Jun 7, 2015

History Alive

I don't think I really want to go over the whole event-filled day blow-by-blow because there were many blows and many events.

Suffice it to say that we attended, as a family, this History Alive festival thingy down at Fort Lytton, an old sea-defence station, now disused and turned National Park. Not really knowing what to expect, we parked at the designated remote location and caught a shuttle bus that was just like the single-decker buses I used to ride to school those many many moons ago. Eloise was very keen on photographing this historical artifact. The bus, that is.

When we got there we were greeted with the vista of a field of tents from a plectrum of the eras of European history from the Vikings to Medieval Saxons to Florentines to the World Wars. We ate sandwiches while costumed... individuals... wandered around exchanging geeky historical tidbits with one another, slightly bemused as jeeps swept by with American GIs hanging off the back, rifles cradled casually, and Victorian ladies promenaded past on unlikely-looking contraptions of dubious provenance. All, strangely, or not, with Australian accents.

Eloise tried on some armour, as you can see. She climbed on a Penny Farthing, played on a Celtic Harp, tried her hand at weaving on a loom invented by the Vikings, sampled some Medieval Herbs (the cooking variety).

Lyra did her usual trick of interpreting every roped-off section as an invitation. I had to retrieve her from the museum when she broke into a display and tried to get on a genuine WW2 motorbike.

The sun was hot for an Autumn day and we tried to stick to the shade as much as we could but there was precious little to be had, so we headed off up to the actual fort and diddled around there. After a while some people started shooting guns, with big bangs! That was exciting, grown men in pith helmets showing off their weaponry.

We rounded off the day by sitting next to some 64-pound cannons as they shot blanks across the Brisbane River. Those bangs put the previous bangs into perspective. Although the men who let off the cannons also wore pith helmets. Clearly men who wear pith helmets enjoy a bang or two.

Then a short tour around a home-made Portuguese Caravel! What could be funnerer?!

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