Fairbridge Folk Festival

We've just got back from a lovely weekend of camping and folk music at the Fairbridge Folk Festival.

Out came our bell tent for a nice relaxing couple of days.

The festival has been running for 21 years, and is based on a national heritage site called Fairbridge village.  It  is a small complex of land and buildings that was originally built as a kind of school/community project back in 1912. Orphaned and deprived children from Britain were shipped out to be educated here to ensure the colonies continued to be populated with 'good Anglo-Saxon stock'. I'm not sure if the children had much choice in the matter, those early settlers sure had some crazy ideas.

Now it's mostly used for tourism, youth groups and camps, and during the festival some of the old buildings were used as venues for the music acts.

The chapel is the most interesting building, with amazing acoustics for performances held inside.

 

Getting slightly rotund.

All the venues were either inside buildings, or inside big marquees, keeping the (still hot for autumn) Australian sun off, and doubling up as shelters from the torrential rain, which we experienced all day Saturday (just like a good old British festival!)

It was a really well organised festival, with a real family feel to it. The standard of all the artists and musicians was really high, with varied performers from all over Australia, Ireland, the UK, Eastern Europe and America playing throughout the weekend.

The musical highlight of the weekend was probably Mama Kin, a Fremantle based singer who headlined on Friday night.

She was joined for one song by her husband John Butler.

We love the smaller festivals, folk festivals in particular seem to have really nice chilled out vibes. All the artists hang around at the festival after they have played, and you can have a chat with them and the people around you. 

The mainstream festivals in the UK just seemed to be getting a bit too crazy and crowded for our liking, but perhaps we are just showing our age. 

We may well be back next year for Fairbridge (with our little Smallard in tow).

xxxx

The Bibbulmun Track

As the weather is starting to cool down now, we decided that come Sunday we'd go for a little hike. We were welcomed on Sunday morning with glorious total cloud cover. Something which we haven't seen often in the last 4 months, so we were even more keen to get out and about, without the inconvenience of soaring heat.

We wanted to walk part (a very small part) of the Bibbulmun track, which stretches 604 miles from Kalamunda in the Perth Hills near where we live, to Albany on the south coast. We only did a few miles, as we didn't want to push ourselves too much. Emma is 5 months pregnant don't forget, and neither of us are as fit as we were when we were travelling the UK. To walk the track end-to-end takes about 6-8 weeks, so probably something we'll never do unfortunately.

We're guessing Angelique was someone's pet.

An unusual but likable memorial; we presume to someone who liked the Bibbulmun track, rather than who perished trying to conquer it (I hope so anyway).

These steps were built by prisoners from a nearby prison. I know if I were serving time, I'd rather be outside building steps than stuck inside four walls.

Emma sporting a rather nice bump here.

We hope to do a lot more exploring now the weather is cooler. So we'll hopefully have more blog posts coming soon.

Frank Turner, Busselton and a Halfway Bump

We've had a pretty awesome weekend, starting on Thursday night when we saw Frank Turner in a small club in Perth.

Frank is a folk/punk singer from a village near Winchester in Hampshire, not far from where we used to live (about 6 miles from where Nick grew up in fact). Although he has never had much mainstream success, he has a pretty big following in the UK. We saw him last April in Wembley Arena, where tickets sold out.

He tours world-wide non-stop so I knew it wouldn't be long before he came to Perth.....

Seeing him at Wembley was great, but I really wanted to see him at a smaller venue. This is practically impossible in the UK as tickets sell out in minutes. But in Australia he is not so well known and so we got to see him play at this tiny little venue in Perth. We were stood right at the back were still only 8-10 metres away.

Then on Friday we both had the day off because it was our 20-week scan. Nick couldn't make the 12-week scan so it was the first time he had seen the little bambino moving about. We didn't get many clear pictures as it was being naughty and curling it's arms and legs up in front of it's face!

After the scan we set off with our new bell tent down to Busselton, about 3 hours drive south of Perth. Lovely rain greeted us on our arrival!

We love our new tent - brings back good memories of our old one that we took around the UK. We have upgraded from a 3m to a 4m and it makes so much difference - much more space inside and Nick can actually walk around in this one.

We then spent the rest of Friday, Saturday and Sunday exploring the area, drinking tea, going paddling, shopping and sampling restaurants.

Busselton and the surrounding area was lovely, lots of cafés and galleries, and gorgeous beaches. Plus, several degrees cooler than Perth at about 26-27 degrees, very pleasant indeed.

We stopped off quickly for lunch at a marina in Mundarah on the way home, about an hour from Perth on the coast. Lots of big yachts and restaurants on the quay.

And finally, for the keen-eyed amongst you, a cheeky halfway bump photo.

Much love to you all. Hope our friends in the UK are finally starting to warm up.

Emma & Nick xx