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Published: April 25th 2006
View from our tent....
....our home at Byron for five days. For Easter I went to
the 17th Annual East Coast International Blues and Roots Music Festival with Sean. It's held in Byron Bay about two hours south of Brisbane.
Day 1:
Wednesday evening we caught a flight from Avalon airport to Brisbane. We got a cheap one so of course it was late and we didn't get to our hotel till after 1 that night😞.
Day 2:
The next morning we got up early to catch the bus to Byron Bay. We had a bit of spare time after checking in so we left our bags at the bus station and went to sit by the river for a while, spotting some lizards on the way.
The bus journey was a bout two hours and we passed through Surfer's Paradise on the way. There were some road works when we got closer to Byron which slowed us down a bit. It was hot when we arrived which was a nice change from the cold we're currently experiencing in Melbourne. We got some lunch at the Railway Bar nearby and then caught a taxi back to the
Byron Bay Van Village, aka our campsite, which we had passed on the way in. We set up the
Brisbane below
View from the hotel room tent and then headed across the road to catch a shuttle bus to the festival. There was a bit of a queue but it moved quickly unlike the one to get into the festival itself. They had neglected to tell us that by buying a ticket online you then had to queue for an hour to receive a wristband which gives access to the festival for the rest of the weekend (we also had to wear wristbands to get into o the campsite). People who had actually bought 'real' tickets were allowed straight in!
So after the little set back we entered the festival site. It was much smaller than I imagined but there was a good atmosphere. We wandered around for a bit taking it all in and then went to the Mojo tent where we saw
Hilltop Hoods (definitely Sean's choice of music, not mine - hip hop, rap stuff!) and
Bernard Fanning (lead singer with the Aussie band Powderfinger). We had some Hare Krishna food for dinner and then stopped by the Crossroads tent.
Sigur Ros (from Iceland) were just starting and we listened to their first song. We were really impressed but also very, very
tired so we left and caught the bus back to our campsite (on the other side of town).
Day 3:
Friday was our first full day at the festival and in order to miss all the queues we got there early before any of the artists had started to play. The weather was fantastic again and we went on the
star dancer to get a feel for where we were and try and catch a glimpse of the coast. We treated ourselves to pancakes for breakfast before going to watch the acts.
We saw
The Hands featuring
Ngaiire, a little bit of
The Skatalites,
Batucada Sound Machine,
GOCOO + GoRo,
Michael Franti with
Kieran Murphy,
India.Arie,
Pete Murray,
Jamie Cullum and a great finale by
David Gray.
After a 13 hour day at the festival all we wanted to do was go back to our tent and sleep. Unfortunately everyone else wanted to do the same so we again had to queue (for an hour!) to get the bus. It was a very long day.
Day 4:
There weren’t that many people we keen on seeing in Saturday's lineup so we decided to have a lie
in and take it easy. We went to Belongil beach for a swim and to relax. It was just 1km away so it was a nice walk. The waves were quite strong so it wasn't that great for swimming in and then when Sean came running towards me shouting
get out, get out, well we did! There were lots of
bluebottle jellyfish in the water! Apparently they don't kill so they're not the really bad ones but they can sting you pretty badly. And as we walked along the beach away form the water we saw lots of them washed up on the beach. We were lucky to not have been stung! Their tentacles were really long, maybe 20cm - they can actually be up to 10 metres long!!!!!
We chilled out on the beach after our ordeal and then went back to the campsite before going to the festival for the evening.
We saw
Bob Geldof,
Beth Orton and
The Hothouse Flowers. Again we were pretty exhausted - watching and listening to music for hours is more tiring than it seems!!
We left just before The Hothouse Flowers finished in order to beat the queues for the
bus😊. Once inside out tent it started to rain and as we were drifting off to sleep the thunder and lightning started. We hadn't fully closed up the tent as we'd been woken the morning before with the heat of the sun - I had gotten out of the tent and slept on a picnic blanket outside for a while! Because of this the end of the sleeping bags got a bit wet. We didn't get much sleep that night because of the storm.
Day 5:
Sunday morning it was still raining and it didn't stop till midday! That's 12 hours of very heavy rainfall so we were basically trapped in our tent until it stopped. However, the need to go the toilet got rather bad so Sean braved the rain. He came back soaking wet so I put on my bikini for my trip to the bathroom! I jumped out of the tent and ran, immediately loosing a thong (flip-flop) in the floods! I decided to take them off and ran barefoot through the swamped campsite over to the toilets, passing two happy ducks along the way! I was drenched when I got back to the tent but
soon dried off. We realised we were quite lucky as many campers had given up and packed their tents up and left. We had felt lots of water under the tent but somehow it stayed out. Later after the rain stopped there were wet sleeping blankets hanging up all over the campsite.
The only person we wanted to see at the festival that day was
The Robert Cray Band and as they didn't start till 10:30pm we basically had the rest of the day to ourselves. We went into the town itself and had a long lunch, did some shopping and went for a walk along Main Beach. We decided to walk all the way up to Cape Byron Lighthouse too. This was a bit scary at times as it was dark by this stage we weren't 100%!s(MISSING)ure of the way! We made it though. The lighthouse lies on the most easterly point of mainland Australia and it's also the most powerful lighthouse in Australia! The walk there and back took about two hours but was one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip.
Later that night we went to see Robert Cray as planned and
were thoroughly impressed. His music is timeless and he is a true classic.
Day 6:
Monday was the last day of the festival and one of the groups that I'd most wanted to see
Rodrigo y Gabriella were playing at 12 when it opened. They’re a Mexican duo but big in Ireland and I have seen them play in London. They played a lot of stuff I'd heard before but I think the crowd was happy as it was probably the first time most of them even heard of the duo.
After they finished we went back into town for the day. We decided to try swimming at Main beach. We didn't have our bathers with us so decided to buy some more as it wasn't worth going back to the campsite again. The waves at this beach were even stronger then Belongil beach so it was quite tiring being in the water but thankfully there was not a jellyfish to be seen!
In the evening we returned to the festival to see
Jackson Brownewith
David Lindley,
The Cat Empire and
Michael Franti and Friends.
Day 7:
The festival was over so there was nothing left
to do but pack up our things and make our way back to Melbourne. We caught the bus back to Brisbane again and then a plane to Melbourne. We were a pair of tired but happy people as we thought about trip to Byron Bay.
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