Day 1 26/1/12

And awaaaaaaaaaaay we go!
Day one of the journey saw me travelling from Wagga Wagga through Tumut and Cooma to a little village called Numeralla which is about 25km east of Cooma.

It was a bit difficult leaving home after a month of time spent with family and not having to cook or look after myself but as Bilbo Baggins once said, "It's a big thing, stepping out your front door"..or something like that.

Bye Mum and Dad - love yas:

Speaking of Lord of the Rings, the scenery as I got further into the snowy mountains country was very reminiscent of LOTR - if New Zealand didn't exist I reckon Australia would have been a great spot to shoot it. I took this photo on my way there:

Actually, the Lord of The Rings references may continue for a little while as the Numeralla Folk Festival has a very "middle earth feel" to it with campfire songs, mountain scenery, spoken word poetry recitals, and little rotund women with hairy feet (haha - kidding..or am I??).

Anyways, after finally finding the location in a spot along the Badja River and parking Freda, I was immediately informed by my neighbour Charlotte that there had been a recent sighting of a tiger snake in the area so to just keep an eye out. Nice.

Another guy then sidled up and started fawning over Freda - if this is a sign of things to come, Freda is going to be quite the heartbreaker. He was rattling off all this info about the car and asking mechanical questions of which I was hoping I was saying "yes" and "no" and "mmm" in all the right spots - I think I passed the interrogation but only just. Did you know Freda has 14 inch rims? Impressed much?

I then ventured over to the hall, giving sticks, bark, leaves and anything that even slightly resembled a tiger snake a wide berth.

After a wonderful dinner I settled in to watch some old traditional dancing in the hall then back to Freda to settle in for the night.

I had a bit of a read of my new Dave Grohl book then tucked myself in and drifted off to sleep to the sounds of my neighbours playing some lovely folk tunes by the camp fire. Day 1 complete.