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Published: July 11th 2021
Travel is two thirds attitude and one third luck.
It's our choice whether serendipity or disaster implodes to advantage or cruels.
Two days to get there from Sydney...mobile home collected from Mullumbimby...we'd set up for 5 days of music and meeting the neighbours.
A marshall walks up at 4pm,
"There is one positive Covid case in Byron Bay. The government has pulled the pin. Bluesfest has been cancelled. You must pack up and be out by sunset." "You've gotta be kidding" buzzing around.
Bluesfest cancelled due to Covid for the second year running.
The Day the Music Died 'Yet Again'.
Will this be the death of live music in Oz?
If they had taken a risk and there was an outbreak...many fear it would have been.
Many mobiles to ears...NO RECEPTION!!!
40,000 looking for alternative accommodation.
Gotta get out of here and get mobile reception before others do!
Ready to go and a Marshall strolls up,
"They've decided you can stay the night but you have to be out first thing in the morning." "Ripper" ...there'll be fewer looking for accommodation tonight...let's get out of here.
Left
the Tyangarah Tea Tree Plantation festival site and drove until we got mobile reception.
But where to stay?
Due to Covid, as we are prevented from travelling overseas there has been a boom in Oz domestic travel.
The Easter holidays start tomorrow...everything will be booked out.
But on the drive up from Sydney we had stayed a night at Yamba Beach and the Blue Dolphin Leisure Park was next to where we stopped to take a photo at the Oyster Co-Op...ping...brain engaged...only place we can think of trying.
"We have a cancellation for one site." "We'll take it" "Easter prices start tomorrow. Minimum 7 days." "We'll take it." Raced back to Mullum to collect Denise's car for me to drive and Denise drive the mobile home...one and a half hours in blinding rain...some areas at 40kph in 100kph areas due to near Nil visibility...too dangerous to pull off...pretty freaky but life can be like that.
Travel is two thirds attitude and one third luck.
Let the adventures begin.
******
Missed out on Tash Sultana with this!!!
105,000 attended the 30th Bluesfest over the Easter
weekend two years ago...one of the World's premier Blues & Roots music festivals...nominated for The World Festival of the Decade.
Then in 2020 the Covid pandemic cancelled Bluesfest and snuffed the music out.
Musicians started driving trucks...anything to survive...anything to make a buck.
Sane countries closed their borders and took it seriously while others said
"Stuff it" and let the insidious virus play its tune while their populous faced Requiem.
Australia's attitude was to come down hard...close borders...trace the contacts and genomes...health first.
Our economy will suffer but it will recover...it always does.
As a result Australia had done well for many months...the occasional outbreak only from quarantined oversees returnees.
Went to the Comedy Festival in May...packed theatre...shoulder to shoulder...no masks...'cos there has been NIL community transmission in Sydney for months!
Bluesfest 2021 from 1 April was to be the awakening of live music after Covid...16,500 fans per day planned for about 40,000 total...all to be seated...only Aussie bands...Covid restrictions carefully planned so nothing could go wrong. We left Sydney for Byron Bay (north coast NSW) on Tuesday 30 March 2021.
That night one man tested positive
after sitting near, but not in contact with a Hen's Party in the Byron Bay Hotel...two attendees infected by an overseas returnee in Brisbane.
A poor mutt sitting at a table nearby that got tested as a close contact to the two Brisbane girls in the Hotel...
proving how contagious the virus is...airborne transmission...by genome sequencing traced to the Hen's Party as the British strain from overseas returnees.
The first New South Wales community Covid case in months had closed Bluesfest and caused pain and heartache to the thousands needing the festival to make a buck.
Fires, Floods, Pandemic, more Floods...now what? August 2019 to February 2020 the worst East Coast bushfires in history...followed by floods Feb 2020...then the Covid 19 pandemic snuck in as the sun came out.
A year of overcoming the virus...then Nature struck again.
In March 2021 the worst floods in living memory...floods wrecking havoc up the NSW East Coast...images of a house floating down a swollen river and submerged rooves.
The reopening of live music set for April 1 as the floods recede.
Then one Covid case in NSW and the music died yet again...JUST ONE
Yet
as Aussies we believe better to be careful than sorry...our National psyche saying:
"Suck it up and move on."
And that is precisely what we did.
******
Ride, ride, ride...the wild, wild surf Yamba was a revelation...the southern entry of the swollen Clarence River...Iluka the northern entry...empty beaches out of town like the good old days...millions of flying foxes flying over at 7pm each evening.
Flooded rivers...wild king tides...trees uprooted from sand dunes and tossed onto beaches...stinging blue bottles in hordes washed up on beaches...floaters with blue wands of agony.
Reminders that Paradise have Stingers to balance Serenity.
Surf crashing on Spooky Beach...sand between toes...waves pounding salt air rocks...surfboard riders at Angourie Point...waves...somersaults...paddling out for another...over and over...the cycle of life...man, board and water...the occasional surf chick zipping within.
When I was 17 I hitch-hiked about 1,200 kms from Sydney to Hervey Bay in Queensland one school holidays with a mate...but there was no surf so we hitched about 180kms south to the famous Noosa Beach where Midget Farrelly surfed the single wave from headland to headland to win the World Surfing Championship.
There was a caravan park one end, a milk bar in the middle and National
Park the other...got our ride to drop us at the secluded Sunshine Beach just south of there.
Our tent under a spindly tree on the beach...still have the cloth
"No Camping" sign behind my workshop door...surf-bum bliss...slipping daily under the Sunrise Caravan Park wire fence to fill our billies with fresh water...running then diving under the fence with the slap of bare feet in pursuit...walking the 5 miles to Noosa for strawberry milkshakes.
Around our fire...waves-a-crashing, flames-a-crackling , salt charged breeze, vivid stars, yarns spun each night.
When we first walked into the Noosa Beach Milk Bar the wild blonde-haired surfie dude looking up.
"Nicky Ellenakov??" I ask in dismay.
He had been the year ahead of me at Lindfield Primary School!!!
Small World...best milkshakes...funny that.
Drove with another mate to Sunshine Beach the following year...hitched our tent under the same tree...much easier to drive to Noosa for milkshakes than walking we found.
Noosa now is totally built-out...breakwater lined with luxury yachts & motorboats bisecting that single wave so it is no more...playground of the rich.
That tree we hitched our tent I could not find years later...kerbed and guttered...houses everywhere.
Like much of the East Coast of NSW...can't find a deserted beach for the life of me.
Until we came to the beaches around Yamba & Iluka!
Magic secluded windswept wild water bliss
Best keep secret...locals prefer them kept that way.
116th Maclean Scottish Highland Gathering He wandered from his caravan site yonder for a yarn as you do...Terry & Julie on that same site for the last 10 years...telling us the local haunts and a highland fling or two.
So Terry and I planned for the caber tossing teams event...Denise & Julie for a Highland Jig at Maclean...Australia's Scottish town.
14 Pipe Bands coming Saturday...every powerpole in the riverside town of Maclean painted with clan tartans...the organisers not knowing 'til the Thursday due to Covid if they could actually have it...mizzling Friday night...sunny skies opening on Sat morn promising large crowds and a wonderful day.
Terry piked for the Highland games...and just as well.
The men had muscles bulging over and under their kilts...T-shirts with
"Eat the Weak"..."Built 2 Big"..."LIFT"..."Aus-Wrestling"...some so big they didn't need to advertise...others in it 'cos they always do.
'Cos real men wear kilts...and no one there
will argue with that!!!
Putting the stone...cannonball throw...caber toss...sprinting...men & women's events...my favourite...log wrestling.
I picked
"L I F T" as my Champion...told him I had high hopes...he smiled as I said he was mine!
But in the caber toss
"Eat the Weak" came First,,,the guy with the long red beard who has contested for 25 years came Second and
"Cerberus" Third.
Glad Terry piked...reckon I'd have difficulty lifting the white 32 foot pole they call the caber...let alone flipping it on end as these kilted giants do.
The women & girls wear kilts too...the Highland Dance competitions fierce, fierce, fierce.
Pipe bands from all over Oz...strutting their stuff...loudspeaker repertoire...3 judges circling...bagpipe tunes still sound the same to my untrained ear.
Single pipers in the grandstand meeting room...judges at tables...hall packed...never seen so many kilts.
I smile at one piper and he appears to miss a note as he smiles back.
A wonderful day at Maclean...missed Bluesfest so a Regional Scottish Festival was the next best thing.
Then to top it off we met the parents of 10 year old Page who won the Highland Dance and is off to
the Nationals on the Gold Coast...shared their joy...as any proud parent would do!
We may have missed Bluesfest...but its the people you meet that are music to our feet.
Relax & Enjoy,
Dancing Dave
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
You are good at switching to Plan B...
a much valued attribute in this age. So you get to see Scottish Highland Games and mine are put off for another year.