03/03/24. We’d just spent the best part the the last three days at Cobargo Folk Festival but realised we’d seen nothing of the town itself. The festival takes place on Cobargo show ground which is situated on the eastern edge of the town. As our accommodation was in Bermagui, east of Cobargo our journey in and out every day ok us away from town and not through it. As we’d got a couple of days free we thought we’d take a ride in this morning. As we drove past the festival site we could see the breakdown process was well underway. All of the campers and stall holders had gone and the stage marquees were being dismantled. We parked up in town and had a wander around. Cobargo has a nice feel to it, there’s a bit of an old hippy vibe with a few arty shops, some neat scrap iron sculpture and the like.
As we were heading to get a coffee we met up with James one of the stage managers. I recognised him by his fetching pink hat. We sat outside and had our coffee together. He was heading back to his home in Canberra after coffee, about a three hour journey which should see him arrive in time for his Pilates class. He was telling us that he volunteers at a lot of the festivals and we’ll see him again in three weeks time at Yakandandah. I was wearing a Cobargo festival T-shirt and as we were walking down the street an old guy shouted to me from a truck asking if it was a good festival. He looked like Sea Sick Steve, but twice the age and unlike SSS this guy was the real deal. We had a chat and he said he usually goes to the festival but didn’t make it this time. “Was there plenty of dope around” he said. I told him a caught the odd whiff but nothing much. He said they must have had cops there, it’s normally all over the place. I said I’d not seen any, he said “you wouldn’t spot them, they look like you”. He then told us that his grandsons were taking him fishing and gave us a run down of all the different fish in the river.
We then had a couple of more days in Bermagui to lounge around, go walking, swimming in the sea and generally recharging our batteries.
06/03/24. Today’s drive was a big one – just under 500km heading west inland to Gerogery West. Our hosts for the next couple of days are Roger and Jeanette Findlay. Roger is a Brit and a life-long Liverpool fan who, despite leaving the UK over forty years ago, still gets up in the early hours to watch every Liverpool game on tv. Jeanette is South African – a bundle of energy and a cracking laugh.
Roger would log onto our livestreams during Covid. We’ve never met, but as soon as he heard we were heading back to Oz, he immediately offered us a bed and said he’d try and set us up a gig locally. As you will know by now, that is not an offer we could possibly refuse. Roger connected us with a music bar in Albury who were initially keen to host a gig. I say initially because once we’d set the date, the owner who did all of the bookings went very quiet and didn’t respond to our emails. We were thinking that it might not be happening as there was nothing about the gig on the venue’s Facebook page. But then the day before, he shared the event. This is not the best way of promoting a gig, I got hold of the guy’s phone number and left a message asking what time we needed to be there etc, but no response. So we turned up on the night in good time, to then be told by the two lads running the bar that Chris the owner wasn’t going to be there that night. I asked one of the lads what was the plan regarding payment for the gig and he said he’d no idea. He was a nice lad and I said I realise that this wasn’t his fault, but we were not playing a note until we knew what was happening. The other lad then said, “I’ll call Chris”. He can back within two minutes and said that Chris would be there by 8.30pm with the cash. Kip asked how he’d managed to get it sorted so quickly, and he grinned and said he told Chris that he doesn’t really need the job that badly.
As we were setting up the house PA some other guys came in looking a little confused. It turns out that Thursday is usually open mic night. “This isn’t going to go well,” we thought. In fairness to these folks, they got a beer and sat down.
I’ve mentioned before that we don’t tend to take bar gigs, the reason being that they can be noisy, not everyone is there for the music, people come and go etc. Anyone who’s seen us will know that our gigs are as much about the chat in between the songs as the songs themselves. Keep that in mind.
The next folks to come in were several young ladies celebrating a friend’s birthday and they went straight onto the cocktails. Carry on regardless, as they say. Roger and Jeanette were in there by now with some friends so at least we had four on our side. We struck up, eased up the volume over the chatter and started doing our thing. People started listening and we managed to draw them in. We threw in a few covers and thought sod it we might as well have some fun. I was watching the door and saw no sign of Chris appearing when, just after we finished the first set, he pulled up in his car outside. I was just going out for some fresh air and as he approached the bar one of the punters said to him “You gotta see these two; they’re fucking brilliant”. We hadn’t paid this chap a penny, but if we had it would have been worth it. The open mic guys stayed, we sang happy birthday to the birthday girl and even sold a few CD’s. Oh, and yes we got paid and Chris wants us back. We’ll give it some thought. We went back to Roger and Jeanette’s for a nightcap and a bite to eat. Roger went to bed just after midnight as he had to be up for 4.30am to watch Liverpool play.
08/03/24. Our venue for most of this weekend is the Burke & Wills folk festival in Mia Mia, Victoria.
When I say in, what I mean is Mia Mia is the nearest settlement (no shops, pubs etc). The festival is the baby of Andrew Pattison and his wife Heather. They run small winery (Burke and Wills Wines) and Andrew has a lifelong passion for promoting live music in his spare time. He’s had many of the greats over here, John Prine, Martin Carthy, Guy Clarke etc etc. He also used to set up tours for UK folk legend, the late, great Vin Garbutt. It was actually Vin who put us in touch with Andrew and several others when we were setting up our first tour out here in 2017. We performed a gig at the winery then, but not the festival. Andrew had arranged for us to stay with a couple who live in Mia Mia itself, which is about ten minutes drive away. We went to our digs to make ourselves known before going onto the festival. We were staying at the house of Anton and Georgina (George) Hasell and their two dogs Pip and Twiggy. We didn’t meet George straight away as she was away for a few days, but the dogs were very keen to introduce themselves and we both took to them and Anton straight away.
Anton was utterly fascinating. He’s an artist, a bell maker, a deep thinker as well as many other things. I can’t explain all that he’s done, but do check out his website. He was a joy to spend time with. I mean this in the kindest possible way when I say that to me he had a child-like curiosity and a slightly skewed way of looking at the world – long may it continue. He is also an amazing engineer who has worked on designing, building and casting bells, tuning them and restoring them all over the world. One of the most fascinating projects he’s involved in is the Clock of the Long Now. This is a project to build a huge clock inside a mountain that is designed to keep time accurately for the next ten millennia.
We had four sets to play over the weekend and did all four without repeating a song. Someone came to us after the final set to say they’d seen every one of our sets and never heard an act play a whole festival without a repeat. I explained that when you’re this old you have a few to call on. We saw some great acts, Kris Mizzi, Fred Smith, Tom Lewis and more, but a special treat for us was meeting Paul Wookey and getting him to join us on stage for a song. He’s a really tasty guitarist and thoroughly nice bloke.
We actually had two gigs on the Saturday; we played the festival in the afternoon and then drove into Melbourne to perform at House on the Hill Concerts. Mark and Candice, whose house is the venue for the concerts, saw us at Cygnet Festival at the start of the tour and emailed to see if we could play their place. It worked out pretty well as we were going to be at Burke and Wills which is less than two hours drive from Melbourne and Andrew arranged our schedule to allow us to fit in a gig with them. On the drive over we bought a bottle of wine to take with us to share with our hosts after the gig. When we arrived at their house we were amazed. The place was stunning, they are clearly very successful people. We sheepishly left our cheep plonk tucked away in the bag.
10/03/24. Up in the morning to drive back to the festival for a set that afternoon. We were feeling a bit knackered and thought we’d go back to Anton’s and grab an hour’s sleep before returning to the festival that evening. When we emerged from our room, Anton told us he’d been to the shops (twenty minute drive away) and bought pasta, would we like something to eat. How could we refuse? He then looked at Kip and said “could you cook it”? How could she refuse? We didn’t get back to the festival, but we did have a lovely meal and great conversation with Anton.
11/03/24. Thank the gods of technology for wifi out in the sticks. We were able to FaceTime our daughter Lianne and sing happy birthday to our grandson Mason. He’s seven today and was born the day before we flew out of Perth when we were in Oz in 2017. We met Anton’s wife George this morning just before we headed back to the festival. George keeps horses and had recently acquired another – she’d been away up north to collect it. We said a brief hello and arranged to have a meal together later (George was cooking) before heading off to play our final set of the long weekend. We wanted to catch Fred Smith. We’d seen some of his set when we were at Newstead and I’d been impressed. I was talking about him to our friends Ruth and Gerard when we were in New Zealand and Gerard told me that Fred works for the Australian government as a diplomat and has done a lot of work in Afganistan. Fred has written a couple of books about his experiences there and Gerard had them both. While we were at Ruth and Gerard’s I read the opening chapter of Fred’s second book The Sparrows of Kabul. It’s harrowing. Fred was in Kabul during the evacuation as the Tallibahn were retaking the country. He was part of the team responsible for getting the Aussies evacuated. I wouldn’t want to see half of what he’s seen. People clinging to aircraft, kids abandoned, parents searching for their kids and parents begging to get their kids on the planes out of there. He saw all of this and has young kids of his own. He must be scarred. I looked on Fred’s website and saw he was playing Burke and Wills, so I emailed him and asked if he’d bring me a copy of his book and I’d square up with him when I saw him. This afternoon I got my book and a brief chat with Fred before he had to shoot off to catch a flight from Melbourne back home to Canberra. Unbeknownst to us Fred had been in the audience for one of our gigs at Newstead so he was aware of our music. Maybe that was why he had to dash off for that flight.
We played our final set of the extended weekend late Monday afternoon (it’s a public holiday here), said our goodbyes with hugs and promises to keep in touch and then went back to have that meal with Anton and George. It was a lovely way to finish off the festival. We had a couple of glasses of something very nice, said our farewells before heading to bed early with a long drive ahead of us in the morning.
12/03/24. We were up and on the road just as the sun was rising – prime time for getting your windscreen caved in by a raucous roo. Thankfully we didn’t encounter any. The trip from Mia Mia to Woy Woy (former home of Spike Milligan) is a little over 900 kilometres if you take the short route. According to Google you can do it in about nine and half hours with a fair wind and no stops. We did it in about eleven and a half with a couple of breaks and some shopping.
To be fair the drive wasn’t as arduous as we thought it might be. We both drive, the roads are pretty good and they don’t get anything like the volume of traffic that we get in the UK. We’re in Woy Woy to play the Troubadour Folk Club and thanks to our friends Michael and Ina we have a little cottage to stay in in their garden and bugger all to do for two whole days.
winter wilson 