Road Trip!

[kareina]

Some time back the town of Rosebery, on the west coast of Tasmania http://pininthemap.com/ppb2f374f5e95076077 , contacted the SCA to see if we would participate in a Festival they were having. Rosebery is a mining town, and the local Mine was sponsoring the Festival, and so there was a bit of a budget to do interesting things. After some negotiation with our Seneschal, they agreed to provide a rental bus to bring us out there, and they provided us food and housing on site, in exchange we were able to set up a display advertising the SCA and showing what sort of cool things we do, do a bit of armoured combat, let the local children do a bit of boffer fighting, and do some dancing.

The trip was ever so much fun! It has been a long time since I did a road trip with a group. A total of 22 SCA folk turned up. The provided one bus to come over from the northern region (Devonport-Launceston area), and one from the Hobart area (where I live). Our bus had ten people, the drive out on Friday evening took about five hours, and we spent most of the trip singing (one of us brought a small flashlight and some song-books), so we had a nice bardic to get us in the mood for the weekend. We arrive in Rosebery to find out that the houses they provided us were actually homes of people involved in running the Festival, who found someplace else to stay while we were there. We got in a about midnight, to discover still-warm pots of food waiting for us, and three houses (one for the nine from up north, and two for the dozen of us from Hobart (two came up in their own car, because they thought the twisty-turvy mountains roads sounded fun). The house I stayed at had a pleasant hour of social time before we went to sleep at 1:00, but the other house stayed up drinking somewhat later than that. Silly folk!

Therefore our small group went out to the site to set up the pavilion bright an early in the morning, and left the other house to sleep in. It being the west coast of Tassie, the morning weather was rainy. Just a gentle mist when we left the house, but a good solid rain fall while we were putting up my pavilion. Fortunately, the afternoon cleared up a bit, revealing the beautiful mountains which surround the valley we were in. Such a pretty place! By the time it was time to drop the pavilion at the end of the day, it was only a bit damp around the edges. The day was much fun! Only a small crowd attended the event, and most of them took the time to talk to us SCA folk in detail about what we do and how much fun it is. There is a reasonable chance that they will actually get something resembling a branch out there, which would be good.

Our bus returned home Saturday night, because several of us couldn't spare more time for such fun, but we really enjoyed the return trip as well, with much more conversation and singing. One highlight of the trip was seeing an eastern quoll http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/BHAN-5373YJ?open , one of the cutest forms of Tasmanian wildlife (and a rare one to see, since it is small, nocturnal, and somewhat shy).

Comments

[baronsnorri.livejournal.com]

It *was* an adventure!! Such small-town hospitality, such craggy, metamorphic outcrop scenery (mountains), such an interesting assortment of wildlife along the way! As one of the drivers, I saw two species of Quoll, a coupla wombats (Vombatus ursinus), around 300(!) possums for the round trip, who-knows-how-many-wallabies(of three species), two very silly young Tassie Devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) playing in the middle of the road, and a rather daring bat. Cool trip, great sing-along!!

[lifeofglamour.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds like great fun. And - OMG quolls are so cute!!

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Aren't they? You should see bandicoots as well, their little pointy noses are just darling.