Saturday 600km
Up at 6am to go out and touch up my three animal/monsters and then to the Victorian Pub at 8:30 to begin the ‘big one’. The festival really went off today, with a supposed 30,000 celebrants milling about the street. People seemed pretty impressed with what I did, which kept my spirits up and the music teacher who set up a stall beside me and had a selection of her students singing and playing music kept me entertained. I was finishing up the piece at around 3pm as most of the families had moved further down the street for the parade and the pub crowd was beginning to go feral. Just as I was picking up, I heard the opening notes to one of the Crooked Fiddle Band’s songs and rushed down to catch their set. Griffith seemed to enjoy the Metal/Folk/Gypsy sounds of this Sydney-based band and after they finished up I said ‘G’day’ to Gordon and Mark and we wagged our tongues for a bit. I got showered up and then hit the town to do a bit of celebrating meself. Getting a beer from the bar felt like being in a Moroccan ticket queue. I finally got served and sat down with some locals who were very chatty about life in Griffith and their upcoming plans to visit Las Vegas. I ended up having an early one yet again as I was pretty knackered and I just don’t enjoy partying like I used to.