Playing catch-up

Well, it's Saturday night, or more precisely, early Sunday morning, and where am I? Yep. At work. Oh the exciting life I lead, sometimes its almost to much to bare. Ah well. It was my choice to pick up this overnighter, and tomorrow nights as well. A comprehensive falling-in-heap is scheduled for monday. Joyous celebrations are scheduled for next pay day. Until then I reserve the right to grumble about lack of sleep and achey bits. After payday the topic of grumblation (well it's a word now, deal with it) shall be Mr Taxman.

Anywho, its about time I posted on the events of the Easter weekend. After work on Good Friday, Nat and I headed up to Castlemaine for the weekend. Some other friends were going to come too, but had to cancel at the last minute. This was the first time Nat had made it up to see mum's place, since for the last 2 years she hasn't had a break at the same time as me. So it was rather fortunet that this visit happended to coincide with the Castlemaine State Festival, which only occurs once every two years. During this festival all the artists in central Victoria, and a good many from much further afeild, come out of the woodwork. It doesnt matter where your interest lies. Theatre, music, and visual arts of every description. Classics, new age and everything inbetween. It was all very much in evidence. Every venue in town had something on, right down to the old mine shafts and goldrush era buildings.

Nat and I arrived at mum's at 6pm on Friday night, and after settling in, giving Nat the grand tour and introduing her to the goaty girls, we headed off to the chinese resturant for dinner, where we spend most of the meal trying to figure out what the artistic statement next to our table was about. After we got back to mum's I started idly flicking throught the program guide, thinking there wouldn't be anything on that late, only to find something that sounded interesting that started in half an hour. So off we went again into town to see a performance at one of the old pubs. The group was a trio called Vardos, and if you ever get the chance to see them I strongly encourage you to do so. They were comprised of a very animated violinist, who also introduced each number and was an absolute crack up, double bass and accordian players. They played Romanian and Bulgarian gypsy music, which was quite lively with occasional sad parts, and were captivating from start to finish. It was also good just to be doing something so far from the norm, and the cocktails didn't go down to badly either! After an intermission, a jazz group came on, which was good but not as engaging as Vardos. As it was getting late and we felt we'd definetly gotten our moneys worth, Nat and I sat out in the beer garden for a bit then called it a night.

On Saturday, after much um-ing and uh-ing over what to see that night - adult puppet theatre or an opera-jazz fusion thriller (we settled on the adult puppet theatre), we went into town with mum and Dave to get our tix only to discover that our first choice was sold out and the other had been cancelled! Ah well. After a wander around town (it was a beautiful day for it) we headed down to Victory Park to see Erth, the group that did the Ned Kelly sequence from the 2000 Olympics opening ceremony. The production, which was on every day of the festival, was set in an ancient Australian garden, with giant inflateable plants, a sinister red back spider, who spent half the time hanging upside down on aerial rigging, and stilt walking insects. It was fasinating to watch as the inflatables gradually unfolded, and David found it hilarlious when the spider came down from his rigging to grab someone, only to be eaten by a carniverous plant (complete with a very satisfied sounding burp).

At the end of the show, the performers came out to talk to the audience and invite them to have a look at the garden. The insects had changed into gardeners outfits, but the spider came out carrying his costume, so that the younger audience members could see it was a person under all of that. We got chatting with the spider, and told him about how much David had loved it when he attacked people, as he has a very visual sence of humour due to his autism. The actors response was to turn to Dave and ask him if he would like to try on the costume and be a spider! Definite brownie points for that!
So Dave posed for the camera, holding his arms out in scary spider pose, while a little boy who was probably all of about 5 announced that he wanted to be next, only to be told that 'they don't have any small enough'.

After a pleasent late lunch we went for another wander around, pointing out some of the more historical sites, such as where they used to keep the gold before sending it to Melbourne, which is now a private residence but was open to the public for the duration of the festival, and the tree that miscreants used to be chained to before the town had a lock-up, and of course the hotel where they filmed the exterior shots for Blue Heelers (what tour would be complete without that?!). We then started to head home, but got sidetracked and went to Guildford to see the Big Tree instead. The Big Tree (yep, thats its official title) is about 30m high, 35m across the canopy and has a 10m trunk circumfrence. Its estimated to be between 500 and 1000 years old so its got some pretty funky hollows and branch formationtions where multiple branches have fused together. The town has actually re-routed the roads around it because the roots were getting cramped, and moved the powerlines to avoid pruning. Anyway. Its a cool tree. We then went back to mums to relax for the evening.

Sunday we had every intention of going to the last day of festival celebrations at the Botanical gardens, but got sidetracked by the neighbors goats and ran out of time. Just as well. Mum went there after we left and ended up coming straight home because there were that many people there that cars were parked for over a kilometre in every direction. On the way home we stopped off at Malmsbury and Taradale to take photos of the bridges there for Nats dad, who is going to be involved in work on them. Pretty funky old bridges with that beautiful old stonework, especially the one at Malmsbury, which had heaps of character.

After all the excitment of looking at old stuff, it was off home to relax for a couple of hours before Easter dinner at Nonna's, where young master Riley, now 3 1/2 months old, was the centre of attention, as he should be.