Many times while I was overseas, I wanted a picture of something quintessentially Australian to show the people I met that wasn’t kangaroos or the Harbour Bridge. Yesterday afternoon, I found that picture, but didn’t have a camera.
There we were, 50 or so people lounging around in the Goulburn River, muddy brown water, bikinis and skinny dippers, board shorts, sitting on the half-submerged log, paddling in the shallows under the shade of the gum trees hanging over from the banks. On one bank, a van was pumping excellent trance across the river, so good I just had to shake my booty in the middle of the water. Sun shining, 34 degrees in the shade…
The day only got better from there.
Hanging out in the purple palace with the cushions and the tofu satay, the music on the stages pretty good, the day settling into a beautifully warm evening. Then at 2, Fractal Glider at the Hydra stage seriously getting down, then off to Robert Leiner at the main stage and the competition was on. Infected Mushroom at 4.30 shifted the intensity about seven levels in one hit, utterly unbelievably good. The rain that started lightly at 5.30 and ended in brilliant lightning shows only added to the show, cooling us down. Every build-up of music took us higher, every blast over the edge a deep rightness as we all danced harder at the new pace. Hallucinogen at 6 were almost a let-down after that, excellent oceanic grooves washing over us but then the Infected guys came back on stage and together they jammed us back into frenzy. Exhausted, I headed to bed, but dragged myself back out three hours later to meet with hermia8 and thunderchylde and catch Tsuyoshi Suzuki at Hydra, having heard good things about him. Was blown away. Want the set list. Didn’t think anyone could get me dancing again at midday, but he did, harder than Infected, if that’s possible. Great mixing, great tunes, great builds, phat sounds and squirly squeaks and hard-edged guitar stuff blended into high-powered mind-altering wow (I’m tempted to quote Les Murray here – “the is-ful ah!-nesses of things”)(and that reminds me, somewhere in about Fractal Glider, my mind comes up with “If music be the food of life, play on”. Weird).
Bumped into an old Fairfax work mate at this point and had a good chat. Caught up with our old friend Roger Bolton who used to work at Next and then did post-production on LOTR and is now doing rave visuals chilling after a long night of hard work in front of the Main stage and Simon Posford’s last set.
Went for one last swim and then the sky opened and the water fell out and we tried to drive home in it.
Thank you to daisynerd for lending me the money for the ticket and generally being the bestest best friend anyone could have (and sooo cute when stomping her dance space flat, circling like a little kitten), to delwyn for finding me at just the right moment and coming through, as always and for his new funky 6.3 megapixel camera (pix soon folks), to jeamland for hugs and lirion for massages and a warm dry top just when I needed it and hermia8 and thunderchylde and kitling and longi and others who I’ve almost certainly forgotten for dancing and just sharing it all again.
Mum will laugh at this, but I noticed that most of the boys I was eyeing were Israeli… tall with long, dark corkscrew curls and clear blue eyes, olive skinned, lithe and fit. Mostly there to see Infected Mushroom who are also Israeli (and sorry, I want to know what the politics are behind IM’s song with the sample “Now is the time to take what’s mine…”, I think that’s a little problematic considering…). Learnt that “Hi sexy’ in Hebrew is “Shalom, tuta”.
Got home utterly exhausted to find The Age did indeed publish my story on Saturday but misspelled my name (honestly!) and then had a very awkward conversation with nuwishas_tail (hugs, honey, sorry).
Finally had food, soon will have sleep. Yay for sleep.