There are a lot of things to hate about the Woodford Folk Festival, Australia’s International Music Festival. For example, if you want to camp there for the week in a decent spot you have to be prepared to forego your Christmas lunch and instead spend the day queuing at the gate, which opens at 2pm, and then setting up not just your camp, but those of your friends who begged you to so that they could, for once, have Christmas with their families.
The other thing is the weather. Those of us who have “done” a few Woodfords have been through it all: torrential rain that saw us wading through ankle deep mud to the cold showers and blistering heat that only a cold shower, fully clothed, can relieve.
So why do we keep going back for more? Because it’s great! When you enter those gates for the start of the festival you leave the outside world behind and enter a bubble where (almost) anything goes. Strange things happen at Woodford. Whilst waiting at our table at the Common Ground Café (a whole story in itself) for my husband to order, I happened to look across at the table nearby only to see a girl sitting there who, whilst chatting animatedly to her friends, suddenly parted her legs to reveal that under her dress she’d decided to go for maximum ventilation that day. And she’d paid someone to help her if you catch my hairless drift. When I related this story to friends they expressed some surprise then all shrugged their shoulders: “Woodford”.
Only at Woodford would you see a cricket game played by the Woodford XI vs the Dreaming All-Stars where, when a goanna happened to take a stroll across the pitch, the indigenous team followed it into the bush with sticks raised to shoulder height. Oh and of course there was the inevitable streaker whom Ernie Dingo affected to smack on the bum with his bat.
There is of course the music, everything from Hanggai, a Mongolian heavy metal band fronted by the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, to the Emmanual College Scottish pipe band, 60s folk singer Buffy St. Marie to the Australian musical comedy trio Tripod. And some guy called Gotya. You can learn to swing dance or get in touch with your inner child/man/woman/goddess or listen to past prime ministers bang the rostrum and relive their glory days. You can spend the week living as a puritanical vegan, drinking drinks made from spinach, kale and broccoli (very pleasant actually) or drink yourself into an alcoholic fog each night and live on greasy Hungarian fried bread and cheese and tiny frozen balls of ice cream called Dippin’ Dots.
Altogether it’s a great big freelovin’ hippy scene. Except someone always gets something nicked.
On the last night of the festival there is a farewell ceremony that most people go to. Many festival goers participate, either singing or making and carrying lanterns. This leaves the campground largely empty. This year, on our way back from the ceremony we received a text from some friends who had left early to say some guys had been seen stealing from the camp. We returned to find that, as in past years, our grog had been nicked. We lost a bottle of champagne from our camping fridge and another friend lost the remains of a bottle of vodka, another some bottles of wine. Someone had seen some guys coming out of one of the tents and told us one was wearing a striped T-shirt and suspenders. We sat around gnashing our teeth for a while and plotting revenge for next year by way of various nasty substances added to some decoy bottles, then resignedly went to bed.
Next morning one of our friends went for an early stroll to see what she could see. About 50 metres down the track from our campsite she spied an old white Commodore station wagon with a small tent next to it, a young guy asleep on a mattress in the open and empty bottles strewn everywhere. What caught her eye was the empty red wine bottle on the roof of the car. What young guys buy red wine? And they were obviously young guys. So she walked back up and mentioned it to her husband, David, who took a look for himself. A young man with suspenders hanging off his jeans was up and about. David returned to our area and announced, “I think we’ve got the blokes who took our stuff.” What he hadn’t told us the night before was that he and his wife had had a $3000 camera stolen from their tent. This upped the stakes considerably.
So David and three of us marched down to the other site to see if these were our thieves. We let David go down on his own first, to make sure it was them. He strolled calmly down, a big man with some presence, and stood casually hands in pockets chatting to the guy with the braces. He then leaned over and looked in the back of the car and pointed to something. The young guy stood with his hands in his pockets and appeared to shrug. David then opened the rear door and reached around and pulled the object out. It was a large camera case. He pointed to it, questioning the young guy further while he continued to shrug gormlessly. When David finally slung the camera over his shoulder we knew we had our men and marched on down to sort them out. Matt, a feisty pom, who never minces his words, let them have it. “It’s people like you that ruin Woodford! This is supposed to be a f’in folk festival not a f’in thieves festival,” he yelled. And then he inflicted what was probably the worst punishment of all to come. He turned around and at the top of his voice announced to the whole camp ground: “Hey everyone, these guys are thieves! They stole alcohol and a 3000 dollar camera from us. So if you’ve had anything taken it’s probably here.” Hundreds of campers stopped what they were doing and stared.
Probably still drunk, four of them were up and blinking stupidly in confusion. The one on the mattress still slept. I decided that if they’d stolen the camera they could well have stolen other things, so I began tossing everything out of the back of their car with the same amount of respect they’d shown for our things. Lo and behold there was a laptop computer in a case. “What about this?” I asked the sheepish looking creature with the suspenders. “Oh, that’s mine,” he replied in a small voice. I didn’t believe him, but didn’t know better, so I put it back.
David announced to them that he would now be informing security and the police and we walked away. Five guys have never packed up faster, and they did it while the whole campground watched on, one guy taking photos. David asked security to make sure someone was on the gate to stop them, but when they got in their car and started moving, he quickly jumped in his own car to make sure. I jumped in the back seat and we took off. As we came down one track they were coming down one that joined it. We just managed to get in front of them. As I looked back they suddenly stopped and threw the laptop out of the car and sped off. I made David stop so I could run back and grab it.
A man who was wandering along near his tent cleaning his teeth stared in amazement. I took off along the road after David until the security vehicle, which was heading back from their site having arrived too late, came along. I flagged him down and hopped in beside him. Unfortunately the security vehicle was a golf cart. It put-putted on through the dust with no hope of catching anything, and we were just in time to see David’s car speed off down the main road, obviously still in pursuit. We then spotted a policeman in another golf cart on another wild goose chase trying to catch the thieves. With no horn on the cart it was impossible to alert him to our presence and so began a ridiculous chase of our own as we hung U-turns and bounced painfully over potholes trying to catch up with the policeman. Eventually as he turned we caught his eye and he stopped. He radioed his mates and I handed over the laptop.
Meanwhile David was still in hot pursuit. He followed the Commodore at enough distance that they wouldn’t twig until they turned down what he knew to be a dead end that led to a swimming hole. They obviously thought they could hide there until the coast was clear. They were bitterly disappointed when two police vehicles arrived.
David had to return to the swimming hole with the camera so it could be photographed and I went with him to tell them about the laptop. Just as we were leaving they were about to be breathalyzed. One of the youngest looking guys had changed out of his dirty T-shirt into a long-sleeved button-up collar shirt. No one was smiling. The festival was over.
