Another annual event held locally is Armidale's Autumn Festival. Its predominant art-from is music and I'll focus mainly on that aspect. Two key features of the Festival's music calendar are the breakfast with the band held in one of the creeklands' many parks. We took our usual trip down to the breakfast of bacon, eggs, omelette etc. and sat close to the Armidale City Band as it performed beautifully lots of traditional tunes and songs. I'll start, however, with our food and breakfast. Here's my plate.
And I'm sure you'll agree that the surroundings are very pleasant. By the way, even in Autumn the temperature at breakfast time is often about 17 C - nice and warm to eat outside.
Here's the local Lions Club serving a queue of would-be breakfast eaters.
And here's the band wearing their smart uniforms. They're serious musicians and have their own band HQ nearby.
The Festival's second great musical event is the massed pipe bands who come from as far as 200 to 300 km away. Here I focus on their gathering in the Mall on Saturday morning observed by a sizeable crowd. This view shows them all dressed in their kilts and other elements of uniform in front of the attractive old courthouse - now being converted into a museum.
Getting ready to play a series of traditional highland melodies, which I've heard all over Scotland. The events I attended there included the Edinburgh Festival and the Highland Games in Portree on the Isle of Skye - among many other occasions.
The band-master in exotic regalia.
Ready to go!
As you can see from these drummers, they're not all local. Moree is 267 km away and Tamworth is 110 km.
Back view of the pipers in front of the post office.
Alas, however, I have no photos of the concert stage in the creeklands where the previous evening I heard all manner of musical performances. My camera's battery gave out and when I looked for my mobile phone I found I'd left it at home. Let's just say that there was a strong quartet and other groups performing folk music. One group performed a traditional Irish song which I'm sure I heard one evening in a pub in Limerick over 50 years ago ... one I found out later to be owned or managed by the IRA! The Festival is, however, much more than just music. There's a large street parade, lots of fairground rides for the kids, a foody's dream in the form of many stalls serving fayre from all over the planet, and amazingly a criterium of cyclists whizzing on their bikes around the city centre. At least I've a few photos of the cyclists and the fairground. For example' here's Armidale's answer to the London Eye.
And the cyclists had a task ahead of them given that the criterium was scheduled over about 4 hours.
AS
Here's the local Lions Club serving a queue of would-be breakfast eaters.
And here's the band wearing their smart uniforms. They're serious musicians and have their own band HQ nearby.
The Festival's second great musical event is the massed pipe bands who come from as far as 200 to 300 km away. Here I focus on their gathering in the Mall on Saturday morning observed by a sizeable crowd. This view shows them all dressed in their kilts and other elements of uniform in front of the attractive old courthouse - now being converted into a museum.
Getting ready to play a series of traditional highland melodies, which I've heard all over Scotland. The events I attended there included the Edinburgh Festival and the Highland Games in Portree on the Isle of Skye - among many other occasions.
The band-master in exotic regalia.
Ready to go!
As you can see from these drummers, they're not all local. Moree is 267 km away and Tamworth is 110 km.
Back view of the pipers in front of the post office.
And the cyclists had a task ahead of them given that the criterium was scheduled over about 4 hours.
AS
No comments:
Post a Comment