A MUSICAL DIVERSION

I still haven’t managed to catch up with all my initial Perth adventures but before the memory fades, I have to report on the Port Fairy Folk Festival.

I can’t quite come to grips with the fact that I lived in Melbourne for over 30 years but it was only when I’d left Victoria that I returned to experience the festival. What was I thinking? Partly, it was because Port Fairy wasn’t on my radar until we had a forced lockdown there in 2021 and partly because I didn’t realise how much fun a folk festival could be until Susan and I went to the Sidmouth Festival in England in 2023.

Port Fairy is a charming little town on the south west edge of Victoria, facing the Southern Ocean. It’s a walkable flat town with streets filled with pine trees and 19th century wooden cottages. And we managed to rent one of those - admittedly 18 months in advance because accommodation during the festival is hard to get, and I refuse to go camping.

If you follow Susan’s facebook page, you would know all the gigs we attended but if you want to check out the music, here’s a Spotify link to the festival’s playlist. As you’ll see if you check it out, it’s not a traditional folk music festival. Amongst my favourites were:

Jenny Mitchell - a charming young country singer who writes her own clever songs 

Jenny Mitchell with Felicity Dowd and Charm of Finches

Ruthie Foster - an African-American gospel/blues singer

The wonderfully named Charm of Finches - two Australian sisters with stunning harmonies

The Briscoe Sisters - indigenous singers from north of Cairns who haven’t done concerts for a while because they’ve been busy having 19 children between them!

I even enjoyed the Miss Higgins concert. Such an engaging performer who managed to hold a huge crowd in the palm of her hand. The main tent, the Shebeen, could supposedly hold 6,000 people and it was packed for her and for other other performers such as Mike Thomas (remember Weddings Parties Anything?). Viva and Linda Bull and Skerryvore from Scotland. 

Mick Thomas's Roving Commission in the Shebeen

It’s a friendly environment. Lots of families with young children, grey haired folk like me, people who’ve been coming for over 30 years, people who’ve just discovered it, people reminiscing about the good old days and people thanking god that the feral drunken days were over.

Another irony about moving to Perth in order to go to Port Fairy is that amongst the stalls in the closed off main street, I found the perfect Perth top. if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s made of a table cloth full of WA motifs. Although white has never been my colour, I couldn’t resist it.



During our lockdown in Port Fairy all those Covid years ago, we used to take our one hour of exercise a day lounging around the quirkily named “Pea Soup Beach”. Even though the lockdown was in summer, it rarely got beyond 21 degrees and it is the Southern Ocean so we were usually the only people there. This time, the weather was warmer and there were more folk (excuse the pun) on our beach but it was still a charming spot, protected from the wilds of the ocean by a reef and so that was how we ended the festival. 




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