Have to say, we love being in the queue, but 1.5 hours was rather long. I think they were still getting into the swing of processing us through. Plus, we didn’t get there until just before the gates opened. This was due to a number of things, including a call to Matt, a toilet stop in North Dandalup and a couple of long traffic holdups due to large machinery being transported with stops to allow for traffic flow.

I’ve just realised that my Worpress page no longer has links for comments and a subscribe button. A quick run through on the setup page hasn’t given me any clues. Even reverting to a previous template hasn’t helped. More work is needed so it’s on the todo list.

Back to Fairbridge:

We had chosen to camp on the oval because of our experience from Nanga when we had a huge downpour, but the oval didn’t end up having puddles and mud, the water just drained away. On arriving there we were directed into a parking spot against a fence. What we didn’t realise was that we would have a caravan and car parked directly in front of us. Although it was not our plan to drive anywhere during the festival it still felt wrong to not be able to drive out if necessary.

There were a surprising number of huge touring caravans nearby, which doesn’t feel normal for a folk event. However, people have to go with what they have and we can’t all have small, shabby camping set ups.

I had brought enough food to feed ourselves at the Festival, though we planned to buy some meals at the food stalls. But, we felt like a rest, so had my homemade soup and bread for lunch, abd then had a rest.

Later we walked around the village, checking out the venues. We had food from one of the stalls, a very meat heavy dish that we couldn’t quite finish even though we were sharing one meal. Our first music session was at the chapel, one of our favourites as it has good sound, though narrow, uncomfortable pews. Of the groups we liked the session with Kavisha best.

In the morning before breakfast we took a short walk to look over the campground, then over the farm.On the way back I bought a coffee.

Overall, we enjoyed moving around between venues. Some of the music wasn’t really to our taste, but we enjoyed Bluegrass Parkway, the Fremantle to Freedom (escape of Finians) presentation, the World Slide Summit with Lucky Oceans and Prasshech Borkar, the Gospel Concert in the chapel on Sunday morning, and the final concert with a couple of acts that we hadn’t seen when they were on the programme and were worry we missed previously. They were Emily Galineau, jazz violinist and the group Apolline, very young musicians who love traditional folk music and are excellent musicians. There were other items we enjoyed, too many to mention.

We were able to catch up with many old friends and acquaintances, people we still see at other folk festivals as well. It felt like the festival goers were mostly older generations, say 50 and above, but there was a programme for children and a separate event space for teenagers, so it catered for all ages.

It rained quite heavily over Friday night and we ended up with water dripping from our air conditioner. It started at the rear fins, move to one side, then the front, then the other side. At one point we had two bowls on the dining table and still didn’t catch all of the water.

Many campers appeared to have been caught short with the heavy rain as well and were having to dry out their bedding and camp stretchers. A pop top nearby had to add an extra tarp to the roof. And that was only in our small section. At least our drips went onto the table and not onto our bed. The air conditioner has had a slight drip after very heavy rain when parked at home. The difference seems to be the slope, at Fairbridge it had a slight slope towards the back and at home there is a slight slope towards the front.

Would we go back to Fairbridge next year? Yes, in many ways it was as good as in years past, particularly the early years when it was a much smaller festival. We are hoping it remains small as it feels more friendly and it’s not such a rush around to see the different acts because of having fewer venues.

We used to camp in a nearby field and it was a much longer walk back to our van, so being on the oval worked out well.