We were aiming for the Golden Oldies and Country Music Weekend organised by Pip and Mel Powell to be held at Logan. Having not far to go, we had a leisurely start to the day and drove the few remaining kilometres to Stawell in time for morning coffee. We picked up some mail but found that the last item sent to us had not arrived. We arranged for them to forward it, when it arrived, to St Arnaud for collection later in the week.
We shopped for supplies in Stawell and headed off for Logan, arriving in time for happy hour with the few who were already there.
The site for the gathering is a stubble field behind the pub. We parked at the far end of the field near Pip and Mel's little property and we had happy hour in the shade of their trees.
We went into St Arnaud to try and find a landline connection to update the web site. The lady in the internet shop was very helpful and when I couldn't get their data lines to work she agreed to let me use the fax line and only charged me half price because of the trouble I had had. We found a nice little cafe for lunch, filled up the water jerry cans and returned to Logan for happy hour.
We had to go into St Arnaud again to fill the gas bottle and refill the Guinness locker.
I had planned to help to erect the marquee behind the pub in preparation for the music weekend but when I appeared at the appointed hour all the work had already been done.
In the afternoon we had happy hour in the pub followed by a dinner of party pies, sausages rolls, little boys and such. The entertainment was impromptu but continuous and included country and western singers and some competitive joke telling and poetry recitation. Brian Holden, a muso and jokster, was pleased, when I recited some Ogden Nash, to have someone to compete with as he gets a buzz out of the interaction.
The weather turned very hot and windy. We had to go into St Arnaud for water so we had lunch in the air-conditioned comfort of the cafe. When we returned the Logan we veged out in a major way and didn't even attend the evening music session. it cooled down late in the evening so we were able to get to sleep.
The day dawned much cooler with some high cloud. We happy-houred at the pub and dined in the marquee with all the hundred and twenty others participants. The meal, was remarkably good which was a surprise considering the fact that their previous biggest dinner had been for 30 people. The concert after dinner included a very amusing interlude from Mel's Daddie who did some stand up jokes and his Twinkle Twinkle Little Star piece. Mel had asked me for a contribution so I boned up on a few jokes from a joke book and concluded with a sterling rendition of "It was a Dark and Stormy Night" which went down quite well.
We veged out all day and went down for an evening drink and the last hour of the Sunday Jam Session. The musos were all played out having done many hours over the week end but the general consensus was that it had been a great success. The Pub certainly did extremely over the week with lots of bar sales in addition to the dinner on Saturday. It had been a pleasant sojourn and we were glad to have caught up with many friends again.