Doof, Bats, and Coffee

Nimbin was basically still shut for xmas till the third week in January (I'm beginning to appreciate why those in Lismore refer to "Nimbin Time") so we headed to the Exodus Festival in Tenterfield for a dose of doofing goodness, and to check out a bunch of local DJs we hadn't seen in action yet.
Tenterfield is the furthest from the coast we've ventured, so we stopped off a couple of times to explore - first at Casino, where the skies above the river were teeming with bats (in the middle of the day, oddly enough, though it was quite cloudy), but the town itself seemed strangely empty of locals - the only people we saw were others heading for Exodus.
We drove on a few Ks beyond the Exodus site and had a look around Tenterfield - a pleasant and relatively prosperous small town, happily bereft of chain stores and chain eateries, and blessed with a couple of decent cafes and a museum to its only famous son Henry Parkes - whom I'd always vaguely thought of as having engineered the federation of the commonwealth of Australia, but it turns out he never lived to see federation, but only "inspired" it. I've officially been educated.
Exodus itself was a hoot - the usual decor, and the usual chaos of generator failure and last-minute improvisation, but also unexpected goodies such as a hillbilly gospel folk country family band stomping it up on the only stage with electricity, long into Friday night. We ended up finding the whole "rave plus baby" thing simply too tiring to do for three days, so we headed home after two, tired but happy - though I suspect the venue's petting zoo was the highlight for K (Exodus is held at a park that is a forest campground for the rest of the year, and the petting zoo bit stays open for the festival); but she was gutted she couldn't actually take the lambs home.

Over the following week we fed our growing addiction to wooden furniture that requires work, and then spent several companionable hours sanding, staining, and varnishing - bedside tables, a kiddies chair for K's room, and some smaller bits and bobs all got the amateur treatment, and then stood drying on the deck for a couple of days. We have also (finally) sighted the goanna that lives in our garden - he's a bloody reclusive fellow for something about two metres long! Hopefully within another two years I'll manage to get a photo of him for the blog.