SOMETIMES THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO IS GET LOST….
So the other day I jumped in my car, packed the big medium format camera and went for a drive to see what I could see and look at doing some landscape photography…. I had no particular direction in mind, I just wanted to get lost, take random turnings and see where I ended up.
Leaving Brisbane, I drove up to Toowoomba then along the range through Crows Nest, Black Butt, Kilcoy then just before Woodford saw a sign to “Festival”
It was late in the day by then and I had decided to head for Mooloolaba to do a coastal sunset shot but the word Festival stuck in my head.
I captured this shot at Mooloolaba…..
…but while waiting for the light to be right, I jumped online on my phone…. stupidly I never actually realised that the Festival would be the famous Woodford Folk Festival…. I know, I’m an idiot but for some reason I never thought that would be between Christmas and New Year.
Now, I do love my music and folk music included, but I had never really contemplated the Woodford Folk Festival, it never really seemed my thing…. but it is the quiet time between Christmas and New Year, I had time on my hands and so on the way home I decided I would buy a day and night ticket for the next day and just see what happened.
…And what a great decision that was…. what a great festival it is.
I drove back up to Woodford for 10am the next morning and stayed until 11pm that night. Saw great artists including Cat Empire, Butterfingers, Nattali Rize and numerous others. Ate great food, sat and chatted to really interesting and genuine people, and honestly have never relaxed so quickly in all my life… and no that wasn’t because of anything else that people jokingly comment on about being readily available at Woodford.
In all honesty I went not knowing what to expect but found a fantastic, family orientated, all age friendly event with great music, great food, great workshops and an amazingly fun and lovely crowd of thousands of attendees.
You can go at a frantic pace and see as many of the acts as possible or slow right down and just lie in the sun with a beer or gin and tonic near one of the stages and let the atmosphere wash over you. I went for more of the latter than the former :) and just felt the tension built up from a lot of hard work over the past couple of months just drift away.
One day and one night just does not do the festival justice, so the plan is already in place that next year I’ll be taking the camping 4x4 and staying up there. I don’t know if I would do the full five days, but definitely three is on the cards, and I can’t wait.
So the lessons learned (or maybe re-learned)…. take the time to go and get lost, you never know what you might find…. and if you do find something that peaks your interest, just go and do it. You never know you might even find you enjoy yourself.
Andy
