First Entry!

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Hello Friends,
After an exhausting and busy time packing and cleaning both Sue's place and mine and moving our stuff into storage we finally left Melbourne on Friday March 11 and reached our first stop - the wonderful Port Fairy Folk Festival! We arrived without side-swiping any poles with our van and without the van falling off the back of the car!! Phew! What an achievement!
As usual we relished the delights of camping in the caravan park with great friends, showing off our new van, and immersing ourselves in fantastic music. There are about 10 venues offering music from early morning (mind you musicians reckon anything before lunch-time is early!) until midnight and it is impossible to leave dissatisfied. It's called a "Folk" festival but there is such a range of musical styles with the exception of rap and heavy metal (thank goodness) and classical. My favourites this year were Mary Black's daughter, Roisin and a French Canadian group. One morning Sue and I threw a load of washing in and Sue hung it on the line. Later I retrieved it and at midnight when Sue was folding it she held up a big old blue T-shirt with a big picture of Mr Grumpy on the front with the words "Mr Grumpy"on it!! Woops... that wasn't ours!! I suggested she quickly hang it back on the line but she went to bed instead. Next morning our friend Julie came back from the bathroom reporting that two women had a conversation that went like this: "Can you believe it. Someone stole my husband's T-shirt from the line". "Really? In a place like this?". So I grabbed the T-shirt and went to hang it back on the line. As I approached the line a woman came at me saying, "That's my husband's T-shirt"!!! So after some explanation and apology it was returned to it's rightful owner, though the woman said she was just about to write on the public notice-board, "Mr Grumpy is not impressed"!! and the husband suggested we might have ironed it before returning it! Later at the festival Julie saw him wearing it and was tempted to ask whether Mr Grumpy was now Mr Happy!!
Whilst at Port Fairy my hair-style went from long, thick and curly to short, thick and straight as I was attacked by a woman with a glint in her eye and clippers in her hand! Actually it was in aid of the Leukaemia Foundation's Shave for a Cure and I am pleased to have raised over $500!! The shave was witnessed by a group of friends who cheered from the side-lines, ohhh'ed and ahhh'ed and assured me that it looked good even when hair was still going in all directions! After the pony-tail was chopped, I said that I had changed my mind... but, too late. It is about 1cm in length now and I am pretty happy with it. By the time we return to Melbourne in 8 months it will be a reasonable length and it is so easy to manage now. I keep pouring copious amounts of shampoo and conditioner onto my hand to realise I only need a eighth of that. And it dries now in 5 minutes rather than 5 hours!
After we left Port Fairy we spent a night in our first free camp - in the bush at Mt Schank - one of Australia

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