Sydney Festival

Aboriginal Ceremony

A decision made late on a Friday night had Marty & I on the train to Sydney Saturday morning. It is a long trip from our home in Nelson Bay to Sydney. It takes just under an hour to drive to the Newcastle train station & then it's a 3 hour ride on the train. By the time we reached The Domain in Sydney it was after lunch, so our first port of call was to find food.
Having fed our faces we wandered around checking out the huge mixture of talented performers (we even stumbled on a wedding), until we found the main stage. As we had arrived well before the concert was due to start we were able to get a good spot close to the main stage.
 

Gurrumul

The concert was opened with an Aboriginal welcome to the country ceremony..... I just love all that cultural stuff.

And then the blind, enigmatic, indigenous musician, Gurrumul Yunupingu -- who hails from ElkIsland off northern Australia and who has just performed for Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II was lead on to the stage.  Gurrumul's songs are a hybrid of indigenous tongue, birdsong and English.

 
Young Aussie singer songwriter Megan Washington then performed tracks from"I Believe You Liar" (2010) and "Insomnia" (2011). She wontwo 2010 ARIAMusic Awards, Best Female Artist and Breakthrough Artist, and received afurther three nominations: Album of the Year, Best Adult Alternative Album for I Believe You Liar and Single of the Year ("How to Tame Lions").

Then there was a short break while we waited for the headline act to play. Nobody seemed to have heard of them before...!!!?....... Manu Chao La Ventura – a globe trotting,Spanish artist who sang a broad, multicultural blend of rock and reggae, sungin Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and English, and they really got the crowd going.

So that was the first night of the January 3 week Sydney Festival that almost rivals New Year's Eve!

Somewhere to hang ya kids...!!!

 We left justbefore the last act (Manu Chao) finished avoiding the crowds, and had a midnight feed of KFC at my request and then headed to the train station.

Well we had just missed a train (which of course was my fault because I wanted KFC!!!) and it was a 2 hour wait before the next one would leave. As the train was already in we got on board and slept. I have to say there are some ‘dodgy’ people on the train at that hour of the morning!

So 3 hours on the train and another hour in the car, it was 6am by the time we finally got home to the comfort of a bed, but it was all soooo worth it – would we do it again -          HELL YES!!!

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