Two days to get there from Sydney...mobile home collected from Mullumbimby...wed set up for 5 days of music and meeting the neighbours.
A marshall walks up at 4pm, There is one positive Covid case in Byron Bay. The government has pulled the pin. Bluesfest has been cancelled. You must pack up and be out by sunset.
Ready to go and a Marshall strolls up, Theyve decided you can stay the night but you have to be out first thing in the morning.
Due to Covid, as we are prevented from travelling overseas there has been a boom in Oz domestic travel.
But on the drive up from Sydney we had stayed a night at Yamba Beach and the Blue Dolphin Leisure Park was next to where we stopped to take a photo at the Oyster engaged...only place we can think of trying.
Raced back to Mullum to collect Denises car for me to drive and Denise drive the mobile home...one and a half hours in blinding rain...some areas at 40kph in 100kph areas due to near Nil visibility...too dangerous to pull off...pretty freaky but life can be like that.
weekend two years ago...one of the Worlds premier Blues & Roots music festivals...nominated for The World Festival of the Decade.
Sane countries closed their borders and took it seriously while others said Stuff it and let the insidious virus play its tune while their populous faced Requiem.
As a result Australia had done well for many months...the occasional outbreak only from quarantined oversees returnees.
Went to the Comedy Festival in May...packed theatre...shoulder to shoulder...no masks...cos there has been transmission in Sydney for months!
Bluesfest 2021 from 1 April was to be the awakening of live music after Covid...16,500 fans per day planned for about 40,000 total...all to be seated...only Aussie bands...Covid restrictions carefully planned so nothing could go wrong.
but not in contact with a Hens Party in the Byron Bay Hotel...two attendees infected by an overseas returnee in Brisbane.
A poor mutt sitting at a table nearby that got tested as a close contact to the two Brisbane girls in the Hotel...proving how contagious the virus is...airborne transmission...by genome sequencing traced to the Hens Party as the British strain from overseas returnees.
The first New South Covid case in months had closed Bluesfest and caused pain and heartache to the thousands needing the festival to make a buck.
August 2019 to February 2020 the worst East Coast bushfires in history...followed by floods Feb 2020...then the Covid 19 pandemic snuck in as the sun came out.
In March 2021 the worst floods in living memory...floods wrecking havoc up the NSW East Coast...images of a house floating down a swollen river and submerged rooves.
Yamba was a revelation...the southern entry of the swollen Clarence River...Iluka the northern entry...empty beaches out of town like the good old days...millions of flying foxes flying over at 7pm each evening.
Flooded rivers...wild king tides...trees uprooted from sand dunes and tossed onto beaches...stinging blue bottles in hordes washed up on beaches...floaters with blue wands of agony.
Surf crashing on Spooky Beach...sand between toes...waves pounding salt air rocks...surfboard riders at Angourie Point...waves...somersaults...paddling out for another...over and over...the cycle of life...man, board and water...the occasional surf chick zipping within.
When I was 17 I about 1,200 kms from Sydney to Hervey Bay in Queensland one school holidays with a mate...but there was no surf so we hitched about 180kms south to the famous Noosa Beach where Midget Farrelly surfed the single wave from headland to headland to win the World Surfing Championship.
Our tent under a spindly tree on the beach...still have the cloth No Camping sign behind my workshop bliss...slipping daily under the Sunrise Caravan Park wire fence to fill our billies with fresh water...running then diving under the fence with the slap of bare feet in pursuit...walking the 5 miles to Noosa for strawberry milkshakes.
