Szilvia GombolaWhen In Home – Travel without leaving home
February 26th 2007 08:05
Below is an article I wrote recently about attending a festival on my own home patch, just after returning home from more than three months travels overseas.
Sometimes when you get back from a great overseas holiday, particularly an extended period on the road, and all the spontaneity, excitement and adventures that comes with that, all you want to do is head straight back. More often that not, it is just not possible. I don’t think there are any real cures for itchy feet, but I do know there is temporary relief to be found, often right under your nose.
I hope you enjoy my review of my experience at the Woodford Folk Festival and please let me know of any tips you may have for scratching the travel itch at home.
Woodford Connects Folks Down Under
Australia’s Woodford Folk Festival has turned 21 and like any enthusiastic young adult has celebrated its coming of age in great style.
In truth, Woodford, like many other young adults, came of age a little while ago. However, the milestone is a testament to its longevity in a field where many festivals are lucky to make it anywhere near puberty. It also signals a bright future ahead for an event that is now in the prime of its life and possibly holds the keys to a better cultural understanding and connection so desperately needed throughout the world.
Having recently returned home to Australia’s Sunshine Coast after more than three months traveling, my wife and I were already missing the daily adrenaline rush and cultural immersion of our inspired days hiking in Norway, drinking in Ireland and eating in Italy. Unfortunately, the world would have to wait for our next international adventures, but what if the world could come to us? We knew what we had to do.
We had been to the Woodford Folk Festival a few times before, but this time we were bringing an unexpected outbreak of itchy feet with us, an ailment we thought was well and truly under control given the travels of the months before. The itch came straight back and we needed a cure, no matter how temporary.
Our relief was sudden and soothing as Woodford took our senses around the world in 24 hours in our own back yard. Our overnight New Year’s Eve visit also provided a perfect reflection on the year gone and a celebration of the promise ahead. A soothing three minutes of candlelit-silence throughout the festival site at 11.30pm said a moving goodbye to 2006, while a spiritual hill-top sunrise ceremony at 4.30am said hello to the first sun of 2007.
The six-day Woodford festival is now one of the largest of its kind in the world, with more than 2,000 performers and 120,000 visitors from near and far creating a temporary global village complete with world music, food, bars, workshops and discussions. It is a true melting pot of world cultures simmering under Australia’s summer sun and burning brightly from its magical hidden bushland valley, which oozes with an atmosphere of open-mindedness and understanding that slows the pace and soothes the soul following the commercial excesses of Christmas.
While Woodford is a showcase of all performance and artistic genres, world music is still its beating heart and choosing who to see, and who to miss, creates the biggest stresses of the day. On the local Australian music front, we took in pulsating acoustic guitarist and singer Paul Greene, enigmatic pianist and story teller Tim Freedman of The Whitlams, and boisterous blues outfit Backsliders (with Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst on drums). From the world stage, Irish fiddle virtuoso Martin Hayes and American guitarist Dennis Cahill reeled and jigged their way through an energetic one-hour set, including a stunning five-minute opening number. This was just the organised music experiences, complimented by the ever-buzzing hive of musical and theatrical street performers that bring Woodford to life.
If music is Woodford’s heart, then cultural understanding is the blood flowing through its veins. A panel discussion on Islam, featuring a mix of new and old Australian Muslims and academics, drew a huge audience who opened their ears and minds to every word.
“It is in the spirit of Woodford that a Rabbi introduces a panel discussion on Islam,” proclaimed panel moderator, journalist and author of The World of Islam George Negus. He described the need to understand Islam as arguably the world’s most important issue and bemoaned that “we do a lot of talking about Islam, but not much talking to Muslims” and the idea of the panel discussion was to help “build bridges of understanding between cultures”.
Celebrating the world’s diversity as you walk the dusty streets of Woodford and soak up the eclectic sights, diverse sounds and exotic tastes and smells of the village’s international foods, against the backdrop of Queensland’s bush and brooding summer storm clouds overhead, it is easy to feel an instant connection to this temporary, utopian global community and forget which reality you are meant to belong to.
Festival Director Bill Hauritz says that connection is perhaps Woodford’s greatest achievement. “It seems sometimes that many of us come here, connect into the festival, and then return home to a world and community that disconnects itself from reality,” he says. “Yet reality is where we say we go when we go home.’’
We didn’t know what reality we were in. All that mattered was we were a world away… at home.
Sometimes when you get back from a great overseas holiday, particularly an extended period on the road, and all the spontaneity, excitement and adventures that comes with that, all you want to do is head straight back. More often that not, it is just not possible. I don’t think there are any real cures for itchy feet, but I do know there is temporary relief to be found, often right under your nose.
I hope you enjoy my review of my experience at the Woodford Folk Festival and please let me know of any tips you may have for scratching the travel itch at home.
Woodford Connects Folks Down Under
Australia’s Woodford Folk Festival has turned 21 and like any enthusiastic young adult has celebrated its coming of age in great style.
In truth, Woodford, like many other young adults, came of age a little while ago. However, the milestone is a testament to its longevity in a field where many festivals are lucky to make it anywhere near puberty. It also signals a bright future ahead for an event that is now in the prime of its life and possibly holds the keys to a better cultural understanding and connection so desperately needed throughout the world.
Having recently returned home to Australia’s Sunshine Coast after more than three months traveling, my wife and I were already missing the daily adrenaline rush and cultural immersion of our inspired days hiking in Norway, drinking in Ireland and eating in Italy. Unfortunately, the world would have to wait for our next international adventures, but what if the world could come to us? We knew what we had to do.
We had been to the Woodford Folk Festival a few times before, but this time we were bringing an unexpected outbreak of itchy feet with us, an ailment we thought was well and truly under control given the travels of the months before. The itch came straight back and we needed a cure, no matter how temporary.
The six-day Woodford festival is now one of the largest of its kind in the world, with more than 2,000 performers and 120,000 visitors from near and far creating a temporary global village complete with world music, food, bars, workshops and discussions. It is a true melting pot of world cultures simmering under Australia’s summer sun and burning brightly from its magical hidden bushland valley, which oozes with an atmosphere of open-mindedness and understanding that slows the pace and soothes the soul following the commercial excesses of Christmas.
While Woodford is a showcase of all performance and artistic genres, world music is still its beating heart and choosing who to see, and who to miss, creates the biggest stresses of the day. On the local Australian music front, we took in pulsating acoustic guitarist and singer Paul Greene, enigmatic pianist and story teller Tim Freedman of The Whitlams, and boisterous blues outfit Backsliders (with Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst on drums). From the world stage, Irish fiddle virtuoso Martin Hayes and American guitarist Dennis Cahill reeled and jigged their way through an energetic one-hour set, including a stunning five-minute opening number. This was just the organised music experiences, complimented by the ever-buzzing hive of musical and theatrical street performers that bring Woodford to life.
If music is Woodford’s heart, then cultural understanding is the blood flowing through its veins. A panel discussion on Islam, featuring a mix of new and old Australian Muslims and academics, drew a huge audience who opened their ears and minds to every word.
“It is in the spirit of Woodford that a Rabbi introduces a panel discussion on Islam,” proclaimed panel moderator, journalist and author of The World of Islam George Negus. He described the need to understand Islam as arguably the world’s most important issue and bemoaned that “we do a lot of talking about Islam, but not much talking to Muslims” and the idea of the panel discussion was to help “build bridges of understanding between cultures”.
Celebrating the world’s diversity as you walk the dusty streets of Woodford and soak up the eclectic sights, diverse sounds and exotic tastes and smells of the village’s international foods, against the backdrop of Queensland’s bush and brooding summer storm clouds overhead, it is easy to feel an instant connection to this temporary, utopian global community and forget which reality you are meant to belong to.
Festival Director Bill Hauritz says that connection is perhaps Woodford’s greatest achievement. “It seems sometimes that many of us come here, connect into the festival, and then return home to a world and community that disconnects itself from reality,” he says. “Yet reality is where we say we go when we go home.’’
We didn’t know what reality we were in. All that mattered was we were a world away… at home.
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