Yesterday morning we washed our sheets and towells. We are right next to the laundry with four washing machines, very handy. We wandered down to the Festival area in the late morning. We met up with Ruth and David and took in some music. Choosing lunch from the many stalls is enjoyable, one of the really good things about a music festival.

There are many venues and events happening – sometimes we chose on the venue, whether it was comfortable, and we were never disappointed with what we saw and listened to. The last act of the day that we really enjoyed was a blues guitarist and singer. At first I noticed him playing with his eyes closed and wondered if we would have a musician who couldn’t really relate to the audience. I was so wrong, between songs he told stories that had me in tears of laughter. This really helped with appreciating his wonderful musicianship.

We heard from Indigenous Australians singing about the women’s experience and songs from the missions (very happy songs).

My aim with the Festival is to take photos and videos that represent some of the sights and sounds, rather than documenting all that we have seen and heard.

We enjoyed the Scottish band with David (Ruth had to leave for personal reasons). We met up with Pam at an event in the middle of the day. And we ran into Eleanor again, dressed in her Fair Maid of Perth costume. We hope to see her dancing with her group this afternoon. We miss running into Eversley, it seems strange to be at this Festival without her.

We have made our usual late start this morning. It was foggy again first thing and was very cold in the van. We had the heater running for quite a while. It’s now 10.30ish and the sun is out, warming the van.

Our plan today is to take a ride into town using the new light rail system. We have some shopping to do, but having a ride in the new red and shiny trains is the main reason for going out. I remembered to change the focus and metering settings on my camera back to daytime photography. I forgot when we went to China and the first few days of photos were hit and miss as the camera struggled to cope with lighting. It took me ages to realise what the problem was even though I could see that most of the photos weren’t working out.