed us around the farm and told us about each bit. The farm was over 800 acres and the farmer also farmed somewher else so they thought our 20acre croft was tiny!

The first bit was the dam. The farmer, Derek, has an engine which sucks the water up from the dam and pushes it over a dyke and into a pool where it gets taken from when it is needed. It is part of a recyling system, the water goes to the crops and once it runs through it goes down a drainage system back down to the dam. Then we went to a bore hole which pumps water from the water table below (about 40 metres down) and is then used in the irrigation scheme.
All this is very important because the area is suffering from drought and hasn't had good rain fall for 18 months.

After that we saw the machinery they use to plant the crops and the cotton. The machines they use are massive because the farms are big and they try to cut down the workload. One machine had a hole which you put the seed in and it releases them one at a time into the hole in the ground which had been made by a sharp disc. A chain then pulled the excess soil over the seed before it started again.

We then went to see the cotton crop which was irrigated by a flooding system. To start the water flowing a tube is pushed back and forth alternating with your hand over the end coming off every time it goes down. Once the water flows you drop it into the drain beside the cotton plant. This is called a syphon. We saw plants that were aout two months old and they had little balls of cotton which would be ready for picking in another 2 months. The cotton is very high quality and the farm we visited won a prize for cotton farming.

Living in a church

Our friend David lives in an old church and the pews, cross and even the hymn numbers are all still in place! Its a lovely building and as he is a part time book binder he has millions of old books in the church and in his workshed which was full of machinery for book making. He is waiting for his house to be delivered to the plot (I mean it!). In Queensland lots of the houses are made of wood and can be moved on the back of big lorries (sometimes called road trains). The weirdest thing was his outside toilet which housed a green tree frog - even when you got rid of him he alway came back to sit inside the pan which was pretty weird and one time I went in he had another frog visiting!

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