Bush / Spirit

Third performance on this tour and I'm feeling pretty fantastic. Lucky me had a massage beforehand and while being worried that the masseuse went a bit too hard (on my request, BTW) and bruised me, by the time I got to warm-up class I was feeling lovely and luscious, my limbs pendulous and weighty. We've also taken with us our lovely tarquet that has the perfect balance of slip and grip and dances like Goanna that has alot of floorwork is relatively effortless and we're not at the mercy of the theatres in their choice of floor covering.

Afterward we waited forever for a taxi and ended up getting lifts from various audience members kind enough to offer transport. By the time we got to Southbank just about every restaurant had closed their kitchens and were in *bar* mode. Except for the Rhino Bar, which was serving tapas. A wonderful idea, you can get a bowl of chorizo and accompany it with a Corona. Which is what I did. Though I also had wedges (sorry, a rather boring choice) and a Moroccan carrot and olive salad. Tapas and beer, what a fantastic combination.

The Rhino Bar was quite a swish little venue with great light fixtures. Check 'em out!

That last one was taken by YB, she's constantly nicking my camera and taking pictures, she really needs to get her own camera!!! There were quite a few good-looking and well-groomed guys here as well, a surprise considering we're in Northern Queensland.

Tags: Townsville, Rhino Bar, Photos,
Bangarra.

We finished rehearsals rather quickly today and had most of the afternoon to wander around town. All I wanted to do was to sit in the Sun by the beach and so DB, YB, BO-A and I headed off to Rockpool. Unfortunately it was rather windy so swimming wasn't really an attractive option. Neither was sitting down and reading a good book. Instead, we played on the swings!!!

On our walk back we passed the Water Fun Park. The bucket slowly fills up with water and subsequently spills out when it's full. Looks like fun!

Tags: Townsville.

The best thing about Mackay was the audience (sorry for sounding so conceited!) Warm and enthusiastic, and with significant TSI representation, they cheered loudly at the end of our Turtle encore and were eager to thank us afterwards. It helped a great deal that half the audience seemed to be related to home boy PT in some way. But I found the auditorium to be so vast it was difficult to connect to the audience and in any case I was still trying to get back into performance mode, especially for this show which, for me, is much more emotionally demanding. SP said I looked so upset he thought I was going to cry which I guess is appropriate but I certainly wasn’t feeling it as much as I have felt it before.

Mackay itself is a rather unremarkable city. If it wasn’t for PT’s family (and the lovely feast that they organized for us the night we arrived) it could have been any other country town – clean, tidy and friendly people. The location of the hotel didn’t help much either, being a twenty minute walk from the city centre, our nearby food options were KFC, Domino’s and the hotel’s pricy restaurant. At the very least I got pretty decent coffee at Foodspace, the café near the Entertainment Centre.

So it was such a relief to land in Townsville. We’re staying on Palmer Street, an up-coming trendy restaurant strip on the “Southbank” and five minutes from the centre of town (though, admittedly is a bit sparse but Flinders St East looks pretty cool). Within half an hour of checking into the hotel and I’m having a good coffee at Coffee Dominion. Later I took a long walk up and down The Strand, which was really beautiful. The cool breeze coming off Cleveland Bay was really pleasant, and to think I was freezing my butt off in Sydney a week ago. People were hanging out, walking, jogging… I just wished I had my own little someone to walk with…

By the time I got back to the hotel, some of the crew were preparing to go out to dinner, to find decent seafood. The concierge recommended Tim’s Surf and Turf on Ross Creek, which didn’t really sound promising but she insisted that it wasn’t too touristy (in fact, she pointed out that the beach was generally touristy and the river was more for the locals). We decided to take her advice and rewarded with the sight of some of the biggest food servings we had ever seen. Tasty too. The garlic prawns looked so good I decided to risk it, despite having suffered reactions to them in the past, and the oysters were quite fresh. AND we had a really good drop of white, and damn it I can’t remember what it was. Afterwards, I ran into more of the group having margaritas at Cactus Jack’s and had a cocktail with them. Man am I going to put on a lot of weight on this trip.

Tags: Townsville, Mackay, Queensland, Southbank, Photos, Food.

Haven't had much time to get over the last show and it's on with the next: Regional Tour 2005. In terms of performance locations, this tour pretty much takes the cake, going from Townsville to Launceston via Victoria before ending in Wagga Wagga. Which means packing is going to be fun. There are so many things to get excited about:
- escaping the winter (though admittedly it's been a rather mild one this year)
- upon arriving in Launceston, I will have been to every state.
- we get to spend quite alot of time in Melbourne.
- we get to see Wagga Wagga again.
Just kidding about the last one. But by far the best thing is TRAVEL ALLOWANCE!!! Yay! Which is great because my Walkman died and it's about time I got myself an MP3 player.

Oh. And there's the show as well. After all that ensemble work that was Boomerang it'll be nice to have a bit of stage time to myself...

Tags: Dance, Bangarra, Tour, Spirit.