Be careful what you wish for!
After all my whinging about friends who could not find their bum with both hands, I suddenly found myself on an impromptu boys weekend three weekends ago.
My son had bought tickets to go on a dance weekend some time ago and became despondent a week before when the adult who was going to sign him in suddenly pulled out. Parenting alarm goes off and I say "Sign in? Why?" and am told that children under the age of 18 require a guardian. (He is 18 in Feb, so close, but no banana.)
"Well, if you need a guardian, that is supposed to be me," I retort, and am astonished when he was not opposed to the idea. (Normally, any suggestion that I would be involved in any part of his life gets an immediate, unambiguous refusal. So if he was willing, I had the leave, and was pining to take the caravan on a tour!
The location was Pyalong, way down in southern Victoria. (See the sheep being herded on the right - we were in the middle of rural Australia.) It turned out to be about am 11 hour drive (as I take it slow with a caravan - about 80 km so others can overtake - and regular breaks). The trip down was great, as I could listen to the Third Test against South Africa all the way - we actually won that one to which made it more enjoyable - without anyone changing the channel or trying to involve me in inane conversation. (My son's ticket included a bus ride, so that would be more fun for both of us.)
Unfortunately, when I had 45 minutes to go, my son calls me to say his mate's ride had not showed up and he was stuck in Melbourne. Pyalong is about 90 minutes north of Melbourne, but I WAS NOT TAKING A VAN INTO THURSDAY PEAK HOUR. I called his friend and said "Catch a train as far North as you can!"
That turned out to be Epping North, so I added 30 minutes south and 60 minutes north to the trip and picked up a softly spoken young man with long hair. (Men with long hair understand each other's feelings and look after each other against the insensitive, heartless,. uninspiring short haired men.) Anyway, I reach Pyalong at dusk and had the joy of setting up a van in the cold and dark.
I must say, when the van was set up, I was ready to sell the house, retire from work and live happily ever after. It is so comfortable, simple and has everything you need and none of the things you don't.
But if I was going to be at a music festival for a 4 days weekend, I was going to take in some music, so headed out to explore.
The place was arranged along a creek with accommodation on the slopes with flagged roads and a village down by the creek. I was annoyed to find all the spots gone on "Warp Drive" and "Astral Street", but did OK on "Doofhard Road". (Doof is a generic adjective that describes the music, people, outfits, accessories and dancing at the event.)
The village was a lot of fun. Very hippy. They had weird art (dog and neon sign that Paul would approve of shown), lots of shops with important accessories, like feathers and beads. They had a new age place where you could perform activities under the sign of water, earth, fire and air. (I meant to do one of these, but did not get time.) And lots of fast food. I was particularly impressed to see the Pyalong Cricket and Netball club running a near non-stop sausage sizzle. I read later that the Primary School made a bit of money leasing equipment to the organisers.
Interspersed amongst the stalls were small music venues. The music was universally Psycho-Trance, or "Doof Music" to the locals. That was the only downside of the weekend to me. I was hope for soulful songs about love, betrayal and the insensitivity of society to the aspirations of the young. Unfortunately, Doof has no words (Oh, Doof is a noun and an adverb too. It is often an ejaculation, but I am not sure what it means in that context.), and involves electronic "acid-jazz" style sounds that build to a crescendo and then fall away sharply leaving a loud drum beat, often the double beat of a human heart. Each time the beat emerges from the sound, the audience cheers and begins dancing with their hands in the air for about a minute until the beat dies away and they just move slowly until the next crescendo.
The DJs (what they are called, despite no obvious use of disks - all thumbnail drives I think) as largely composing live. I was not there long enough to really work out what made a good DJ and an average one. I noticed that two stands always had big crowds and the rest were lucky to have 6 revellers. I asked a few of the locals and was told "It is doof, man!"
For me, the highlight of the weekend were the young people. They were very accepting of me, provided I wore my hair loose, and chatty. The standard outfit was multi-coloured, wool ponchos, but there were a huge range of variations in the minority. Many young women dressed in cabaret styles, and a few were effectively topless. (No photos as that would be make me a dirty old man.) Some guys dressed in "movie outfits" - I saw a few fantasy vampires, demon warriors and ghostly beings. Most had doof sticks. When you are doofing, you hold a stick with a totem attached, often with flashing LED lights. There were a couple of requisite phalluses, eagles, hands, cartoons of favourite DJs, but one woman did a brilliant, multicoloured crushed paper floral arrangement in the shape of a fan - it would have taken her hours.
Dancing was a 24 hour activity. The above photo as taken a 6:45am, so most of the crowd had petered out. I doofed a bit, but also sat in my awesome caravan, read some S&T and a sci-fi novel and caught up on some Zzzzz. At the end, I had ticked a bucket list item. You see, I grew up about 80 km south of Woodstock, and when I grew up everyone was talking of it and I always wondered what it would have been like. Now I know, but would have liked some lyrics all the same.
Oh: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. I think there was lots of the former. The village had police on patrol, so the only "drug use" I witnessed was Nitrous Oxide. (Some groups seemed to spend the whole weekend doing that. They offered it to me, but drug use is not on my bucket list.) And rock-and-roll: Zilch in the musical sense.
Spelling and originality were optional!
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