The dark clouds were upon us quickly, and as the Gregorian Chanters were only partly into their bracket, the skies opened and the tumult descended upon us. What use now the thin ponchos, what use now the oversized brollies? Blue tarpaulins floated upon waterlogged terraces. Drowned faces peered out from beneath flimsy shelters, a mixture of wistfulness and guilty pleasure writ large. What did Janis Ian sing ‘Take me walking in the rain’?
From the performance shell, the heroics of the audience – their audience! – moved them to tears. A mexican-wave of brollies had flowed down the amphitheatre, but no-one left the terraces until the torrent had subsided and Genevieve declared a respite. Like many others, I headed for the 44-gallon drums of burning logs scattered across the hillside, valiantly endeavouring to dry a soggy body. Equilibrium restored, chant one more resounded up the valley.
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As a flaneur, it is not my wish to review the programming or the performances, suffice to say that I have already booked accommodation for 2012. It is the sounds, the smells, the people, the idiosyncracies that come together to make this festival unique in the pantheon. Older gentlemen, with flowing beards and brown corduroy trousers held up by a belt, stockman’s hat perched on their thinning pate. Gentlewomen with padded hips and a befuddlement of dress, huddled together gossiping softly as only women of-a-certain-age know how. Hale fellow well met, to the right of me, g'day mate to the left.
Easter Sunday dawned soft and clear, as a glorious blue seeped high into the sky, above the paddocks, above the lilies in their pond, above the swooping eastern rosellas, above the spotted gums. God was in his heaven, and the conductor tapped the podium.
Four Winds Music Festival, Bermagui, Easter 2010
