Happy as a pig in mud at #HVMWF 2019

As a bloke in the queue at the bar said to me when I went to fetch a hot spiced cider, "Gumboot people are happy people!" As nice as it would have been to don tatters, face paint and fancy headpieces (we saw lots of beautiful examples), I was extremely happy with my choice of clothing for the Huon Valley Mid Winter Festival on Friday night. I counted the layers I was was wearing - six in total on my upper half! Plus thermals under my jeans and long socks in my gum boots. And I was warm as toast. There was a serious amount of mud, a little rain and a whole lot of happy punters. As I have said before, these people know how to run an event. There is plenty of seating, lots of toilets, undercover areas, fire pits to warm up by and friendly volunteers with a sense of humour. And that's before the great selection of food and beverages, sculptures and awesome music acts. Despite the testing weather conditions, there were plenty of interstate and international visitors. I had squid from the fire bugs at Tasman Quartermasters, some tasty fries, croquettes from Eten and one of Yeastie Beastie's fabulous doughnuts. With hot spiced Willie Smith's Cider in hand, we ran into a few groups of friends and made it out of the paddock car park without needing to be towed out of the mud. Happy days!

Ravens

"So what are you up to on the weekend?" my work colleague asked me on Friday afternoon.

"Well, on Sunday afternoon we're going to drive about an hour south of us to Hastings Caves, where we'll get on a bus to take us deep into the southern forests at dusk, to listen to the sound of ravens coming in to roost for the night, then get back on the bus and come home again."

I realise how odd that sounds, unless you've been to anything that's part of the Dark Mofo festival before perhaps. This particular event is called Hrafn: Conversations with Odin, a sound installation by renowned sound artist Chris Watson whose works have been heard around the world and who has previously worked with Sir David Attenborough.

The installation is part of the $2 million Project X, designed to bring visitors to the Huon Valley to aid in recovery after the devastating bushfires early this year. The fires damaged much of the Tahune Airwalk, one of the region's main tourist attractions, and it's not expected to reopen until late 2019. The project has copped criticism, as it was always going to. But good things always do, and same old, same old isn't going to bring people here, when everyone loves the new and different. Hrafn is on from Thursday to Sunday next week as well, read more and get your tickets here.

Dinner at one of the Huon Valley's restaurants and cafes is part of the Hrafn experience. Last night we enjoyed a delicious meal of beef curry (David) and seafood chowder (me) sitting by the wood fire at The Bears Went Over The Mountain (or The Bears for short). We actually hadn't been in there since a stop for Devonshire tea during a holiday in Tasmania more than 10 years ago. It's been renovated to a larger, light and bright space with yummy scones and plenty more on offer. The Bears is licensed with a nice range of Tasmanian ciders, wines and soft drinks. Now we know, we'll go back for sure.

Paint the town red

Each year, businesses in the south of Tasmania are encouraged to light up in red in support of the Dark Mofo festival, the annual winter art and music festival run by the team at MONA. Whether it's red lighting, red coloured food and drinks or limited edition red packaging, many businesses get into the spirit of this fantastic festival that brings many visitors to the state. The idea is to create a great experience for tourists and local festival-goers as they travel around the Hobart area. As we now live on the main road and David runs his technology help business from here, we decided to light up the Franklin Old Bank in red too. Spooky huh! I love this time of year.

A very long weekend

It was a long weekend, and boy was I grateful for this one. We needed the time to adjust to our new one-dog household. Just to give ourselves some space, without obligations. Yesterday we took Gretchen on a short outing to Cygnet. We picked up a few things, popped into a couple of stores that we hadn't been to, had coffee and cake at Lotus Eaters in their nice dog friendly outdoor area. Gretchen is having to get used to being solo dog. Over the weekend she kept looking out the door or around the garden for her missing sister, which was a little heartbreaking. But at least she gets the whole back seat of the car to herself now. We couldn't face going straight back home, so called a kind friend who had offered support and popped in for a chat. It did us both the world of good.

Today we left Gretchen at home alone for a few hours while we headed to the Taste of the Huon. The weather was beautiful, and loads of people came from Hobart and beyond to sample a huge range of food and beverages, a much needed boost for local businesses affected by loss of income during the recent bushfires. We had coffee and doughnuts, sampled some Indonesian fare, bought some local saffron and wine and a take-home pack of ginger beer, then settled down with a Simple Cider to watch a performance artist called Samora Squid pass his entire body through the head of a tennis racket, then swallow a sword. That guy is a true entertainer.

Mid-winter festing

My favourite Tassie festival, over again. This year, friends made the trip down from the north to stay and join us at the Huon Valley Mid-Winter Festival. Friday night's burning man ceremony was awesome. After the long and tedious preamble last year ("Let me tell you a story...", a very long one that will go for about 40 minutes), it was refreshing and positive to have a woman from the local indigenous community welcome everyone to country, encouraging us to take care of the land we depend on. Then a horde of flaming arrows flew at Big Willie and up he went, to the great delight of the crowd.

I had been looking forward to trying a rabbit pie from The Princess and the Fatman made with sustainably farmed bunnies from Geeveston, and it did not disappoint. Absolutely delicious. Then a pork bun from Fat Pig Farm and some hot mulled Willie Smiths cider. And I simply can't go past Lady Hester's sourdough donuts, oh my god! As always the event is so well organised, with all the basics sorted, like enough seating and toilets, friendly staff keeping the place clean, easy parking and plenty of fire barrels to warm up by. Add the music, costumes and generally jovial atmosphere, what's not to love. Bring on 2019.

Dover Seafest

The sun shone and the crowds turned out for Dover Seafest on Easter Saturday, the first one in 18 years apparently. We took the dogs down for a couple of hours and met lots of friendly locals and visitors who came up for a pat - or even a selfie. It was a lovely outing, with busy food and drink stalls, entertainment, kids activities and of course water based action including rowing and sailing. The queue for Masaaki's Sushi was huge (as usual), so we had a pale ale from Devils Brewery and a delicious burger, followed by a good old flake cone from Huon Valley Soft Serve. Then we all had to go home for a lie down, especially the dogs, who were all patted and cuddled out.

Gong xi fa cai

Happy lunar new year to our Chinese friends and colleagues! Last Sunday, Huonville was host to a performance by members of the Chinese Community Association of Tasmania. In the river foreshore park, we were treated to traditional Chinese songs (from the young lady in pink below), Wushu martial arts and of course, the famous dragon dance. A cute-as-a-button four-year-old girl stole the show as she practiced her martial arts moves in a striking red outfit.

The group decided this year to take their traditions out to rural and regional areas in Tasmania, partly to share the celebrations and partly as a rehearsal for this Sunday's big festival performance on Parliament House Lawns. Red envelopes were presented to audience members who could answer some basic questions about lunar new year. I won a red dragon decoration for saying the traditional new year greeting in Mandarin. Well, kind of. As above.

A day at the fest, 2018

The Cygnet yarn bombers have excelled themselves. Everything from garbage bins to trees was decked out in colourful wool at the 2018 Cygnet Folk Festival over the weekend and looked fabulous. Check out this beautiful chair:

This year we bought a day pass just for the Sunday of the festival and spent a long and full day there. We started off with a yoga class in the Cygnet Town Hall. That's where the wholesome stuff stopped. Let's just say my diet for the wasn't healthy, but it was delicious! Coffee with an Eccles cake and a spinach ricotta pastry from The Lotus Eaters for breakfast, a sourdough doughnut from Yeastie Beastie, an organic choc mint ice-cream, a Taiwanese steamed pork bun (from Geeveston), Willie Smith's cider, a currywurst sausage from Silver Hill... oh boy. I'm back on the wagon today. Still have a couple of Christmas kilos to lose.

As usual, the variety of acts at the festival was terrific. We enjoyed indigenous songwriting legend Joe Geia and his band (our choir in Franklin sings one of his most famous songs, called Yil Lull), The Band Who Knew Too Much from Melbourne (singer and accordion player Dave Evans right) and Canadian balladeer Scott Cook and the Second Chances. In St Mark's church, we heard the distinctive sounds of a collaboration between ARIA award winning traditional Greek band the haBiBis and Jewish Sephardic music from the Balkans by Saray Illuminado and later, the harmonies of Queensland duo, Noel Gardner and Alex Bridge. We dropped in on a Scottish tea dance in the town hall accompanied by harp players Van Diemen's Angels and wrapped up the day with Hobart's Bootleg Gin Sluggers in the scout hall in Burton's reserve. All in all a top day out. The organisers and volunteers really did a terrific job.

#HVMWF17

The Huon Valley Mid-Winter Festival is over for another year, and this year we again spent the Friday night in the glorious cold night air in the paddocks around Willie Smith's Apple Shed in Grove. Well, some of it was spent toasting ourselves next to fire barrels. Eating pork cracking and pork buns from Fat Pig Farm, raclette with cheese from Tasmania's Heidi Farm, burritos and divine doughnuts from Lady Hester. Stu from Tasman Quartermasters was wielding the blowtorch, his cooking method of choice. We warmed ourselves up from the inside by sipping hot mulled cider.

It must be said that the 'burning man' ceremony went on a little (OK, way) too long this year, with a man telling a "story" that wasn't and fire dancers who would have been awesome if you could see them. After 35 minutes of this, some Korean tourists standing next to me wielding enormous Samsung phones turned and asked "burning soon?" Then finally, Big Willie was lit and he burned brightly in the Huon Valley sky. It's absolutely one of the best festivals of the year, set up to cater for the crowds and the cold. All my photos were rubbish though. I'm blaming icy fingers!