southbound sunday

After a surprisingly good night of sleep, it was Sunday.
I lied in bed for a while hoping to high heaven that my leg was rested and stretched enough to bear weight. When it got too hot to lay in the tent anymore I had to get up, fortunately it was slightly healed and with the help of some voltaren gel it was right for the rest of the weekend.
The Silents were due on at 11:35 so we had some time to kill.
Which the boys spent sitting around in a circle, taking turns spinning a stick, and who ever the stick pointed at, the person who spun the stick got to throw the stick at that person’s shins.
I thought it was the most ridiculous game i’d ever seen, but other people who heard that anecdote didn’t seem to think so.
Maybe you just had to be there.

My boy and I went off to see the Silents, who were everything I thought they’d be. Not much of a crowd but they kicked off the day with a good vibe.
We checked out the stalls on the other side of the Rock Stage (in case you haven’t noticed already the stage names were Paper, Rock, & Scissors), I finally got a new nose stud. My old one had been lost whilst camping and I hadn’t coped very well. I have a habit of fiddling with it, which when I can’t do that it’s frustrating. My nose stud was an act of defiance to an ex-boyfriend and it’s so much a part of who I am, being without it wasn’t a nice feeling.
So we started drinking again to the Jezabels, and found some shade.
It was shaping up to be 36 degrees Celsius (96 degrees Fahrenheit), which is pretty warm! Particularly when there’s not much shade around. But we enjoyed the Jezabels and then I went off by myself to the shaded tent to watch Junip (Jose Gonzalez) who’s voice was intoxicating as I expected. Unfortunately his voice was also putting me to sleep, and as I was leaving half way through I bumped into Marnie and we went to the Merch Stand (I got a cold war kids and a rapture shirt – she got a birds of Tokyo and the morning benders shirt. We don’t know who the morning benders are but she liked the look of the shirt. She did the same last year with chairlift – bought the best looking shirt).

Got back to the rock stage and the boys were still there, with a slightly bigger pile of cans in front of them.
And then it was time for Cold War Kids.
His voice is just amazing – and very true to life. They played a lot of songs from their new album, which just sounds amazing, but also some classics like ‘red wine success’, ‘ hang me up to dry, and ‘hospital beds’, as well as ‘audience’ from their latest EP.
I got very excited half way through when they bought out the maracas but they made me wait until the very end for ‘we used to vacation’, but well worth the wait.
We left the scorching sun to find some shade and some cold beverages.
My boy discovered the lamb roll van and didn’t eat anything but that for the rest of the weekend. I paid $4 for a very small glass of OJ
After standing in the sun for an hour we needed shade, and there was guaranteed shade in the tent at the paper stage.
We watched some old ladies have a ball of a time dancing to Dan Sultan, and trying to convince him to take his shirt off.

But we were just waiting it out until Children Collide.
And what fun we had.
My boy’s brother had found some ginseng pills and was jumping around like an idiot. He also found a way to make suspenders from the Southbound lanyards that they were giving out – and annoyed the hell out of us all but adopting an horrific ‘southern’ accent.
But children collide haven’t disappointed me yet – well they still continue to not play my all time favourite song, but apparently they haven’t played that in a very long time so it’s not just me that’s disappointed.
I had to try to not jump around too much which was frustrating, but if it meant I could walk out of there standing up then it was worth it (although we did limp out once more, as an effective queue jump).

After Children Collide we all headed on a quest to get some food, and meandered back to the tent, killing some time before The National.
A massive bushfire had caused this crazy haze to settle over the camp site, so we watched a very red sun set.

The National were spectacular.
I have two of their albums (really should have more but I only have so much money), but I’ve really only killed their latest album, which worked out great.
Yeh I was that girl – the one who knows every word from their latest album and sways to everything else.
But looking at the happiness in my boys face when they played his all time favourite song (not from their latest – he’s old school) was just amazing.
It was a really good set, very polished and everything I expected.

After that we hung around until Public Enemy playing Fear of a Black Planet.
My boy is the hip hop fan in the relationship and I was very amused at the excitement, the dance moves, and the knowing every lyric.
And again, it was everything I expected from a hip hop group that had been around for that long, it was a highly choreographed and highly enjoyable.

Some drunken hijinks ensued that evening, including me stumbling into a corroboree and inventing the turtle dance (you lie on your back, kick your legs, and try to spin in a circle) which I found hilarious, but others not so much (again I guess you had to be there, and be me, and had as many Heinekens and smokes [public enemy brought out the ex-smoker in me] as me).