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Radio documentary featuring The Reverend and Mrs Rowdy

4/11/2019

Fleurieu Folk Festival
Radio 104.4FM (New Zealand) created this one-hour documentary with a Rowdies original “Rowdy Overture” top and tailing the show.
(Recorded by David Calder at the Fleurieu Folk Festival 2018)

It’s a great little summary of one of Adelaide’s premier local music festivals. Plug in and listen up here – while you do some dishes or gardening or whatever activity takes your fancy ….

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Rowdy Gospel Session

4/11/2019

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Summer is nearly here and so Festival season begins again. Woohoo. We hope you were able to join us at the Rowdy Gospel Session at the recent Fleurieu Folk Festival. But if not, here are some shots of the event and maybe we'll see you sometime soon...

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Termitaria haiku

2/6/2018

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NT has the most amazing termite mounds. many align themselves magnetic north. And by the time you get to the top end where we are now they can be 2-3 metres high. You pass incredible eerie fields of them that look like the earth's own Stonehenge. Some are sharp and craggy, some are curvy and vaguely sensual, some are like fairy citadels in miniature.

Termitaria
Sharp then smoothed by rain
The Venus of Willendorf

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A list, and the most useful tool

2/6/2018

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Most expensive so far - a growing list
Petrol $2.05 (Ernabella- Pukatja), Yulara (Uluru)
Boxed water - 10 litres $10 Marla roadhouse
Milk - 2 litres $7.50 Daly Waters
Ice - 5kg $8.80 Daly Waters
(Everything else was great value at Daly Waters. Where there was a remoteness and shelf life cost they passed it on. Otherwise not.)
Most expensive flat - new tyre $190 (fitted) Oodnadatta pink roadhouse (but they did have the right tyre in stock so no complaint really...flying in a new tyre would have scooped the pool)

Pictured below is without doubt the most useful tool on board

Raking the coals and arranging the fire - many times
Managing the camp oven in and out of the heat - many times
Lifting the camp oven lid to check on the amazing food within - many times
Handle for jacking up the van to dig out wheels from a bog - once and once only I hope
Handle for jacking up the van to remove flatty and put spare tire on - twice. Meh, it's easy

And to think I nearly left it home...

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Daly Waters rush hour

31/5/2018

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Daly Waters is an amazing little caravan park hotel haven about 300km south of Katherine NT, just in off the Stuart Highway. We stayed there a couple of nights a week or so ago (tempus fugit), and played (they have live music every night! Current resident musos staying there until July). We have been playing a bit along the way, in caravan parks for the folks, or at events we invite ourselves along to... more on that in a later post.

Mornings till about 10am see a lot of slow coming and going as last nights guests check out, and the new day's visitors start to drift in. That morning the roar of Harley engines amped up the regular traffic. Dogs cowered as one biker then another growled in, accompanied it seemed by distant music. As the third biker arrived the tune got loud, louder than the bikes, pumping from the last rider's onboard sound system. And the song playing was "The Sounds of Silence". We saw him and his mobile sound system again further up the road at Matarangka (amazing thermal springs)

(thanks to Mij for pix, and also for accompanying on mandolin/harmonica)

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In no particular order - Oodnadatta Track

28/5/2018

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The Oodnadatta Track haiku

Oodnadatta track
Stone chip on the windscreen
Gibber plain outback

Whirlies on the land
Painted Desert horizon
Here we understand

Mirror Creek foreground
Dusty mirage up ahead
Rattling bumpy sounds

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Sweet dirt road

24/5/2018

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I said I could drive this way forever
Doing eighty something nice and slow
She said so is this your kind of heaven
I said its a sweet dirt road

You glide and drift sometimes when its soft
It may smooth the bumps may slow you down
Or leave you marooned a while

Gently shakes the wheel under my hand
No rush the land passes still and slow
I could drive this way forever

Smooth and speedy now but maybe later
Rough like it was before, that time i nearly lost it
Driving fast as you can without losing control

It's a sweet dirt road

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Star shadow emu dreaming

9/5/2018

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Have you ever camped on a gibber plain ten miles from a shanty town
And each hill reveals no beyond and no limit
And time and space is gone
If you ever camped......
Perhaps you know just how I feel tonight

Have you ever seen the dusk stretch out over mesa valley
And lines of scrub streaming out with unseen water
Where drivers dust settles over track and in creek beds like fog
If you never saw ......
Perhaps you know just how I feel tonight

the Milky Way drowns out the sound
Of groaning jets heading west
star shadow emu dreaming the land it walks
Now I've settled under flaming skies
I just can't know how I feel tonight

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Witnessing determination

9/5/2018

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Driving up through Pimba, Woomera, and other historic nuclear waste and test hotspots, we are witnessing evidence of one of the greatest sins of all - the contamination of vast tracts of land with radioactivity that lasts longer than humans can imagine.

But we have also met people with huge hearts, working with integrity to keep the land clean and protect it for posterity. People in communities like Kimba who have woken up to the insidious and compulsive lying of successive governments, and are standing up for the land, this and future generations. Amongst the constant work of seeding, tailing and deballing sheep, digging out boulders ploughed from ancient land, we were shown the reality of a famous country hospitality. An honour to meet the resister farmers of Kimba.

Rain being ever on the farmer's mind they asked if we could dance up some rain, so to that end the Rev walked to the top of Mt Ive the following day, a feat bound to attract rain to an unprepared walker, and got caught in a light shower. Returning to the summit later that day with Mrs Rowdy we finished the job and were drenched to the bone with aqueous bounty. Hope that was good enough for y'all!

We also wintessed the determination of tiny things to survive and flourish - only a couple of days after an earlier rain, already green leaves were sprouting from the hard red track we took to the summit.

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So it begins

30/4/2018

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Two vans, a 4WD and trailer, six human people and two dogs rendevous on Pt Wakefield Rd, opposite the drive-in at Gepps Cross. Farewelled by Eunice's family, and the whole journey blessed and brought under the protection of the Old Ones of this land, the convoy sets off for Port Vincent and Point Pearce.
A late afternoon visit to Point Pearce Cemetery where members of Eunice's family rest was a powerful encounter with the legacy of that community, and the post-European history of that place. We watched the sun set and pelicans glide into beautiful beach at Chinaman's Well.
An hour of songs in the saloon bar of the Port Vic Hotel played impromptu and unplugged to a small, smiling crowd.

gepps_cross_video.mov
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