Millmerran Camp Oven Festival - October 2024

 Thursday 3rd October 2024

Millmerran Camp Oven Festival, never been, neither have we.  

I thought you could take your dog to the camping area but not into the festival area, so with Boris being a little bit needy we couldn't leave him alone, so we didn't go.  BUT, turns out you can take dogs into the festival area.  Never mind, we are finally going.

Our plan is to leave today, go out to Kaimkillenbun and stay the night, check out the little reno they've done to the public bar, maybe a couple of drinks and dinner of course.

BUT FIRST, let's not get ahead of ourselves we have to do lunch at the Exchange Hotel in Kilcoy of course!

We rolled into Kaimkillenbun around 2.30pm and since you have to book into the campground at the pub, it'd be rude not to have a drink or 3 wouldn't it......  Got talking to a couple of locals that were in the bar, we bought a dozen bum nuts from Tonka (that'd be him in the photo below, sitting at the bar in the singlet) and when I say bought, he wouldn't actually take any money from us, so we left payment for a drink for him with the bar staff who we're going to tell him after that we'd done that.

A few more campers came into the pub to book a campsite and low and behold you wouldn't believe what the cat dragged in,  Craig stuck his head out where you enter the pub and wouldn't you know it, a grotty yachty mate from the Sunshine Coast has come in to book a campsite too!!  We sat and had a drink and a chat with Nick, then headed off to set up camp for the night a bit after 4pm.  We popped over to say hello to Nick and Jen and meet their little puppy Jack, then started chatting to the other 2 couples that we saw in the pub.  Actually turned into a really good afternoon of chatting and drinks.  Last time we stayed at The Bun Hotel, we were the only ones camping!

The Bun Hotel campground: $30/night for power and water, and you get a $10 voucher to redeem at the pub.  Amenities block with toilets and showers and a laundry. 

And you see the most amusing things on the roads out west....  it did have a pilot car in front!

Everyone headed into The Bun for dinner tonight,   We sat outside with Nick and Jen and puppy Jack.  The meals are delicious and a generous size.

Sorry,  I remembered to take a picture about half way through.

Big afternoon, so everyone wandered off to bed after dinner was done.  We can honestly say it was another enjoyable stay at The Bun Hotel and that Parmy for me is about an 8 or 9 out of 10!

Friday 4th October 2024

No need to race off this morning, we've only got about an hour and a half to travel today, to reach Millmerran.

We were surprised to learn last night that each of the people we met, were all going to different festivals this weekend, there's about 4 festivals on out this way over the long weekend.  Nick and Jen are off to an acoustic music festival (they are musician), the other people we met in the Scout 14 Hybrid Pete and Tanya and the Kedron Caravan Warwick and Kylie (I think I had the ladies names right) they were all off to the Big Skies Festival at Jimbour House which was just up the road and us off to Millmerran.

Our fellow campers in the Scout and Kedron were off on their adventure before us.  We bid farewell to Nick and Jen and Jack the puppy and headed back to Maclagen about 8.30am, because Craig wanted to go to the butchers he saw yesterday that were advertising cheap eye fillet steak at $29.90/kg.  They also had some great looking beef ribs and Malay Satay Lamb sausages, thank goodness we had room in the freezer!  Yep I hear you and I said the same thing,  why didn't we just stop yesterday as we were going past!  

We were intending on heading to Dalby for breakfast and so I could take a photo of a catenary lighting job we supplied in Dalby, however instead of turning right we went straight ahead so ended up in Oakey, but that's okay we hadn't travelled that road before.  Breakfast at a little cafe in Oakey in the main street, that had really friendly staff and served up a massive yummy breakfast.  Fuelled up after breakfast and headed to Millmerran.

Enroute to Oakey and you come across the strangest things.  It wasn't quite high enough for us to just go underneath 😂

Arrived at the Millmerran Showgrounds about 11am I think, and it was a very organised and easy check in to get our campsite.  Once again greeted at the front gate by a volunteer, who pointed us to the line up for campsite check in.  Two lovely ladies greeted us, checked our tickets, gave us our wristbands and programme booklet, then we were told to move forward to the barrier and wait for someone on a quad bike to escort us to our campsite (Millmerran you can book an actual campsite, rather then just get randomly allocated one).  I booked us a site at the end of the aisle looking toward the  airfield, firstly because someone wanted to be able to go out in the middle of the night and do a piddle and also he thought it would be interesting to watch planes landing and taking off.

Our site was about 100m to the entrance to Camp Oven Alley, which is where the camp oven competitors are cooking and also about 100m to a block of portable toilets.  We had some horse event stuff stored in the area next to our campsite but we didn't have passing traffic which was ideal.

After reversing into our campsite, we spied our neighbour and introduced ourselves - Deb and Mark are their names but Mark was off helping friends set up.  More on our camping neighbours later 🤔  Campsites are really roomy, we've unhitched the car and set up all the shade walls we have, including putting one up from the caravan awing over the back of the car to help keep the fridge in the back a bit cooler - it's going to get a bit warm this weekend.  Took us about an hour to set up and fiddle fart around with everything but we weren't rushing.

Time to relax now for a bit - the festival opens at 4pm.  We met Mark we he got back, they seem like nice people.  We do have another camper across from us that we'll refer to as "the keeper of the bin", she's quite possessive of that bin near our car in the photo above 😂  Anyway,  it went missing during the afternoon and she stomped over asking if we moved it and we said no, she said well where has it gone,  we were some what gobsmacked at the importance of this missing bin considering there were 2 more about 20 metres down the road!  She found her bin again and stuck a lovely little note on it, to say it was her bin and don't move it or take it 🤣🤣  There's more to the bin story to come!

Around mid afternoon, we thought we'd stretch our legs and go over do a bit of a reccy around the festival area. The camp oven competitors are setting up their cooking areas and across from them where the judging area is we came across a collection of camp ovens, skillets, fry pans etc.  Standing there having a look and this lovely older fella (Wayne) came over and started talking to us about the collection, Craig asked "are these all yours"  his answer "yes"!!  Wow, it was an awesome collection of SOME of his cast iron camp ovens and things and after talking to him for a bit, he was saying the Potjie pots he imported from South Africa and the big fry pan with the divider in it, he brought in from Germany where they are used in street food stalls!  Craig jokingly said to him, he should keep an eye on me because I'll probably try and put some of his camp ovens in my handbag 😆  I must have a bloody big handbag!

This is a Furphy jaffle iron with the kangaroo impression on side and koala the other,

on the inside of the jaffle iron.

You can buy camp oven meals from these guys, they cooked savoury mince for breakfast and stew/curries with damper for lunch and dinner.

Continuing on looking around the festival area, we headed over to the market stall area and stumbled across the Shady Character guys (Shady Gear is their name) that we bought our end walls and the one over the push out bed area from.  Thought we'd pick up another wall for put over the front of the caravan to try and cool the tunnel boot where the Fridge lives in the caravan.  Jan and her apprentice helper (who's name I did not get) are very funny and entertaining to talk to you and Jan is very helpful, she knows her product extremely well.  Back at camp we put up the new shade - temperature inside the boot when we put the shade up is 39.5 degrees, after about half an hour it had dropped down to 34 degrees!  It is helping keep it cooler, yay.

The rest of the afternoon involved chatting to our neighbours Mark and Deb for a bit, and then enjoying some yummy Wurst Pepperoni sausage from one of the stalls with smoked cheese and biscuits for nibbles with a few afternoon drinkies.  We got all the toys out for our stay this weekend including the Baby Q and are trying pizza on it for the first time - yep we got the pizza stone, see how we go.  Probably cooked more pizzas then we needed, well I know we did but I had four flavours I wanted to do - Rosemary and Salt (Craig's favourite), Garlic and cheese, Supreme we'll call it and I had a hankering for Ham and Pineapple.  While we were cooking them, a volunteer stopped next to our campsite doing his rounds, so Craig went and had a chat to him.  I thought he must be getting hungry and offered him a couple of pieces of pizza, which he seemed to enjoy.  

Yes we had a fair few pieces of pizza left, so Craig popped over to our neighbours Deb and Mark to ask if they wanted any - they were happy to help us out and eat some.  We popped over and joined them and friends John and Fran for a couple of drinks and a few laughs.  We did discuss the crazy bin lady, everyone seems to be a bit gobsmacked by her obsession.

Saturday 5th October 2024

A nice leisurely pace this morning, showers, coffee, breakfast then headed over to wander around the festival before it gets too hot.  Watched the camp oven competitors going about cooking their competitions meals, it sounded like they started around 5-5.30am this morning, it'll be a long day for them.  We took our hat off to one competitor that had 3 or 4 kids to wrangle while Mum and Dad were cooking (at one point in the day we went past and I'd say it was the 2 youngest were flaked out in the camping chairs at the back of the area 😴)  Plenty of camp oven cooking demos to watch, there are workshops you can do also with past cooking champions, bush poets on the main stage and singers, market stalls to wander through, a bar to stop and have a rest at, food trucks a plenty, oh and most importantly for good boys (which apparently I live with one of these), an ice cream vender that adds real fruit to the ice cream - someone might have been very keen on this.

There was also a Snowys Outdoors pop up store, which had lots of camping gear to look at.  We picked up a new poo shovel for the van with a handle that screws together in about 3 pieces I think, so it packs down small.  If you bought over a certain value you got a ticket into a raffle draw that they were doing Saturday and Sunday afternoon for some of their products.

There was also old machinery, engines and things:

and a working blacksmith -  the bellows was amazing that the blacksmith was using.

The old engines were great,  my favourite was the one with the little water tank because it looked so cute!  And my other favourite is the Hit and Miss Engines, they sounded so funny.

We did slow cooked marinated beef ribs in the Baby Q for dinner tonight with chips and salad.  Had drinks with the neighbours and watched the sun go down while dinner cooked.

Now, remember I mentioned about the "keeper of the bin" earlier.....  well the lovely Rotary Club volunteers came through on Saturday afternoon to swap over the bins and well they took THAT bin and didn't replace it because the boss man said there were 2 bins just over there.  Okay, so that just sent me into a fit of giggles and we didn't hear another peep out of the bin lady all weekend.  We did hear from one of the organisers that a lady did complain about "her" bin being taken away 🤣

Sunday 6th October 2024

So we didn't win anything in the raffle draws yesterday at Snowys pop up store,  see how we go today.

Back over to watch the camp oven competitors and demos a bit this morning, go back and buy some more Wurst sausage. We came across a husband and wife team selling ready made products such as pies of amazing flavours, a variety of ready made meals such as lasagne, curries, meatballs with pasta, ribs with irish mash, along with roasting and smoking joints of meats.  We just bought some a couple of pies to take home with us.  Best thing is they have an online store and delivery 👍

We bought another shade wall for the length of our Fiama awning today 🤦‍♀️ I think we have a  full set now LOL!

I must admit, when we put up the long wall it was instantly cooler under the awning when you walked in, we were very surprised.

We went back over for the final raffle draws at Snowys this afternoon, unfortunately we didn't win anything but there was plenty of happy people that did !

Met our neighbours at the Snowys draw and we all headed back to camp afterwards.  It was nibbles and drinks time and we were joining that lot next door again.  Doing a slow cooked marinated bonesless butterflied lamb leg, roast potatoes and broccolini for dinner - first time in the Baby Q, see how we go.

Now I said earlier I'd say more on our camping neighbours later - well later it is.  We have done a lot of travelling and camping over the last 24 years, a fair bit of it on our own. We have met some nice people and have even met some people that we ended up travelling with for about 2 weeks off and on up Cape York.  Normally though when we go away you just sort of do the hello how are and maybe have a bit of chat - pleasantries.  For us this time, from the moment we sat down with Deb, Mark, Fran and John on Friday night to have a drink after dinner it was so much fun.  We would not normally have drinks/nibbles each day with our neighbours, we like to give people their space but this trip we did and it was like sitting down with old friends and your cheeks hurt by the end of the weekend from laughing so much.

I must admit when we got up Saturday morning, we were talking about the previous night and kinda went sheit what was everyone's name again - I could remember Deb's name 100%, other then that I was a little dusty.  So  we decided to use any old name for each person until one stuck, so funny and everyone played along and by end we were know as - Mark and Deb ended up Ethel and Brian, Fran and John were stuck with Sylvia and Pete and we got Beryl and Claude 😂😂😂  We can honestly say we had an absolute blast with these people and feel so lucky to have had them next door!  Hopefully we have made a couple of new long term friends.  Cheers 🥂Ethel and Brian and Sylvia and Pete, thanks for the memories.  And no,  they didn't pay me to say this 😆

Back to Sunday afternoon, like I said drinks and nibbles, watched the sun go down.  Mark set up their TV outside so everyone could watch the NRL Grand Final.  We ate our lamb roast and shared some for a taste, game finished time to clean up and go to bed.

Ollie and Maggie

Monday 7th October 2024

Heading home today sadly, back to the real world.  Farewelled our new friends who left before us and we were off about 9am.

A little over an hour later I got a message from Ethel (Deb), saying they were broken down in Pittsworth, they had only been able to do 50klm and limped into Pittsworth.  Just quietly between me and you,  they were probably the people holding up everyone travelling between Millmerran and Pittsworth 😉 

They were collected by RACQ and towed/transported home and looks they need a new catalytic converter.  As Deb said it's just a part of the adventure!

So, that's it for our latest adventure, not sure if we'll get away again this side of Christmas, but you never know!

We do have a few things organised for early next week year, we have some friends picking up their new Swag van in February so we'll be doing a couple of shake down weekends with them before they head off on their WA adventure and we have a longer trip planned early next year too.

Stay safe and have fun until the next time!

Boreen Point September 2024

 Friday 6th September - Sunday 8th September 2024

We did a quick little weekend camp up to Boreen Point Caravan Park (Lake Cootharaba), so Craig could try out his newly acquired kayak, which is apparently a good source of exercise for his shoulder rehab.

Arriving before lunch on Friday, we checked in and went off to find our campsite in the back lots.  We only had one neighbour on one side and the other side was vacant and a small group across the road.  The sites on the waterfront which is where we wanted to camp, so we looked at something different for a change were all booked and there was also a group celebrating a birthday, so it'll be nice and peaceful where we are and heaps of room.

We headed off after setting up, to Habitat Noosa at Elanda Point for lunch at their brewery/restaurant.  We'd never been so thought we'd give it a go - really delicious meals, very happy we went.  The new owners have done a cracker job tiding up the campground as well.

Craig went off for a little paddle, we'll call it the maiden voyage in the afternoon which was very successful, in that he didn't fall in the tide and he made it back to shore (Lake Cootharaba is only about  2 1/2 feet deep at the moment anyway 😆).

We wandered down to the Boreen Point Sailing Club about 5pm to meet up with a couple of mates for afternoon drinks.  Wonderful little club, with a great outlook straight across to the lake.  Back to camp for an easy dinner of loaded hot dogs done on the Baby Q.

Saturday morning was a slow start and Craig thought he'd go out this morning for another kayak before the wind came up.  It was an absolute cracker of a morning, no breeze, the lake was glassy as.

Lunch was at the Apollonian Hotel today, sat out on the lawn in the shade of one of the big trees.  Couple of drinks, lovely lunch, very relaxing.  

A nice lazy afternoon back at camp, chat to the neighbours.  Pulled out some nibbles to enjoy while sitting around the campfire.  Some nice smoky beef kebabs and garlic butter chicken kebabs on the Baby Q for dinner, don't need much after that sizeable lunch we had.

Good night to sit around the campfire after dinner too.

Boreen Point Caravan Park is a lovely place to stay.  You've got unpowered and powered sites to choose from, water view sites and bush sites.  Rubbish Bins, Dump Point.  Two amenities blocks (main one is larger) and a camp kitchen. A big oval for the kids to play on and of course the lake right there in front of the campground with a beach right there to enjoy.  It is dog friendly and you need fill out a dog application form online when you book.

Tara Festival and Camel Races 2nd - 5th August 2024

 Friday 2nd August 2024

We've decided to head out to Tara for the festival and camel races.  Our neighbours are from Tara and had suggested we would enjoy it - it's held every second year.

We've never been to camel races in all our years of travelling, we never quite got the timing right, kept missing the camel races out west by about a week or so. We've never been to Tara or even been through Tara on the way somewhere else - so a first on both accounts for us!

We got on the road by 9am heading to Kaimkillenbun to have lunch at The Bun Hotel, but first we needed to stop in Kilcoy A. because it would be time for a comfort stop for me and B. we had been told by our neighbours to take cash out with us because most years at the festival the network gets overloaded and the Eftpos machines go down.  Since we hadn't had time during the week to get to the bank, an ATM in Kilcoy was the next best thing.  Now, here's the first delay in our trip today, there is a perfectly good ATM on the corner of the main street right, well Husband couldn't find it 🤔however he did find the ATM in the Exchange Hotel which being it was 10.30am was conveniently open and therefore he thought it rude not to have  a beer since we'd used their ATM - really......   When I walked past the sign on the pub steps, you know how you look at something and you just know .....  yep, I knew I didn't have to go any further and he'd be inside the pub of course!!  😂

After a quick beer and chin wag with another punter at the bar, we headed back to the car HOWEVER here comes the next small delay for the day..... we walked past an elderly staffy sitting with his owners and thought that he just needed a pat (after asking the owners first of course) or if I'm honest we needed to pat the staffy 🐶  Okay, so distraction finished we continued on our way to The Bun Hotel.  It was quite a slow trip for fair while due to a silly little old car that was holding up the entire highway due to barely being able to do 80klm in the 100 zone and barely doing 50klm up the hills.  Finally we got an overtaking lane and as many vehicles as possible went past him 😖 very frustrating and inconsiderate.

Anyhoo, finally arrived at The Bun Hotel about 1pm and it was pretty busy with quite a few caravans parked and locals, luckily for us the travellers were all moving on so we found a park.  The bar was stilled packed when we walked in and had to squeeze past everyone to the spare seats.  There were quite a few people still having lunch, so we ordered a drink and perused the menu.  It was amazing how many caravans came past heading toward Dalby, we hoped they weren't all heading to Tara!

We enjoyed a couple of drinks and Craig had the Lamb Cutlet special which was apparently absolutely delicious, while yes I had a Chicken Parmy.  You can tell if a Parmy is going to be good when it's been made with love as I say, and this one was delicious.   Craig wants to go back so he can try the T-Bone for dinner that was one the specials, so we might have to stay overnight next time we head that direction and hope the specials are the same 😆  Time to hit the road again, stop for fuel in Dalby no more distractions, we need to high tail it out to Tara, so we don't miss the camping move in cut off time of 5pm today.

Ha, so much for no more distractions - we saw the sign the Lake Broadwater camping area which is one that has been on our to do list, so Craig figured we might as well stop in for a look see since we were going past 🙄 It's about 10klm in from the Moonie Highway and is really quite a nice looking camping area.  It has toilets, level areas to park you caravan etc., there is a powered section at one end, shady trees but unfortunately no dogs allowed.  We did hear an awful lot of Corella's squawking, so it might pay to look up and listen before setting up camp there.

Finally, Tara Showgrounds 3.40pm and holy crap it is a mad house, organised but a mad house!  I don't think we've ever seen so many caravans and people in one location and are wondering "what have we done" coming here!  The line of caravans to get into the camping area wasn't too bad actually and it was moving through the first marshalling area quite fast.  While we waited, Craig had an amusing chat with the marshalling Lady for the lines in, who was staying well hydrated with a can of Rum and Coke 😂  Love it!

We got our wrist bands, Tara Festival Program booklet, camping permit to display on the dashboard and were told to follow the green signs to our camping zone "Racecourse East", where we would be met at the next marshalling station by the campsite parking officials.  Now, our neighbour Hannah who was volunteering at the Festival informed us afterwards that our parking attendant was Uncle Don (yep she's a small town LOL).  Uncle Don was very sweet and said he had a nice site in mind for us since we had no friends and were travelling alone 😆 and the site was pretty close, otherwise his only other options were right down the back which will be miles away.  So off we went with Uncle Don leading the way on a quad bike, he got Craig to come have  a look and make sure we were happy, then helped Craig reverse back out of the lane so he could go down the next lane which was an easier entrance into the campsite.  What neither of us failed to notice though with a nice campsite, was that there is a dirty big tree above us which is not going to be conducive for making solar power now is it!  Never mind, we were all set up by around 4.15pm and sat down for an afternoon drink and relax - it had been an exhausting day.

It's pretty well organised and laid out in the camping area, each site is marked clearly on the four corners and they are really big sites.  Because our neighbour was there with friends and had parked right over next to them, there was a bit of "yard" between her and us and we parked our car across the edge that area.  Plenty of room though.  Holy cow there are some people camped here!  And it's sooooo dusty!

                                                    The is just left and right of our campsite on one side.

You can see the dust in the sky

The festival opens this afternoon at 5pm with food trucks and entertainment on 2 stages.  During the afternoon we were entertainment by our fellow campers cracking a whip.

We headed over to the festival about 5.30pm and upon entering realised that we have to purchase drinks tickets inside the festival for alcohol, spirits and wine and the line up was enormous.  Water and soft drinks can be bought from various stalls around the grounds.  We grabbed some dinner from one of the food trucks (Large Karaage Chicken and rice $40 for 2 bowls), found somewhere to sit down and eat and then headed back to camp.  It's suppose to be 0 degrees tonight, so the new diesel heater should pay for itself straight away! 

It was nice sitting sitting around watching the sunset, people coming and going and then looking at the stars, while sitting around our little campfire.  It had dropped to about 4 degrees by 9pm, so on went the heater in the caravan.

And then the fog started to roll in, that was really cool....

We had a very comfortable night inside the caravan with the heater going and at some stage later in the evening, I heard some fellow campers making their way home after the bands had finished having a lovely sing-a-long together - they should not give up their day jobs 😆

Saturday 3rd August, 2024

She was a bit nippy this morning, coffee inside the van with the heater.  Festival gates open at 8am and first camel race is at 9am, along with entertainment on the stages and markets.  Headed over after breakfast around 9.45am and first thing we did, was line up for our drink tickets - we got 30 tickets to be safe LOL (Beer, Wine or cider is one ticket, Premix Spirits are two tickets and a tick costs $6.00 each).  Of course Craig felt a beer was the next order of the day 😆

We walked around all the market stalls first, bought a T-Shirt, a lovely little leather handbag that goes across your body, Craig bought 3 different flavoured Jerky (upon eating some of the Peri Peri one back at camp later on, announced with very watery eyes that it had quite a punch 🤣)  There was some camp oven cooking going on 

Also watched the chainsaw carving bloke, pretty impressive sculptures.

Grabbed an early lunch from the food truck Brazilian BBQ (which was at Stanthorpe for the A & G Festival), we grabbed the 2 person platter again which was soooo yummy.  We headed back to camp after lunch, we have noted that if you're not on the racecourse fence you can't really see much of the camel race or the yabbie races.  Arvo nap for the old man, before heading back over for the last camel and yabbie races at 4pm.  The aim is to get a spot on the side of the track, but we were a bit early so stopped to watch the Outback Stockman's Show which consisted of a trick horse, registered proper stock horse, Brahman bull that is very dosile. We got to give the Braham bull a little tickle and scratch after the show, which he seemed to like 🐄

We ended up finding a spot to watch the camel race on the opposite side of the track to the festival on a bit of a knoll.  Final camel race is getting under way and Barry seems to be the favourite - that's Barry the camel not the jockey LOL!  Took a little bit to get all the camels organised down at the start line, some sitting down, one facing the wrong way, it was hilarious listening to the announcer.  And we're off and talk about funny,  would be the funniest race we've ever watched.  Pretty sure Barry the camel won but there was a back runner (probably the one facing the wrong way LOL), who crossed the line a bit after the rest of the pack.

Off to watch a yabbie race now, after stopping in at the bar.  Wow, didn't expect the bidding on the yabbies to get up to around $750 a yabbie 😮  We didn't bid on one.......  Yabbie racing is not what you would call fast paced is it 😆 and I've no idea which yabbie won.

We watched the band Murphy's Pigs for a little while, the seating in front of the stage was packed as was the standing area, so we figured they must have been popular.  They looked like an orchestral band, turns out they sang sea shanty's, kinda like that Fisherman's friend group from Wales I think, the ones they made a movie about.

Some of the young patrons around us started to get a little bit silly, so we headed back to camp and opted for a warm shower and sitting around our campfire while the spag bol warmed up in the camp oven over the fire.  

We could hear the bands playing from the campsite but without the drunk yahoos annoying us - yeah yeah,  I know what you're thinking - we're not good with crowds, so you have wonder what we were thinking when we decided to come to a festival right LOL.

Sunday 4th August, 2024

Last day of the festival, after breakfast we headed over to catch a camel race, use our last 10 drink tickets and also to get lunch from the Smoking food truck.  Ticked all those boxes, watched a bit more chainsaw carving and Craig tried some lamb or beef from the camp oven cooking folk.  Stopped off at the petty zoo area to have a look at the baby lambs, goats and chickens (I do miss having my chickens at home),  did the rounds of the markets again and headed back to camp.  It appears there was just too much excited for the morning and the old bloke needed another nanna nap 😆

Yep,  I got him a camel hat 

I went for a wander around while Craig was sleeping and there are quite a lot of empty campsites now.  You can camp at the showground until Monday if you want, which is what we are doing.  Our neighbours came back during the afternoon and we were chatting as their friends came to sit around their campfire and have drinks and nibbles.

We put our campfire on so we could re-heat our spag bol for dinner, all the time chatting away with our neighbours Ken, Kay and Carmel and their friends.  Ended up quite the night with the neighbours, lots of drinks and laughs to finish up a great time away at Tara.

Overall, the Tara Festival organisers have done a wonderful job, camping areas were great, campsites were huge, yes the campsite are marked out, there were plenty of portable toilets and showers throughout the campgrounds and festival area (toilets) and they seemed to be constantly getting cleaned and filled up with water.

Booking in for camping was easy, fast and efficient.  An enjoyable time at Tara.

It is, I suppose your quintessential small town festival that would bring together the town locals and the surrounding property families and workers for an enjoyable weekend, but in saying that it would seem that the Tara Festival has grown now to the point of being that popular, the camping old out weeks in advance (2,500 campsites I think) and they had to halt ticket sales at 7,000 because they had reached capacity.  Apparently the first time in the history of the festival this has happened.  Well done Tara!!

The festival is held every 2 years.  The camping area is dog friendly, however you cannot take your dog into the Festival area or near the camels.  You are allowed to leave you dog at your campsite unattended while you attend the festival.  Normal rules apply if taking your dog in regards to picking up poo, being on a lead at all times etc.

Monday 5th August 2024

Quick breakfast this morning, packed up, said goodbye to Ken, Kay and Carmel and headed home.  Never seen so many caravans on the road in a line heading in one direction 😆

Stopped off at the Exchange Hotel for lunch to break up the drive for Craig and give him a breather.  Arrived home about 2.30pm and unpacked, thankfully before the rain starts tomorrow.

Look at the dust on the bonnet!

We'll be off camping again in about 5-6 weeks.