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Published: April 20th 2009
Off to the Bluesfest
Look, clean gum boots!We travelled the short distance from Murwillumbah to Byron Bay on Wednesday 8 April, arriving before noon at the Byron Bay Tourist Village. This was very handy as it meant we could be allocated a nice dry camp site separated from the main crowd of campers that were arriving during the next few days. Byron Bay is inundated with people over Easter, a large portion of which are like us and are here mainly for the
East Coast Blues and Roots Music Festival.
The rain that we had been having further north had also occurred here, so the general camping area, although nice and grassy, was covered with pools of water and mixed with a bit of mud. Fortunately our camp site was nice and high and we never had any problems with water or mud (unlike our site in Brisbane).
It was quite fine, sunny and warm on Wednesday but by Thursday the showers had come back in force. Our 'tourist village' was right across the road from the Bluesfest, so in between showers we picked up our entry wrist bands in the morning and got a bit of a taste of how wet, soggy and muddy the festival grounds were going to be
- the path in was covered with water and the thin coating of grass was quickly turning to a mud mush. The purchase of cheap gum boots a few days earlier for Alex, Annelies and Thomas was going to prove very sensible while Mark braved it out with his 'Crocs'. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to work out which acts we would see over the 5 days and how to juggle them all in - some bands played more than once so if two favoured bands clashed (there were 5 'stages'), there was a chance we'd get to see one of them on another day. We headed back to the Bluesfest in time for the 4pm start. Every other day (Fri-Mon) it commenced at noon and we were usually there around that time. The last gigs finished at midnight, but Alex and the children didn't always make it that late.
There are too many acts to list all those we saw over the 5 days and we ended up avoiding some of the bigger ones because of the manic crowds in the large 'Mojo' tent, although we did see John Butler, Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, Xavier
On the ferris wheel
With Mardi gras beads Rudd, Alabama 3 and Ash Grunwald in the Mojo, but the latter two acts were on early before the crowds had gotten too large.
Friday was the only day it didn't rain during the afternoon or evening and on Monday it hardly stopped raining at all. By then, the festival grounds were just a mud pit and the only late act that Mark and Thomas wanted to see was Ben Harper & Relentless7, but he was playing the Mojo stage, which was ridiculously overcrowded. With another shower falling, we decided to give Ben a miss and ended up leaving around 10pm.
Some of the acts we saw and liked (but not necessarily favourites of all of us!) were John Butler, Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins, Seasick Steve, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, CW Stoneking, Bob Log III, Ash Grunwald, Eugene “Hideaway” Bridges, Eric Bibb, Lucinda Williams, Luka Bloom, Pugsley Buzzard and Ruthie Foster. We also enjoyed Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience and not just because Alex, Annelies and Thomas all managed to catch the Mardi gras beads that were continually thrown to the crowd. Thomas also enjoyed the show put on by Mic Conway's National Junk Band. Alabama 3
Bob Log III
Yes, that's a helmet, gas mask & jump suit! was another act that we enjoyed except for the large amount of profanities that came from the lead singer's mouth, which caused Thomas to comment “If he can't think of an adjective, he just says the f-word”. How true!
We spent of lot of our time at the Bluesfest watching acts with Jon, a friend of ours from Melbourne. It was nice having company and catching up again.
On Sunday morning, we drove up to Bangalow, hoping to catch some markets, but also to re-charge the car auxiliary battery which was running low due to the fridge. We normally get a powered site at caravan parks but even though we had booked our camp site 6 months previously, we couldn't even get a powered site back then. Unfortunately the markets were not on but it was a nice drive nonetheless. There were markets on in Byron Bay on Monday, but the rain put an end to our plans to walk to them.
On Tuesday, we met friends from Brisbane (Graham, Robin, Astrid and Aiden) for lunch. They especially made the diversion through Byron Bay on their way to camp at Yamba to see us. The children were
all similar in age and had a lovely play on the beach before and after our lunch at the (very expensive) Byron Bay Beach Café. After saying goodbye to Graham et al, we did the loop walk up to the lighthouse and Australia's most easterly point.
On Wednesday we headed up to Kingscliff for a few days.
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