This will be my fifth in a row. I have a nice life, indeedy. Let's reminisce.
The first year, 2006, I saw my first huntsman spider. Introduced by my banjo buddy, Tom, who used a newspaper to gently nudge the beast out of the back of his van. That was the year that I camped along the fence near the trees that can suddenly drop their branches as a form of self pruning during droughts. To be fair, knowledgable people had examined the branches above and not that I noticed, but the potentially dangerous branches were probably a safe distance away.
In 2007, I scored a place for my tent under a deciduous tree, good for shade and for not dropping their branches. However, I did see a huge branch fall to earth. Twice. Now I really believed the signs that say "DO NOT CAMP UNDER THE TREES".
2008 taught me about fire preparation and snakes. A change of weather was due at 5pm and we were warned that if the wind moved toward us, an evacuation would be necessary. Promptly at 5pm, a good rain started and the wind moved away from us. A snake was spotted near the workshop building. 'nuff said about that.
And, fast forward to 2009, when the fire came too close for comfort, so the organizers deftly moved the festival over to Blackwood, VIC. And, the Blackwood festival was born. The only encounter with natural disaster that year was my introduction to March flies. A relative of the northern hemisphere's horsefly to which apparently, I have no natural immunity and scratched at those bite for months. Months.
This year, the timing of the festival was moved away from the fire season. Next week I'll make the trek to Yarra Junction in the autumn for this year's adventure. Maybe this will be the year that I'll be frozen to death before the branch falls on my snakebitten arse and the huntsmen eat me for lunch.
Time will tell. In the meantime, I will have the utmost rocking time jamming with some of the best and nicest old time players in the world. Lets hope my Zoom H2 is working and I get some recordings so you can hear some.
2 comments:
Is this kinda stuff just par for the course down under?
We have our own dangers and adventures up in the northern hemisphere, too. Just more familiar, I guess.
I meant to add that I'll be doing a fiddle workshop!
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