Port Fairy

Well here we are at Port Fairy Folk Festival on the South Coast Of Victoria, about 4 hours drive from Melbourne. It's not the sort of Fesitival you might be used to in UK, for a start it's ultra organised. We arrived on Friday afternoon,first thing you noticed were the easy to see directions to the festival office posted clearly in the main street. The performers reception office was well organised, although we were actually not expected until Saturday, no problem fixed in a flash, we were given a welcome food hamper, maps, passes, directions to our Motel, all done in a flash. We have an artists Green Room (BBC Style) free breakfasts, subsidised meals and drinks, guitar lockers, easy chairs, seperate doors into the Arena. Star treatment all round. The whole town seems switched on to welcome the Festival, there is music everywhere, on the streets, in the pubs, on the beach, Port Fairy has opened it's doors and it's full of friendly happy people.
The Festival Area is big but compact, if you know what I mean! There are five main Stages, four of them tented, there is also a live music Guiness beer tent and a cafe style music tent where you can sit eat and lisen to live acts, there are open air shows with variety acts,jugglers, acts like Miss Australia 1963, not sure about that one! childrens tents and a wide selction of food tents selling almost every type of meal and drinks you could imagine, from Curry to Bratwurst, it's quite a sight.
The tents are the size of circus tents, people bring their own chairs and when the place gets full they do the Port Fairy shuffle to get everyone to move forard and let more in. The PA is top quality, experinced staff everywhere, helpful and efficinet, there's that word again.
The line up of artists is simpresive, Nanci Griffiths, Elenore McEvoy, Dougie McLean, The Saw Doctors, Emily Smith, Josh White Jr and of course Vin, As you would expect there are also quite a number of Australian on the bill, in fact we bumped into Enda Kenny last night as we wandered round getting our bearings as well as quite a number of poeple who recognised Vin from his previous visit three years ago. In fact people stop Vin almost everywhere we go, we stopped at a quite little town in the middle of knowhere on the way down here and a couple from Melbourne came over to say hello.
Vin's first concert last night was on Stage 2 at 8pm, the audience loved him and although he only had a 40 minute spot, just enough time for Vin to warm up, he was on top form and produced another great set. I have to admire the way Vin handles these situations, it must take a lot of effort and experience to capture such a large and varied audience in such a short period of time and win them over with such ease. I'm learning so much from just being part of this quite remarkable tour.
After the concert we sold some CD's outside of the stage door and then went on to do an official CD signing at the main CD sales tent, all very well attended, it's amazing how many northerners there are here!
The wonders of modern day computers, last night we manged to get Skype working on the laptop, I spoke to JUlie first by phone, which worked really well then we linked up via the Video link, I saw her wearing her new pink plaster on the broken wrist, I'm missing her already, especially now that she is in need of some TLC. Vin then spoke to Pat although the conversation was quite intermittent and kept breaking up all the time, I think it's the laptop more than the internet link. More from Port Fairy as the weekend rolls on.
While I have been waiting to connect to the internet and update the Blog, another afternoon has passed in Port Fairy, Vin's second concert took place on Stage 2, this time it was full hour plus encore, and he went down a storm, which reminds me the heavens have opened up and it's pouring with rain. After the concert we set the CD stall outside the tent and it took another hour to clear the crowds, in fact we sold out of nearly all the CDs we had brought down to the area and Vin was kept busy signing and chatting to everyone.
We decided to go across to the Green Room for a quick bite to eat and bumped into Dougie McLean and his wife JUlie,we spent a very pleasant half hour chatting to them, I had the camera handy but decided not to seem to starstuck, it seemed the right thing to do at the time, I think Vin agreed. We also bumped into Dave DeSante from my favotite Australian group Wongawilli, Dave runs the Illawarra Folk Festival and invited us on the spot to come down to Sydney to do a concert for him.
I manged to catch Dougie in concert this evening over at stage 4 which was great, he sang all his well known songs and had the crowd eating out of his hand.
I just made it back to our Motel be fore the heavens opened!
Tommorow is our last day here, so this will be the last report from the Festival, Vin has a concert early tomorrow morning them back to Burks and Wills to sing for our supper. Speak to you then.