Woodford Folk Festival

I am so proud of our family! We survived eight days of camping at the Woodford Folk Festival (henceforth WFF), one of the largest music festivals in Australia. Mud like you have never seen. Sun to burn skin. Tent collapsed and beds wet. But we did it and we had fun.

For those who don't know what WFF is you could check out the article on Wikipedia, but after this authoritative and unbiased account you'll know all you need to know.

About 120,000 people attend over a week, with music and acts of all kinds. It's not only folk; you can hear just about any kind of music you like. Some of it was even a bit head-banger-ish to my ears. The atmosphere in the temporary village is so relaxed and fun, unlike our real day-to-day routine.

To set the scene this year, our state has experienced flooding and torrential rains for weeks.Tens of thousands of homes have been inundated and thousands of people were stranded in evacuation centres. There have, unfortunately, been fatalities, too.

Undeterred, or maybe delusional, we left home on Boxing Day (Dec 26) with a Holden Commodore packed to the roof, and stuff strapped to the top as well. Woodford is less than an hours' drive from our place. It took us a few hard hours in the rain, but we worked cheerfully and got our camp set up with no major hiccups.

A quick trip down the hill from our prime camping spot in Cloudlands to the festival site for dinner whetted our appetites and wetted our gumboots. There are about 50 different places to eat, and we chose French food for our first meal!

We really knew the rain had been Biblical in volume, because it was even wet INSIDE the venues.

The next day while we were in the village working and having fun a storm blew in. Our camp then looked like this...

We rebuilt it.

We actually did have a couple of sunny days, as you can see from some of the photos. We didn't take photos on the rainy days!

Since tickets for a family of four would set us back about $1000 for 8 days' entry and camping, Hubby and I volunteered to be bar cashiers. Patrons buy tickets to take to the bartenders for drinks. My friend Helen manages the Northern Bars, and we knew she would give us shifts that allowed one of us to be with the girls at all times. The deal is that you work 30 hours for the festival and get in free. Some of my shifts were canceled (because of rain), so I got off lightly.

We enjoyed our work and got to know such nice people from all over. I set a record for the festival this year by taking in the most in one five-hour shift! That was a lot of counting, with no cash register and no time to use a calculator. I was about one percent off, I was told.

We mostly worked in the Pineapple Lounge, and were able to hear great blues, reggae, and poets during our shifts. There were almost 650 acts performing during the week on about 20 stages.

We loved the Chai Tent and spent New Year's Eve there. That's where the hippies hang out. Inside it smells like chai tea and hippies.

By the way, at home my favourite chai tea is Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice with sweetened, condensed milk.

The girls loved the shops and bought clothes, jewelery and books. They got henna tattoos!

One of the nicest things about WFF is the street performers. They are world class, and so much fun.

One group, the Gremlins, were building a 'rokit ship' in the village green, and wandered the streets as if they lived there. During the day you'd see them fishing in the pond, mocking people or wandering around looking silly. Each night they had a performance that told a little more of their story.

There was an art installation called 'Babel' which dealt with language, and an indigenous gallery, Yoweh.

I did a felting workshop for grownups and made a cobweb felted scarf. Together the girls and I did a felted scarf in the Children's Festival, sculpted a Bunyip, did beading and made headbands.

Dellylu's favourite spot at the festival was the creek. She loved to sit on a chair with her feet in the water watching the little kids playing. After twenty minutes of cold water on my feet I felt I was ready to get back into my gumboots.

Gumboots were omnipresent. Most days there was no place safe from the mud. We could not ever step outside of our tent without them on. I saw lots of gumboot injuries, with calves worn raw from the rubbing. I was so pleased I had thought ahead and brought long socks and knee-high panty hose. Not the most fashionable, but we each only got a couple of blisters on our toes.

A few of the acts we saw included;

Ykson

Von Doolette

Circus Arts Australia

Hat Fitz and Cara Robertson

The Twine

Dya Singh

Sabrina and the Red Vans

That 1 Guy

Lior

Cloudstreet

Briefs

Jambezi

Angela Little

TinPan Orange

Vika & Linda Bull

stringmanmassy

Sydonia

The Dynamites featuring Charles Walker

Orkestra del Sol

Arrested Development

One thing that I love about the village is watching the cairn grow during the week. Somehow, people know to add stones to the pile in the middle of the road. Above is how it looked on the first day.

On the last it was this fabulous creation captured in these less-than-fabulous photos.

On the last day I also took photos of some campsites near ours. Hubby joked about Woodford House and Gardens. And this is the better, higher and drier site. Many, many thousands of people were camped in the flats below.

The festival culminates with a fire even that was beyond my photography skills. I did get the photos below of some of the lanterns to show you the size. Also the size of the last available clean T shirt, the little sister's.

As we left on day eight, we all agreed we'd do it again. Our feet had been wet the entire time, but the fun outweighed the fungus!