Autumn Festival

 Every year, Armidale stages its Autumn Festival where throngs of people get together for parades, music, theatrical events, cycle races, and cultural aspects - especially tasting multi-national foods. Well, last year and maybe the year before, the event was cancelled. But this year it was partially resurrected and yesterday saw me join crowds of people celebrating a cut-down event. We did not see street processions or cycle races and there was no morning breakfast in the creeklands listening to tunes played by the town's band. Nor did we hear any bagpipes played by people wearing traditional Scottish dress.

Nevertheless, this year's reduced event saw laods of people strolling through the town's central mall and enjoying what they saw. Here are some pictures I took of proceedings.

Several orchestral groups played very simple music to considerable applause ... at least one of them apparently brought together by Armidale's Conservatorium of Music, which greatly adds to our city's cultural life. The two orchestras I saw were for school-kids and one or two of the players seemed  to be little older than maybe 8 or 9 years of age. The works performed were quite simple, but nevertheless generated great applause.

Here is the seating next to the former court-house for people wishing to listen to numerous bands and orchestras scheduled to perform much of the day. This picture was taken before the concerts started and the seats were awaiting the audience.

Armidale's pedestrian mall has several coffee sholps like this one. They were doing a roaring trade.

There were heaps of sites / vehicles selling some interesting foods. I sometimes buy the feshly berried food shown here. 

This is the food van used by the Ezidi migrants to sell their traditional foods. The Ezidis were massacred by Islamic State and many others fled their region in northern Iraq. Many eventually made it Australia and Armidale is now home for maybe 500 of them ... with many scheduled arrive shortly.

Local motoring enthusiasts showed off their historic caes. I loved this ancient vehicle.

This next one was an MG dating back to maybe the late 1960s. I always look at these with curiosity and appreciation because - from 1969 to early 1971 I worked for the British Leyland Motor Corporation at the Morris factory in Oxford. I was in an efficiency group whose task was to increase productivity and performing this task I frequentlt visited other factories including the nearby MG factory. I wonder if I ever saw this vehicle go down the production line!

The weather was great for this occasion - nice and sunny and warmer than some recent days.

AS