Festival at Mt Garnut

Well, the festival was something of a blur, as any good festival should be! The photo here shows the view we were heading into as we drove up to the Atherton Tablelands, a high plateau that climbs fairly sharply from the coast. There were three cars, Shannon and Nick in their Wicked van ( a van converted into a camper- they're everywhere up here) called Ninja Turtle, on account of its paint job; Eleanor and Anna in "Log", and Notker and I in the Disco, which has adopted the title of Wesley (pretty sure we'd had a few when Eleanor thought of that one). As we drove into the sunset, we were having a good old time on the UHF radios making up jokes and generally talking nonsense. We observed radio protocol in a way that must have confused any truckies who were scanning the channels!



After a bit the sun went down and as we climbed higher we were driving through misty mountains- quite the way to get to a festival. We eventually arrived, only to find Notker and I needed more cash for the tickets so off we went, back to Mt Garnut. Here we had our first experience of a genuinely weird outback pub, complete with rather intimidating and drunk locals. No worries, we were only there to take out a heap of cash! Not only for us but we'd been loaded up with cards to get some for the others too. Back in the car out the front, Notker said "Let's get out of here- even do a burnout!" in German accent of course which probably made it funnier at the time than it now sounds.

Here's a photo of our camp at the festival- just chilling out one afternoon. A girl camped opposite us joined us that afternoon, Heidi, and was great singer and guitarist so we had our own mini concert for a bit.

Here is a photo of the whole crew, Eleanor in front, then Notkr, Anna, Shannon and Nick.

I haven't said much about the festival! It was basically a big dance party with a hippy take, my favourite section was the chill out zone, a large area with a separate stage and cafes set up. We saw a guy playing an African harp, heard some good live bands, and a few dj's were really good too. Four days of constant music and partying, sleeping at weird times and I felt about 10 years younger!



After the festival we visited the hot springs at Innot- natural springs that you can soak in- that was amazing after four days without a shower. We camped down the road, which is where this photo was taken, we were just having breakfast and Heidi was playing us a song. It was a good way to farewell the guys, they were heading to Kuranda for a reggae festival and I was off to visit Uncle Greg and Dell at Miraa Miraa just up the road. Here's a photo of us visiting the 'Cathedral Fig Tree near Yungaburra:



It was great to see them and I had some much needed R & R, they shouted me a meal at the pub too one night where I attempted to eat the largest rib-eye steak I've ever seen. We had a few nice drives around the Atherton area too.