Music by the bay

I'm often not in Melbourne during this summer holiday period.  I usually continue my stay in the country and return at the beginning of February.  This year I had a day of work to attend to earlier and now find myself on holidays in my city during summer.

I was a bit worried about how I would spend the time because my business is very quiet at this time of year and there's not a lot of spare cash floating around.  No need to worry though, because I've discovered there are a lot of community events being offered for free.

Just down the road from my village, I have an "historic seaport".  It's a beautiful setting.  There's a park overlooking the bay which has big, shady trees and a rotunda.  The rotunda provides the perfect stage for musicians and the local council realises this and is offering free concerts on Sunday afternoons.  I put my camping chairs in the car, heavy duty sunscreen in my handbag, hat on my head and headed over to meet a friend and spend the afternoon with the Tim Rogers trio consisting of him and a cello player.

It wasn't too crowded.  People were gathered wherever they could find shade.  The council had thoughtfully placed big umbrellas to provide shade where there were no trees.  There was also a supply of sunscreen available. Kids roamed free and danced spontaneously and there was music.

The friend I met is a new friend and we discovered common musical tastes and talked about gigs and Tamworth Country Music Festival and lyrics and bands and other things.

Traffic was chaotic though and I wished I had a bicycle like my friend.  I managed to find a park only to discover the parking metre was out of order.  I photographed the parking metre and called the number provided.  I listened to about 90 seconds of information which ended with the instruction to leave all my details, took a breath and then was told that the voice mail box was full.  Oh well, the gift of free parking too!

We'll be heading back on another Sunday for some outlaw country from the Wagons.  Sitting out for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon reminded me of guitar afternoons at college which were put on as a "recovery" event after campus parties.  Music is indeed very good for the soul.