Doug Kelly mentioned the Cygnet Festival in his e-mail. I don't know much about that one, but I'll look it up on the 'Net.

Yes, Gulgong is guaranteed to be hot. The last time I went there was 1989, the day after the Newcastle earthquake hit, so all the Nukes folk - including me - were a bit shell-shocked. Most of the Nukes people who were already at Gulgong, and hadn't heard any news or read the newspapers, didn't believe that there really had been an earthquake but we finally convinced them.

I don't know why but I never got back to Gulgong Festival after that.

Jimmy Crosbie - a larrikin Irishman from Sydney, with a lovely singing voice - died a month or so after that too, so that was the last time I ever saw him as well. (I'm pretty sure it was that year, but ... my memory for specific dates has always been hazy) But, while I was there he and I had a mini music session, where I played the harp, very haltingly) and he sang some of his lovely songs.

He sang a song that I don't think I have heard before or since, about the Bells of Shandon. Anyone know it?

A few of us went to his funeral and wake. The thing that amazed me at the funeral was that there was not one piece of music in the whole service. And also, that the priest very obviously thought that Jimmy was not going to heaven, but to the other place, for his larrikinism and "wicked" ways.

The wake was wonderful, though. I drove back to Nukes at about 3 in the morning with a car load of people, after the best send-off I have ever been to.

Helen