Victoria down! ...Next up, Far North Queensland.

Having a day off back in my homeland of Brissie today. After some frantic uploading, downloading, catching-up, catching zees, and chasing tail I am now getting ready to pack the bag to head off to Cairns tomorrow, for the Queensland leg of the tour. All my dresses are washed but thanks to the relentless down pour that has been happening in South East Queensland come the last week, I have now resorted to drying my tour dresses with a travel hair dryer. Let’s hope this works, otherwise, it could be a very musty smelling tour van.


The rest of the Victoria leg was wonderful, including a very intimidating show at the Palais (next to Luna Park, St Kilda) on Friday. This building is purely imposing, holding around 2500 people.

Inside the Palais, omg omg omg omg omg

Lucky that I couldn’t actually see anyone past the front row, otherwise I may have had a very real nervous breakdown.

Watching Sarah's show from front of house at the Palais

Saturday we played the quaint and cosy Town Hall in Meeniyan.

Meeniyan is a small township about 2 hours South West of Melbourne and is home to a grand total of 420 people. Considering there was an audience of 200 strong on Saturday night, it is safe to say that half the town turned out for the event.

It was such a lovely experience including all of the small town trimmings and a good dose of authentic country hospitality. We took the leisurely scenic route to the town (and by ‘scenic route’, I mean accidentally getting lost in the neighbouring hills of the Tarwin), where after hitting a dirt road and driving by several massive property's we realised that we may indeed be heading in the wrong direction.

Ummmm, maybe we should check the address...

 

40mins and some help from Google Maps later, we arrived in Meeniyan where Suzanna (of the local CWA) showed us into the back stage area. There was tea, coffee, beer, wine, snacks, an open fire and a group of country-woman working hard in the kitchen preparing us an epic feast for that night.

Backstage at Meeniyan

It was pretty much the best food I had ever eaten...the fact that I had only really eaten cheese and bread for 4 days previous to this may well have contributed to it's overwhelming tastiness, but still, it was pretty darn good.

I am certain that the Meeniyan Town Hall experience is going to be one of the most memorable nights of the tour.

In general, the first week of touring had its ups and downs to be honest. At first I was feeling really quite shy and a bit overwhelmed by the whole big-tour experience. I felt like I was simply moonlighting amongst a bunch of pros. That said, by the time we got to Meeniyan it was starting feel a bit more natural to be hanging around a bunch of extremely talented strangers and I am starting to feel more and more comfortable with the whole thing as each day passes.

In other news, I got a call today from the local paper in Rockhampton (The Morning Bulletin) saying that they had had an ‘anonymous’ tip-off that I was coming to town as a part of the Sarah Blasko tour, and would I like to be interviewed etc etc. I have a sneaking suspicion of just who this ‘anonymous’ informer was, eh hem, ...Mum.