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We started out on Wednesday night by taking Jordon down to Mum's place in Anglesea and stayed there for the night. I was pretty grumpy most of Weds night. Anth had been given the job of getting video footage of me leaving for my first Rainbow and I was not particularly co-operative.
Thursday morning I was a bit more excited and a little less grumpy so we got footage of me putting things in the car and driving off down the road. We stopped in Beaufort for supplies along with the billion other hippies hanging out there to do the same. I could totally live in Beaufort! It's lovely and very close to both Rainbow and Meredith! :D
We headed to Rainbow and arrived at about 2pm-ish? I think? It was surprisingly fast getting through the gates and getting the car checked, even though we had THE MOST attentive car checker of the lot. Everyone on the staff there seem to have been given the same pep talk, BE INSANELY HAPPY. They were and it was infectious straight away. I was told by one girl she was the fun police and if I didn't have fun she'd track me down and make sure I did. Special mention: THE WRIST BANDS! Material wrist bands are the SHIZ and I will look down upon all other wrist bands in the future, even if they have something pretty printed on them.
We found Camp Douglas pretty quickly due to the fabulous organisation efforts of DMF. We drove around the block looking for somewhere to fit the car, found a place and set up pretty quickly. This was our first attempt of sleeping in the car with a tarp for a porch. It was a success, though we have a few improvements that we came up with to make next time. Comfy bed off the ground and a porch to stand up in and keep all our belongings. It would have been different if it rained a lot I think, but not by far, we were quite protected :D
Once we were set up we went for a walk around the entire site, checking out where things were located and watching people finishing their set up, dessert for my eyes! So many amazing things to look at in the market not to mention all the art that was being set up. Canaconda!!, Lifestyle Village Sign. I had corn, a baked potato and then chips from the Moroccan baby place. OM NOM NOM. (Eating was definitely one of my highlights :D) We made it back to the car for the top 6 of the Hottest 100. HOORAY GOTYE #1! We knew it'd happen but it was still exciting to hear. I then sat in the car and spent some time on my own reading the entire rainbow booklet twice and writing out a timetable of things I wanted to do that was small enough to fit in my doof belt. I went to bed at a reasonable time because I wanted to get up in the morning and DO ALL THE THINGS!
Friday I got up and went to the Psy-bus for a cup of tea and an egg wrap. OM NOM NOM. The music there Thursday and then again Friday morning was freaking awesome. Mostly from the 60s/70s. I really loved their set up, couches, carpet and a view of all the trees and wonderful ppl walking past, plus they were so close to our camp site AND had tea AND their bus says "Hooray for Everything!" :D
I had a walk around the markets in search of a rainbow poncho/sombrero combo. I had seen a rainbow poncho earlier. I found the stall which had it and got the last one!!! There were 4 there when I walked passed on Thursday. The kid that was helping his parents was 16 and in love with his newly discovered passions - Phat pants and mixing pop locking with shuffling. He showed me his moves and we chatted for a while, he was pretty hilarious.
(Poncho sombrero combo references)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpietKYg7AI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5tKAe9lTak&feature=related
I headed over to the Fairy Wing Workshop only to find out the girl running it had only been funded for 20 pairs of wings. Even though I was there before it was meant to start, I missed out. Many ppl were disappointed including myself and Charly, when I saw her tears I nearly started too. Luckily she is one of the most awesome humans on the planet and loves The Mighty Boosh. I whipped my rainbow poncho out of my doof belt and she wore it and danced around playing near the Giant Winged thing in the lifestyle area and we quoted Boosh together, it's impossible to be unhappy in a poncho :D
I then headed off for another walk around the markets. Retail therapy to cheer me up even more. Popped in for a massage at the small massage stand with two tables. The masseur worked out my back issues with only a few prods and then worked on it like he had known my back for years, simply amazing. Got Anth a doof belt from The Fairy Pyjama's stall.
Headed back and got dressed for Pam & Twigz "animal with a twist" cocktail party. The callisthenics outfit I got from savers for $4 was appreciated by many, so comfy also, will definitely be wearing that as soon as I get another chance. Party was very fun but short as we all wanted to go see Opiuo. I watched about half his set and had a little dance, he was pretty cool but nothing that blew my mind. Headed down to Tijuana Cartel instead and they were heaps of fun. Danced a bit here too with Kelly and Lucas before missioning between the camp site to get changed and markets for dinner before going to see my friend Stevie's set. He's now known as "Steve Ward" which sounds so serious and old considering when we used to hang out he was "Stevie B" and he's got such a beautiful little baby face. He's turned into quite the nutter (I guess he always was) he wore a black mask over his eyes and did lots of crazy moves and used a mic to sing/talk into and other equipment I couldn't make out. Very entertaining even though the music wasn't really my kinda thing. Went to bed after that because there was another bunch of awesome things to do on Saturday!
On Saturday I Skipped laughter yoga and tai chi which I'd planned to go so that I could wake up properly and get myself sorted for the day. Went to Qi Gong at 10. This was interesting to say the least. Basically the guy who was meant to run it was trapped due to floods in NSW so another guy ran it, at first he seemed to know about Qi Gong but did mention that if we were serious about it or anything that we may not like it. I figured he practised it, but hadn't learned to teach it or something. Anyway, after a few minutes of creating our energy ball etc, we started very slowly doing moves called "spanking the dragon" and then we did the YMCA and the Hokey Pokey very slowly. It felt like he was taking the piss too much for me so we bailed.
We grabbed Anth's didge so he could join the didge workshop and then I walked around on my own again, enjoying watching EVERYTHING. Went and hung out at the stall for a while with Selina, Ash and a few others. Then I heard some strange music and asked what it was, Selina told me it was rock aerobics and I should definitely go look. OMG, best advice ever! Rock Aerobics is fucking hilarious and next year I'm dressing up for it and going to be there for the whole time. I stood back and watched everyone for a while, then saw Richard and Leigh Bear, dressed in rock clothes having the time of their lives (Richard had a fantastic head band and his straight bourbon in a bottle also, I still have this mental image of him swigging on it while making rock poses that will be stuck in my head for life!) I joined them and then muppet came over and joined us for a little bit too. This is my kind of ridiculous fun, spandex, rock moves and exercise, its exhausting pretending to be a rock star. I loved all the signs they held up, my favourite being "man embrace" which they held up after they got ppl to partner up for a move.
I walked around some more, got a feather extension put in my hair, then stopped and watched tribal belly dance fusion at the chill stage. Another thing I'd love to be there for next year to participate in. Got another massage, ate a crepe with banana and then went down to the Indigenous Bungaree to join in with the basket weaving. The person who was meant to run this couldn't make it. Instead some of the girls picked different grasses/reeds from around the area and brought some rafia, we made bracelets and the woven matts for the kup murrie they were going to cook on Sunday (food cooked under ground especially as a birthing ceremony for children in the torres straight island). It felt great to be part of their community for the day, seriously beautiful humans:).
One of the elders entertained us with stories from his past while we wove and I made friends with a girl from Ringwood who wants to become a professional story teller :D she was so lovely and I wish I had exchanged details but I'll find her again I'm sure. We both jumped up at the chance to be moving parts of his story about spearing a dugong, making the mother and baby noises with our mouths. I really love this way of teaching and passing on stories and hope to use it in the classroom. Being told a story is one thing, getting to be a part of the story makes it much more fun and things really sink in. The weaving wove into the Stolen Generation talk so I stayed for most of that which was so interesting and sad at the same time. After hours sitting in the marquee I was very hot and my back was hurting pretty bad so I headed back to camp before Ellie ended her story. I grabbed my 3rd baked potato and then lay around in the car for a while chilling out then eventually got up and went for a walk to see OTT as Luke had mentioned he'd be worth seeing. I chatted and danced for a while. There was also a rather amusing hour of me arriving somewhere just after anth had left, at the marquee, at the stall, back at the camp site etc. and him riding around looking for me also. Bed time - Big Day was BIG!
Sunday
I made it to laughter yoga. I'm so glad I did, it was hilarious. Basically it was a little like yoga in that you were focused on being in the moment and breathing, however the rest of it was like doing improv games in drama workshops but everything had a laughter aspect to it. Eg we got on our ha ha harley's and rode around making laugh noises instead. We also all got to have a "laughter bath" which is standing in the centre with a few ppl, eyes closed, and having the rest of the group run at you laughing and raising their arms - very cool experience, Anth had told me about it ages ago so I was looking forward to it and it did not disappoint. It's pretty easy for me to end up giggling stupidly at just about anything so my fake laughter pretty quickly turned into real laughter. It was also a fantastic reminder that taking life a little less seriously and laughing more often is really really good for you. Being positive and looking on the bright side really does make you healthier and helps you to live longer. I feel like i've lost this part of myself a little lately and I'm going to work on getting it back. I cannot wait to do this with Kate next year :D
After that I spent some time laying around and chatting in the teepee with everyone who was exhausted from the night before. At one point Gosia said she was seeing cat shapes in everything, I asked everyone to make cat noises and the whole teepee was soon a mass of miaows. Later I had a miaowversation with James which was rather hilarious also. Classic times, crazy days.
Then it was time for the sparkle party. I got dressed up in my stupidly small lycra hot pants etc and headed to the dancefloor with everyone else. DMF boys rock my freaking world. Their costumes were AMAZING!!!!!!!! No shame, freaking brilliant. Lorna and Kelly's were also brilliant. Kudos to Jane for organising such a fun and hilarious moment. Shame it didn't last longer. I think the idea of getting the mollusk to have it during his set or taking it somewhere other than around Heath's luau is a great idea, he didn't seem too impressed which dampened the moment slightly but we soldiered on and had a blast despite his soggy attitude towards it. Hooray for sparkly us, IN BOOTS! :D
After the sparkle party I did a heap more walking around. Shopped some more, bought two tops, two skirts, a shirt for Anth that he'd pointed out earlier. I saw a friend from highschool also, we were pretty close around year 9/10. It was her first Rainbow too and she was loving it also. We made plans to catch up which I'm looking forward to doing sometime soon. I looked at the crystal mandala teepee, had a massage in a chair while watching the chill stage and just stared at everything lit up again at night. I ate another potato, more corn, more chips from morrocan baby place. Headed back to the camp site and then had great chats with AJ.
At some point on Thursday I saw a guy that looked just like AJ, I named him "not AJ" and saw him many times again throughout the festival. His real name is Nicholas and he was camped right near us. I introduced him to some ppl at our campsite and he told us that he thought we made up names for our empty chairs and that AJ didn't really exist. When AJ finally did get there on Sat night I spent a heap of time explaining to him that there was a "not aj" hanging around. We tried to find him twice, once he was asleep, the second time he wasn't at his camp site. AJ then proceeded to tell me he thought "not aj" wasn't real. You can imagine my excitement when I finally got to introduce not aj to aj. Their chat was freaking hilarious also, they didn't just look alike, they were finishing sentences and joking about the same things!
Monday morning I spent packing up the car, then walked around the market some more while Anth packed up the outside of our set up. I needed to let off steam and cheer myself up cuz I was a bit upset. I stubbed my toe and bled a bit and had already scratched some mozzie bites on my feet so by this point they were sore too, however, after a few minutes walking around rainbow, I was pretty happy again, despite my aching feet. I bought Anth some shpants, finally ate a hari krishna feast plate (I left it until now incase my belly got upset) OM NOM NOM just as I remembered it from Meredith 2006 and still the same price!!! Then we headed off to our hotel booking in Ballarat. Despite how freaking awesome Rainbow is and how much I love walking around dirty with everyone else in the bush, it still felt pretty darn amazing to be clean and in such a neat and tidy indoors place, one extreme to the other always increases the novelty. We had a short walk to the rotunda in town, ordered AMAZING room service food and then watched tv/stuff on our laptops until we fell asleep. Definitely doing this again next year, driving such a short distance and then having ppl wait on you while you rest is just what I need after such an intense amount of sensory stimulation.
In conclusion. Rainbow is for life! I don't think I'll miss one unless I'm not in the country from now until forever.