The Cat Empire -- Biliyana~Eldorado, VIC 5-6th Nov 05

This was just a totally awesome camping trip with Nic & Joko - Nic's best friend who has Permanent Refugee status in our home, & Tim - nic's bf ( and the rest were Nic's friends). Nic decided to go see The Cat Empire with some of her friends, a pretty cool and fun band that plays mostly jazz with some reggae/funk/hip hop elements (up til then, I had no idea who they were). It was held in the outskirt of VIC at Eldorado, about 3.5 hours drive from Melbourne, somewhere near Wangaratta. We rented a car and as Tim was the only one with proper driver's, he drove all the way there and I took over the wheels for the journey back cos he was buggered. We left on the a Sat morning, and arrived around noon and started our camp site. That's me, Nic, Tim & Joko. We purposely chose a spot next to the river with easy access down for a swim!! Anyways, you know how I told you before that I had drowned my mobile, this is the part where it happened. We had all our valuables put in a bag and Tim was the one carrying it. After we were done swimming, we had to trek a fair bit to get back to camp and we were crossing this section where the riverbed suddenly plunged...water was over our heads and the current was really strong. Being the smart ppl that we are, we had used Joko's cloth bag, so everything in there drowned when we dropped in the water. Damn!! My phone died an instant death, leaving nothing recoverable. That night, we had dinner at the main amphitheatre (its all open air by the way) and got us some beers. Music was great and everyone was just enojoying themselves and dancing away, just the atmosphere alone was awesome. The Cat Empire did a really good job, entertaining us til the wee hours of the morning.

When we woke up the next day, everyone was buggered and trying to sober up. Thank god someone brought coffee and a boiler!! That really saved the morning. Grabbed ourselves some bacon & egg sandwich, and just lazed around and chilled out on the grass. Then it was a long drive back home....



http://www.thecatempire.com/ce_stage_menu.html
For those of you who are interested in what it was like, using the above link, click onto Tour Info, and choose Past Tours. This will bring you to a new page - click on "The Night That Never End Tour" to expand the story. The band put a few lines together on this event, and does alot better in narrating it.

Oh, and did i mention the toilets??? As this was totally feral, they had makeshift dump stalls, built over holes with two planks, and everything you dump big or small goes down to this bucket that contains soil in it to absorb your shit, and when you are done, you throw in some lavender to help contain the smell. OF COURSE that didnt help the least bit. It stank soooo badly I had to hold my breath until i turned blue before i was willing to take another gasp of air. And I tell you what, I LOVE lavenders, and this really put me off lavenders for a very very long time. Uggghhh....