Day 24 - 18/02/12

Woke up after a nice little sleep in and had a (glorious) hot shower in the amenities block.
Speaking of which, this is the first amenities block I've come across that has a radio going 24/7. It's quite a good idea as it's nice to listen to some tunes whilst you have a shit, shower or shave. It's also quite useful in helping to block out the god awful noises that some blokes make whilst performing any of the previously mentioned functions!
I drove into town and had a walk about the riverboats area and the main street.

Ah, nothing like a re-created old timey street to lure in the tourists...

Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river...

I also stumbled across the "Thong Tree" - does it get any more Australian than this?

The Thong Tree: More Aussie than a shrimp on the barbie

I then drove over the river to neighbouring Moama and had a lazy lunch and read in this ampitheatre type thing:

Beautiful day courtesy of Echuca. Feet by Steve.

Then it was off again to the festival for an afternoon and evening of more music.
First up was a guy called Ryan Meeking - he was very good - good voice and some good songs.
Next up was Lanie Lane who played mostly solo apart from a couple of songs where she was joined by a dude on trumpet.
I was surprised to observe a big chunk of the crowd knew most of her songs - I thought a couple sounded familiar but it just goes to show how out of touch I've been with listening to new music in the past 12 months. Anyways, she was quite good and had a cute stage personality.

Mmmm, chick with guitar - Lanie Lane

Then it was The Audreys who played as a duo. They were ok but I wasn't all that impressed, would take The Waifs over them any day.

The Audreys.... zzzzzzzzzzz

I then went and got some tucker and got back just in time to catch the start of Mick Thomas' set (from Weddings, Parties, Anything). I really enjoyed this set and he even played his hit song "Father's Day" which was a suprise. His in-between song banter was quite funny and he told a couple of good yarns.
It's funny how long the wheels take to turn in the music business. He played a song which he announced was a new song and would be on his forthcoming cd to be released in a couple of weeks. The song was one I remember him playing at an APRA songwriters in the round afternoon at Tamworth two years ago. So it was even newer then but it just shows how long it sometimes takes to get a song, once written, recorded and released.

Mick Thomas spinning a yarn.

After the set finished I sat back on the hill, writing in my journal and taking a few photos when I was approached by a dude called Craig.
Now I know a lot of people can talk, but man, this Craig could TALK and talk, and talk, and talk...
After a while he said "You're not saying much" and I felt like saying, "Well, you haven't shut up in the past half an hour and the couple of times I did try to get a word in you didn't listen anyway!". It didn't really bother me either way, but he ended up talking through most of Mark Seymour's set so I don't really know how it was.
After Craig eventually moved on, I then got talking to a Julie. She was a 20-something girl up from Melbourne for the weekend.
We were just chatting about general stuff, well, she was doing most of the chatting, and she mentioned how cute and shy I was - so I thought I may be in with a chance here. But then the conversation turned to her husband and how she was not happy that he had spent all afternoon playing with random kids rather than hanging out with her. The conversation just spiralled further from there to the point where I was effectively counscelling her about a situation which I knew nothing about and really didn't want to know any more. I ended up saying she'd better get back to her husband and she said I should meet him but I respectfully and sensibly declined.
Fair dinkum, who are these people and where are the non-psycho, unattached single women in this world? You've gotta laugh but at times I feel like the flame to which these psycho moths are drawn to. Ah well, it takes all types.
I stuck around to see half of The Bamboos set but by this stage I'd had enough and it was back to the Caravan Park for me.