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Published: June 11th 2007
our camp
Penny's camp trailer, our tent and also Cathy, Penny's friend camped in her car beside us Every year for the past 16 years, Townsville has held its annual folk festival on the Queens birthday long weekend.
It is held 40 kms south of Townsville at Mountain View Lake Eco Park which is a small caravan park beside some beautiful hills and a lovely lagoon. You can camp in unpowered sites, but need to bring all your own camping gear, shower and toilet facililites are situated in the main festival area, with showers of the very cold variety and basic toilets provided. There were some great food stalls, including the Hare Krishnas, Taste of Thailand, Ice creams, Coffee, Chai Tea and Biscuits, Hamburgers, Juices and more coffee. There were the usual market stalls of clothing and associated jewellery, and bits and pieces.
The festival starts on Friday night and goes until Monday afternoon with two main performing areas, the main stage and the Jam Tin, as well as Frog Hollow for workshops, an acoustic area called The Settlers and children's festival area.
The focus of this gestival seems to be on encouraging the local artists to perform with most of the performers local groups, not just from the folk genre of music. There was
The camping area
As soon as the sun set behind these hills it became very very cold around 5 degrees at night quite a lot of blues, bluegrass and world music amongst the local perfomers as well as folk and almost country.
Cloudstreet was one of the main acts, with four others also named as headliners but unknown to me except for one which i have heard of through Woodford Folk Festival but not seen perform.
The Wattle and Gum bush band performed a huge bush dance on Saturday night, they have at least 15 players on stage, with fiddles, violins, mouth organs, percussion, accordians, guitars, mandolins and banjos, creating a huge sound.
There must have been around 200 dancers, it was huge. The bush dance went for 2 hours straight with the usual dances of Circassian Circle, Heel & Toe Polka, Strip the Willow as well as They Gypsy Tap and Gay Gordons which are dances usually found at balls. They had an excellent caller and a few people amongst the audience helping with directions.
To clear the area before the dance they run a fire event in another area in which dancers perform with fire ropes and fire sticks. Quite simple in concept with a little symbolism, a live band, and lots of dancers making some great
More hills
We had a cold snap go through Queensland but with the proximity of the hills and being out in the open it made camping a real challenge patterns.
Following the fire event was a the bar music session which then flowed into the bush dance.
All in all a great little festival with quite a different flavour to it compared to Wintermoon and Woodford.
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