Day 282 - Saturday 7 October - Craft beer festival

Day 282

Saturday –

7 October 2017  - First game of the season for the Wildcats 96 v Brisbane 86

Toowoon Bay – Erina

We were awake at 8am after a restless beginning. Our new Asian neighbours were still up jibber jabbing at 11am and one woman’s voice was penetrating. It was like we had landed amongst some Asian cartoon and Mighty Mouse was one of the characters. I was glad they settled down before Paul had reached his limit.

We read for a short while, before getting up and going for our morning walk on the sand. We weren’t in for a big one, just to the surf club and then back though the burbs to return to our van.

With breakfast and showers out of the way, we were ready to head to Erina at 10am following the roads taken earlier in the week. We were early fro the Tailgate craft beer festival, so we opted to walk around the industrial area and then the sports ground, to kill some time.

At 11am we were ready to make our entry. We were now familiar with most of the vendors and we went to each to say hi. I don’t really know how it happened, but I became known as official photographer for the event.

It took a while for the punters to arrive and fill the car park, this gave Paul plenty of time to chat to everyone and anyone. I had had my fill by 12.30pm and went to the car to collect the computer and set myself up inside the bar in a quiet corner and use the free wi-fi.

The band Slide Milligan was playing LOUD making it impossible to find a quiet spot, but I tucked myself up in a far away spot and got busy. Blog, Facebook, Brewery reviews all needed to be added, but I soon became aware it wasn’t going to be a quick process, obviously plenty were logged on to the signal slowing things up considerably.

I resorted to loading my photos, then Paul joined me and we ordered lunch and hung out for a bit. I kept an eye on the signal and each time it improved I got busy. Paul continued his ‘work’, checking in every now and then. I just continued to plod away. 

Each time Paul came back he had a new story about someone he had been talking to. He met a fellow member of the craft beer page who had to take a selfie, he got business cards from blokes interested in our story, travels and reviews and he was starting to feel like a celebrity of sorts. It was all a bit weird.

I was then called to take some photos of the event from the balcony of a building across the road in my “Official Photographer” capacity. I was lead up by Shannon, the brewery manager and then stood there checking out the event and taking a few snaps. I am not sure what they are expecting, but hey, it’s all in good fun I guess.

I returned to my corner and Paul went off for another beer, but once the battery power of the laptop died, I called time on our day out, it was 4.30pm. We went around and said goodbye to the various brewers and then it was time to take the celebrity beer reviewer home.

We stopped at the shop on the way, finally getting back just after 5pm. Once we were unpacked, we donned the walking clothes and went for a stroll. We walked to the beach lookout where we could see a fire making its way up between the forest trees of the nearby bay. A water-bombing helicopter was on the scene, collecting seawater and dumping it, but it didn’t really seem to be having much of an effect. We did a walk through the suburb, ending up at the golf course.

We wandered across the manicured lawns in our thongs eventually finding a way out to the lookout once again where we could see that the fire was worsening, the wind not helping matters.

We returned to the van ready for another dinner of soup, before we settled in for a quiet evening reading our books.