Sunday at Boomerang

My Boomerang t-shirt

I bought this souvenir shirt on Friday and decided to wear it back to the Boomerang Festival on the last day of the festival, Sunday.  
The only problem being that most of the workers at the festival were wearing them as well, so quite a few people thought I worked there, instead of being just another festival goer, which at times was rather amusing.
I'm used to seeing these types of shirts sold at Bluesfest, where performing artists are listed like this on a t-shirt and sold as a memento of the weekend.  
So, it was strange to me to see a TV reporter like George Negus with rather high billing on the shirt (usually the further up the top of the shirt the more important the artist or band is).

Xavier Rudd was obviously booked after the t-shirts were printed as his name didn't make it onto the shirt at all.

I wasn't there Saturday, so I didn't get to see Xavier, or Gurrumul play, but I saw Xavier play Bluesfest this year and I saw Gurrumul play just before Bob Dylan at Bluesfest a few years back.

John Williamson and
Warren H Williams on Sunday

The main reason I chose Sunday over going Saturday was that Sunday was the closing day of the festival and John Williamson was playing.
I had tickets to see John play at a winery last year, just outside Brisbane, but a viscous looking hailstorm came over and the forecast didn't look good for the evening, so I stayed home in an effort to avoid hail damage to my car.
The storm batted my area, and I was patting myself on the back for not going, until after the weekend when I heard that the winery didn't even get any rain that night, so that was $100 ticket down the drain.

At least I got to see and hear him play some of my favourite songs, like 'True Blue' and 'Old Man Emu'.

Even Steve Irwin liked to get in on the odd version of John's song 'Old Man Emu'.

The view from the bar

The traffic getting down from Brisbane was a little slow and it took me just over two hours to get down from Brisbane and I was thirsty when I got in the gate, so I headed to the bar for a mid-strength beer.
The weird thing was the only mid-strength beer they sold was a Brisbane beer called XXXX, which is quite strange, since the festival is in a state that are bitter rivals at just about everything, but mainly football and beer.

Don't ask me who these guys are,
but they must be important to someone, right?

Archie Roach presents "Butcher Paper,
 Texta, Blackboard and Chalk"

Butcher Paper, Blackboard, 

Texta and Chalk Book Launch

I saw Archie sing on Friday night on the main stage, and on Sunday he presented a film featuring his partner, who had passed away.
His latest work is a children's songbook which he worked on with his partner Ruby Hunter.

It was perfect weather all weekend for the Boomerang Festival, you couldn't have got it any better than it was this weekend.

The closing ceremony was just as much fun as the opening ceremony.
Click on the link to see the YOU TUBE of the closing ceremony here-
Boomerang Festival Closing Ceremony

Then it was off to watch the NRL Grand-final commentated by Ernie Dingo and George Negus.

I went down to the Alter-native tent to have a peek at the Grand Final and ran into Ernie Dingo and asked him which team he was going for.
Like me he didn't care which of these two teams won. 
I actually met Ernie's wife Sally at the Brisbane Writers Festival

A Monocled 

Monk Swimming

when I went to see Malachy McCourt do a talk after just having read his book, 'A Monk Swimming'.

A Monocled Monk Swimming

and I just happened to run into a man on that day (Paulo Coelho) who would become the second highest grossing author in the world eventually, who showed me the butterfly tattoo on his forearm and told me the story behind it.
So, the four authors were Paulo Coelho, Malachy McCourt, Sally Dingo and another author (who I can't remember now) in a small friendly group in a small space listening to them talk about their lives, and of course Sally was talking about her life with Ernie, because that was what her book was about.

Tammy Anderson wrote, directs and stars 
in the one woman show
I Don't Wanna Play House

Now Ernie was standing next to a lady named Tammy Anderson, who was in a one woman play performed throughout the weekend of the Boomerang Festival called 'I Don't Wanna Play House'.
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/local/goulburnmurray/201007/r598243_3875971.mp3

Tammy Anderson

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/07/09/2949459.htm
George Negus comes sneaking up from the side of us while we are all having a chat and it's like we are all at a BBQ having a talk in the backyard, quite surreal to me being the "Nowhere Man" in this group of achievers.
I ask George who he is going for, and like all of us he doesn't care either, because he follows the Australian A-League in soccer and goes for the Central Coast Mariners. 
The game started, so Ernie and George had to go up on stage to do their commentary of the game and I was left standing next to Tammy and talking to her throughout the game.
We had some laughs and exchanged stories about our lives and her play and life in general.
I didn't know a lot about Tammy, but I had caught a few minutes of her play while wondering around the site.
Quite powerful and confronting stuff I might say as well.

I had read somewhere that she was in the movie 'The Sapphires', which I haven't seen yet, and I didn't quite get around to asking Tammy about it, so I Google-d it when I got home and found out she played Evelyn in the movie.

I'll have to watch it now.

And talk about 6 degrees of separation, who should be singing before the final on the big screen in front of us but Tammy's co-star in that movie, Jessica Mauboy.

It sure was a surreal night for me, anyway.

And the chooks (Roosters) won ... if anybody cared;-)