Cygnet Music Festival - Cygnet, Australia
Cygnet, Australia
Well here we are at our first Aussie Music Festival. We heard about Cygnet on the ferry on Sunday and after spending 2 days in northern Tassie we beetled down here, an hour south of Hobart to the stunning Huon Valley. Arriving early was a great choice as we have the most amazing view over the bay from our campsite. Also, it is lovely to be in one place for 5 days, do the laundry, put the awning on the Tardis out, set up the outdoor stove, install the solar shower and portaloo in our pop up ensuite, (yes, we have a bathroom tent!, which will be a good thing as there are only 3 showers and 8 loos, women's that is, and about 6000 people) and chat to our ever increasing supply of neighbours. Ah ha, I realise for the first time in my life I'm one of those people at a festival who has an enviable set! -up only achievable if you arrive two days early. Cygnet is a town about the size of Stromness and they arrange their festival in a similar way with half a dozen venues in the town where one can easily walk to everywhere including the campsite in 20minutes. Like Stromness, the night before the festival starts there is an open session in one of the pubs, so Michael and I went along and did some songs. Festival Headliners/international acts are the Danish band, Afenginn, and the London Klezmer Quartet and recently back from Glastonbury, the Aussie 'Formidable Vegetable Sound System' who sing about permaculture and sustainability. Amazing beatbox and computer generated sound. Opening night we plumped for the acoustic blues and Americana gig! which had a high banjo content and was wonderful - of a standard comparable to what we get at the Orkney folk festival. Walking back through the town we caught a couple more acts in other venues. The festival operates a wristband system for the whole weekend (£100 equivalent including camping=bargain) so you can pop in anywhere for as long or as short a time as you wish. Michael attended a bluegrass banjo workshop on Friday so he may be getting the old finger picks out when we get home. There had been a high Klezmer, Gypsy, Balkan content to this festival which is fine by us. As I write this I am listening to a Tasmanian Macedonian dance band, Xenos - in fact they came to Woodwick House in Orkney about 10 years ago, I distinctly remember the little goat bagpipes with fur and tails! Hallelujah for multiculturalism and allowing displaced peoples refuge. Actually a thorny issue in Oz at present. I don't want to get political but we are hearing all kinds of horror stories about the recently elected uber conservative government here. Sadly, we may have come to Oz just in time before it is mined within an inch of its life. I remember the successful campaign 30 years ago to save Tassie's Franklin River from being dammed; according to The Wilderness Society this piece of virgin unspoiled wilderness may be under threat again. Across Friday, Saturday and Sunday we have seen just about everyone we wanted to. Wow, what a lot of local Tassie talent as well as bands from other parts of Oz. If you can be bothered, check out on YouTube: Guerilla Zingari, The Stray Hens, Fanny Lumsden and the Thrillseekers and Lulu and the Paige-Turners. All completely different. Well my foot is much better. I'm not up to dancing or long walks yet, so can continue to be lazy. Monday, we head back up north to start our loop around Tassie in a fairly logical manner, perhaps.....? Note - St Kilda photos are up on last Blog posting.