The Currie Way Of Life: A Festival With No Name

On the weekend our little town put on a big shindig! It's the annual town festival and it's apparently a much bigger deal than I thought.

It's called the Nameless Festival (good name right?) and since it's smack in the middle of tourist season the town is over run with grey nomads. The car park where I park during school drop off and pick up times was full of caravans and camper trailers. The neighbours had a caravan in the front yard and come day of the carnival there was so many caravans and camper trailers and vans all the carparks were full and they were parking on street corners.

There is a street parade, more food vans than you can ever imagine, rides, stalls and a main stage with lots of different acts performing throughout the festival.
Both the local primary schools have a truck in the street parade. We missed most of the week leading up to the carnival (as both big kids were sick) but the kids get to make tonnes of decorations and get the truck looking amazing. The kindy and pre primary kids get to ride on the truck each year. This years theme was carnival of colour and let me tell you they nailed it! The truck looked like an explosion of colour. The kids each had to wear coloured clothes; boys in orange and girls in pink. They made funny hats at school to wear and the girls had coloured headbands.

The festival started on Friday night. A day when both kids were too sick to leave the house. It was a family friendly night, a couple of amazing illusionists performed on the main stage followed by Shannon Noll!! Who knew such a small town could get such good performers! I was REALLY looking forward to going but I couldn't take the kids out by myself. Maybe if hubby was home we could have rugged them up and taken a couple blankets down and stayed for a little while. Unfortunately I was home alone with the kids and it all seemed like hard work to me. So I put the kids to bed and listened to the concert in the background while watching trashy tv.

Apparently it was a good night.

Saturday was the big day. Street parade was at 9:30am. I REALLY wanted the kids to be in the parade so I gave them panadol, an antihistamine, multivitamins and a nose spray and we made it there.

Mr 4 was super nervous, he cried when it was time to line up. But he overcame it and jumped up on the back of that truck. After making sure Kaitlyn was up on the truck and happy Isla and I quickly ran down to the finish line and waited for them to come past. For a small town it was s decent sized parade. The bmx club, swimming club, schools, cadets, police and gymnastics club, plus a couple others I didn't know all paraded through the streets of Tom Price. The kids did amazing! Kaitlyn was up there clapping and dancing along to the music and Bradley was sitting with his little buddy waving as they went past.
I was pretty proud of them. And they didn't have a single coughing fit on the truck!

After the winners of the parade were announced (our school won) it was time to find a patch of shade to feed Isla. We had a quiet sit down and decided that we could have a little wander around the festival but the kids had to go home and have a nap.

We went for a wander around. There were heaps of rides for the kids but unfortunately having been sick and coughing for days the kids couldn't go on many and not having another person to go on hedge bigger rides with them (as I had to stay with Isla in the pram) it was hard to know what to do with them. They did have a turn on those clown things and on a little car ride.

Then I took the kids to have lunch at one of the many food vans before heading home for a sleep.
Let me tell you I have never seen so many food vans. The kids chose bright green, blue and yellow slushie drinks from the slushie van, a hot dog and chips from the junk food van and I got an amazing burger from the Margaret River Burgers van. Best burger from a truck EVER. We sat down in front of the main stage and watched the gymnastics club give a performance while we ate. Then Kaitlyn got up and joined the "Polka Dotties" for a dance. She did awesome, following the little dance steps and dancing along.

But it was hot and the panadol was wearing off. We had a quick stop at the chemist for baby panadol, Vicks baby balsam and more nose spray, as Isla was now getting sick.

We started walking home, Bradley was the first to lose it. He sat on the ground, crying and throwing rocks. Then Kaitlyn started walking slower than a dead person and Isla started crying for her feed.

We made it home hot, tired and exhausted but we had a great morning.
The kids slept it off and we had a relaxing afternoon at home.

The Saturday night was an over 18's event where The Wolfe Brothers and The Potbeleez performed and it was again a loud night. We sat home and listened to the performance while watching more trashy tv.

Overall it sounded like an amazing weekend, the small part of the festival we saw was awesome. For a small town it was a great shindig! I hope next year hubby is home and the kids are healthy so we can fully enjoy the entire Festival.