What happens on Australia Day?

Our national public holiday. Tanslates to: Day Off. Where we do what we do best: BBQ and drink.

Okay, there's a little more to it than that. Some places have parades, my parent's town had raft races last year. Tamworth (self-proclaimed country music capital) has a parade where they try to do the world's longest line dance. There's speeches, people getting citizenship certificates and Australian of the Year awards as well as the downright fun stuff. My town, well, for the second year running we had camel races.

The City Band (yes, a brass band) played for the ceremony stuff. Here's a pic of myself trying not to be shitscared that I need a lot more time practising before I should be playing in public. Thank goodness we didn't have to wear our godawful blue jackets. It's a horror uniform when you're sitting in the sun at about 38°C. Funny, though, the uniforms look really good when the band is all together.

Then the camel races were started and the band I play bass in was meant to play for two hours. We started late because the ceremony stuff went overtime, and then we had to stop every time they even thought about having a race, or a lolly scramble, and listen to the announcer bloke carry on for the most part unintelligbly except for saying 'bloody' far too many times for a family event. So in total we played about ten songs, and were getting paid $400, so that works out about ten bucks each, per song. $400 is a fairly rough price for a good band to be paid, but it's a community event. I like pub gigs so much better. No faffing about, just play your set, take a break, play another, and so on. Yeah, you get idiots, but you don't get idiots that try to organise you and want you to stop and start playing at the drop of a hat. Anyway, here's another of me and my bass. It's a Yamaha 5-string which I dearly love even though it's in dire need of a set-up and a set of new strings. No that anyone needed to know that.

Then, of course, I went to the pub. Drank far too much and walked home.

I missed out on playing goon of fortune. That's my regret for the day. A friend only recently told me about this game, and that they play it for Australia Day. What it is: a goon bag (the sack thing out of a cheap cask of wine) on a hill's hoist (rotary clothesline). Everyone stands around it and then you spin the clothesline. Whoever it lands on drinks. Beats the hell out of swinging from the clothesline.