The support crew at Port Fairy very kindly arranged for a car to take us the 25kms to Warrnambool station, where we’d get a train into Melbourne central to meet with the bus that would ferry us to the airport where we would pick up the hire car that we’d drive to the Burke & Wills festival in Mia Mia. It was a bit more of a palaver than it should have been because it was a public holiday, but I had a nice rock and roll moment chugging through the streets of Melbourne in a bus with my instruments. Don’t ask me what it was exactly, but I’ve always wanted to see Melbourne and to be there after a great festival on the way to another one was quite a nice feeling.

The drive from Melbourne to the Burke & Wills Festival north of Melbourne was an eye-opener for me.
 
I, like most of Australia and people around the world had watched the news reports in horror and disbelief on the bushfire tragedies in Victoria. It was one thing to watch on TV, but it was quite another to be confronted with the aftermath driving through the Victorian landscape to Andrew Pattison’s winery. No-one said how dry the land is. Parched, brown, dusty grass. At times I likened it to the surface of the moon and this was even before we saw what the fire had done.
 

 
Enormous stretches of blackened trees with orange leaves. It was quite surreal. We had heard reports of a fire headed towards Andrew & Heather’s winery but thankfully the firefighters contained the blaze. Victorians have assured me that once some decent rains fall it’s astonishing how quickly things green up again, and I hope this happens quickly for them.
 
Soon after we arrived a gorgeously healthy dinner was served (by healthy I mean salad, grilled zucchini, roast potatoes & grilled chicken breast, but these were leftovers according to Andrew. It was wonderful!) and Bridget & James Fagan decided to have a photographer snap-off, eg, Bridget took a photo of James while he was taking a photo of Paul & I taking photos of ourselves. Musicians are mental, no explanations are required:
 

 
After witnessing a spectacular sunset and full moon rising simultaneously, we were onstage performing.
 

 

Look closely and you can see the full moon!
 
The only downside to this gig was that Mannie wasn’t with us as he headed back to Brisbane for work earlier that morning. Still, it went pretty well. I have noticed that when we perform my song, ‘Drink Up Me Boys’ the audience tends to become rather teary, so I have now decided that this song requires a disclaimer that tissues may be required.  As we had completely sold out at Port Fairy we unfortunately had no CDs to sell, however Bridget found a lone one buried in her suitcase and Andrew graciously offered to donate his own copy to sell, so we actually sold two. Big thanks to Martin Pearson who manned the merchandise table and sold our two CDs!
 
We then proceeded to have one of the most magical, intimate and memorable evenings I have experienced in a long time. I am giving my personal detailed opinion of each of the performers here, as a broad opinion simply would not do them justice. With glasses of wine, lovely lighting and an audience of 30 or so, I had the absolute pleasure of watching Irish folk singer Enda Kenny, who literally had us all spellbound with his achingly beautiful songs & stunning melodies. His performance was so pure and honest that I decided to buy his albums two songs into his set.
 

 
Enda was ably followed by Nancy Kerr & James Fagan, performing in their element and absolute best form. Nancy’s current songs written while staying in Australia for the past few months are the finest I’ve heard from this incredible duo thus far, and I can’t *wait* to hear the album that captures these. ‘Sweet Peace’ and ‘Queen of the Water’ are still rolling around in my head; testament to Nancy’s songwriting ability and their ability to consistently perform and deliver.
 

 
After Nancy & James was Nano Stern from Chile. There is nothing more endearing for an audience member than watching a talented performer crack jokes and charm the pants off you in your own language. Nano decided to play a softer set than usual and concentrated on beautiful South American folk songs. He may have been singing in Spanish, but we all knew exactly what he was saying. A wonderfully earthy performance by a mesmerising guitarist and singer (who also plays a mean harmonic flute!).
 

 
Martin Pearson rounded the night off by performing songs cabaret style. I had fun watching him – he truly loves to sing, and does a brilliant job. Martin was backed by Alex Legg and Chris Pain, accomplished musicians themselves on guitar and harmonica. The evening progressed into a mad drinking session and telling of odd and peculiar tour stories with more than a few sore heads at breakfast the following morning!
 
We spent the night in Killara, a huge B&B just down the road that Andrew had booked out just for the artists and hit the road the next morning back to Brisbane and the mundane world of phone calls, trash emails, junk mail and preparing for St Pats.

Huge thanks to Andrew and Heather for inviting us to play at this amazing festival, putting us up and generally looking after everyone. It was a fantastic night and we felt so privileged to be a part of it.

For us, the Port Fairy Folk Festival started in true rock and roll style; getting into trouble at Brisbane airport at 4am.
 
When we fly, Mannie and I have to check the guitar and bouzouki into the over-sized baggage area (long gone are the days of carrying our treasures onboard with us). Before the instruments disappear down the conveyer, they’re checked for explosives. A yawning security officer swabbed Mannie’s zouk and the machine started beeping. Nonplussed, he did another swab and again, the machine went  nuts (I nearly wrote ‘ballistic’ there but that would’ve been a really crap joke!). On the third time it came through clean, and the guard explained they’re sometimes twitchy in the mornings. I guess machines need coffee too. But then as we went through the personal gate, Mannie was singled out for the search, and once again the swabs turned up positive. By now, we were wondering if perhaps it was something he worked with to do with carpentry, and were getting worried, but again, after a couple more runs it came through clean. The security people didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, but it was fairly amusing to me as the officer had a strong Russian-style accent, and there was Mannie with his Belfast brogue…
 
We caught the Port Fairy bus with a bunch of other similarly tired-looking musos including most of Shooglenifty (whom we seem to always bump into no matter where we are) and settled in for the 5-hour long, flat, brown bus ride. Thank heavens for iPods and airport novels!
 
Port Fairy is an utterly gorgeous town. Streets tunnelled by huge Norfolk pines, old kooky-looking buildings, the sea… It’s just lovely. It reminded us a little of Ross in Tasmania, except with the ocean. The festival itself is huge. The whole town gets involved, and for one weekend of the year this affluent sleepy seaside town is transformed utterly. The festival encompasses the town, using local venues, the main street, the surf club, church halls etc, with the central festival area taking over the vast sports/cricket ground. This part of the festival is separate, as it contains the paid venues, and it’s a bit like a country fair; big tents, stalls, performers etc, but the genius here is there’s a lot of free entertainment outside of the main event. Someone told me the tickets for this festival sell out so fast, they’re done through a lottery system. Judging by the great crowds, I’d believe it. The concert venues are great, and the organisers really go to town decorating the stages (something other festivals might want to take on board as some of the venues really did look special). The biggest of the tents looks like something out of Cirque de Solei and is really massive.
 
We were put up by the wonderful John & Del, in a very cosy B&B style environment. Beds were made mysteriously while we were gone, and chocolate biccies and tea bags were magically replenished. It was grand.
 
So, five gigs in four days. As this was our first time performing in Victoria, we really had no idea how we’d go, especially as there was a strong Celtic contingent including the aforementioned Shoogles, Nancy & James Fagan, Seamus Begley & Jim Murray, Alan Kelly, Colcannon and more.
 
We were just overwhelmed by the response.







Our first gig inside the festival was so packed the MC had to come on halfway through and ask everyone to move in more. This brings me to a wonderful festival institution called the Port Fairy Shuffle. Most of the venues have very minimal seating, and patrons are encouraged to bring their own chairs (the small baby deckchair things –there’s a height restriction). This sounds clumsy, but it works very well, as for gigs like the Shoogles or The Waifs, there’s always lots of good dancing room. When asked, the whole seated audience will shuffle over to make more room. It’s quite something to behold. No grumbling, complaints, people just do it. It’s also quite odd to see folks wandering around with deck chairs slung over their shoulders. I doubt it would work somewhere like Woodford, because of the heat, but in temperate Western Vic, it works a treat! After the gig, we’re allowed to sell our cds from the side of the stage (there is also a well-stocked shop).  From an artist point of view this is brilliant because it’s immediate, and despite what I thought, it didn’t get in the way of the next performer at all. After that gig, we had a queue across the floor for cds. Now this is my only negative about the weekend, but really it’s an amazing thing. We sold out of cds by the third day. I packed an entire caseload, and each of us had a load stuffed into bags. But hey, that’s a brilliant thing, and we ended up taking orders. I had an incredible moment, taking the last batch of cds into the store only to literally have them taken from in front of me one by one while I filled out the extra paperwork. By the time I had signed them in, they were gone.
 
The other wonderful ‘downside’ is that we are now very nearly sold out of our first pressing of albums. The second pressing will be delivered soon. It’s a very nice feeling!
 
We had the most amazing time. It’s an incredibly-well organised festival, and the support crews were just fantastic. Not once did we have a grumpy driver or an unhelpful person. In fact one of our drivers went out of her way to give us a guided tour of the town and the beautiful headland, and the crew even managed to organise a lift for us to Warrnambool on Monday, 25kms away (more about that and the Burke & Wills festival in another blog).  We got to see a lot of great acts (in addition to those already mentioned), including Lior, The brilliant Scared Weird Little guys (I nearly lost my coffee over the country singer skit), the Waifs, Gibb Todd, Mark Seymour, The Audreys, and the awesome Nano Stern from Chile.


And the coffee was great too, although being a bit cool in the mornings, the queues were often huge!
 
It was a smashing weekend, easily worth the 2am departure! But it wasn’t over yet, as on the Monday, we hopped a car, a train, a bus then a hire car and made it to the extremely intimate Burke & Wills festival…