Category: 2015

Five days, awesome music, rain, incredible crowds, Paul Kelly, costumes, rain, hair, blues, Tony Joe White, gospel, rock n rain, Marlon Williams, dreadlocks, mud and mud boots, Beth Hart bringing tears, what a singer, Keb Mo, sore feet, great food, Gary Clarke Jnr a Jimi Hendrix clone and more, foot tapping, hip swaying, thigh slapping, funny walks to the blues beat.

Five days of a music festival from midday to midnight is a challenge . It must be what a marathon is like. Start out at a steady pace, get to the middle of the festival in good shape, and rush madly at the finish to trying catch those last few acts before it is all over. The race to the finish is hectic and some hit the wall to trudge home, albeit with a blues beat gait, songs in our heads and the good feeling you get when around thousands of people who smile, laugh, sing and shout with pleasure at the artistry of others.

 

How good is this place? We couldn’t pick the tide or the weather but the island delivered to us in spades with its beauty and variety.

High tide forced us inland along a necklace of sandy tracks which threaded numerous beads of blue and orange lakes. Lake McKenzie with its corona of powdery white sand and ice blue iris was busy with brown backpackers.

Lake Allom’s orange waters are home to numerous long necked tortoises and on our approach, they glided towards us crocodile like, with their heads barely above the surface while small fish nibbled at our toes.

 

 

A strangler fig had squeezed the life from a forest giant which succumbed to time and returned to the earth leaving the fig to circle a void like a roll of fencing mesh.

 

 

 

The island surprises. Nutrient poor sand grows forest giants and purple water lilies exist in freshwater streams on the beach washed by salty king tides.

The 80 year old Maheno wreck is now a rusty hulk yet some decking timbers remain. Lashed by years of tides, storms and cyclones like the one that left the ship stranded, these remaining teak boards are testimony to their durability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We drove around Indian Head where backpackers dipped in the deep holes of the Champagne Pools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch with the giants of Pile Valley then onto the barge at Kingfisher Bay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think we’ll be back.

We’d heard these well preserved relics of the NSW gold mining days were worth a visit and weren’t disappointed when we spent a few days driving and walking around the district. A coffee in the Hill End store across the road from the double storeyed Royal Hotel put us in the mood to stay the night.

 

The town was fortunate to have Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss open a photographic business in the rush days and their long lost but now treasured photographs form a record of the buildings and residents of Hill End from those times.

http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/society_art/photography/holtermann/

Apricot and plum trees in full and tasty fruit marked where residences once stood. National Parks have erected information boards in front of these grassy allotments and Merlin and Bayliss’ photographs allow the mind to create images of the town in its day. Piles of brick rubble reconstruct and men, women and children appear to stand in front of their humble abodes.  In quite a few photos I sure I saw a man with a camera slung around his neck pinching fruit from the trees.