Celtic Festival, Kapunda 2007

My first visit to Kapunda, Australia's oldest mining town, was to experience one day of a three day event, the 32nd Annual Kapunda Celtic Festival. Blonde Rose and I attended the second day which was a Saturday.

As far as Celtic Festivals go, this one had a Celtic flavor but my impression overall was that this could have easily have been a Town Festival. Largely because many of the market stalls and some of the performing artists weren't specifically 'Celtic' themed. That said, I didn't get to see all of the Celtic performing artists such as dancers, singers and more. Perhaps if I had I would've been left with more of a Celtic experience.

Don't get me wrong, I was not disappointed with the festival at all. Kapunda is an exceptional town with a lot to see. Which is why I didn't see all the entertainment. Too busy looking in local art galleries and exploring the excellent basement Kapunda history display at the Visitor Centre, as well as the basement museum display at the Kapunda Bakery. Even without a festival there is plenty to do.

click image above to see larger version.

What we did see at the festival was Honorary Town Crier and Honorary Escort Town Crier (to the City of Salisbury) Tom and Daphne Benny. Tom is something of a regional icon for his Town crier abilities and he was in fine form at this event, welcoming guests to the town and announcing the various street performances.

An Ghillee Mhor and the Border Celts was the only truly Celtic act I saw. Unfortunately I only caught the last half of their spirited dance routine that involved a bit of shouting and a lot of hitting together of, what looked to me like, bamboo poles.

click image above to see larger version.

The Creole Cowboyz, a six member band of blokes, playing music inspired by Creole French traditions, were a highlight. They seemed to be putting on a show intended for kids and families but, with a lack of younger members, persevered with an older audience that connected well with their humor. A particular highlight was a very young audience member enjoying dancing around like a chicken to the bands 'chicken song'.

Later in the afternoon we caught the Henna nights Bellydance troupe. They put on a great demonstration with three different performances - two group dances then a solo dancer for the finale. I'm not exactly sure how 'Celtic' belly dancing is but the performances were very well received and added much colour to the festival.

We finished off the day by taking a drive around the historic sites of the town that included some excellent lookout points for views of the surrounding country side. I must do this tour again some time because we were chasing the setting sun. Trying to see everything before we ran out of light.

I quite enjoyed the trip to Kapunda. A town that should certainly be on your itinerary if you happen to be in the region.

Comments

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

TV Series Review: 12 Monkeys (2015 - Season 1 ) Spoiler Free

Being a fan of the 1995, Terry Gilliam movie, Twelve Monkeys , when I discovered SyFy channel had adapted it into a TV series, 12 Monkeys , I was interested to see how that would pan out. Although the show has been aired in Australia on free to air TV (I'm pretty sure I've seen it listed there at ridiculous hours on occasion), it's only recently that the first two seasons were added to Australian Netflix. So I added it to my list of shows to watch. This article is not so much a review of the show, rather it's my thoughts on adapting to the TV version after being a big fan of the film. At this point, I've only seen all of season one and the first episode of season two. Going into the TV series I literally went in cold, not knowing anything about the approach to this adaptation from pre-publicity or trailers beforehand. I didn't really have any expectations other than wondering if the show would stick to the movie plot lines closely and, if they did, how w...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

Review: Beware the Batman - Animated TV Series

I first wrote about the 26 part TV series, Beware the Batman in my Animation and Video blog when the initial trailer was released back in June of 2013. At the time I was underwhelmed with the shows CGI and almost immaculate Gotham City streets. For some reason the show was only ever aired at odd times on late night TV here in Australia, which seems to have been it's fate for the second half of the series in the USA too. As a result I only ever caught two or three episodes before the show disappeared. Apparently being declared a financial failure by Cartoon Network .

TV Series Review: The Peripheral (2022 - Prime Video) No Spoilers

It's rare these days that I come across a TV series that disappoints me at the end of each episode because I don't want it to stop. The Peripheral is exactly like that. However, now all of the first season's eight episodes are on Prime Video, you don't have to wait week to week, as I did. Binge them all in one go if you must. My only disappointment in Season 1 is that now I have to wait and hope there is a season 2 because (minor spoiler) the story is only half way done (or less if they do a third season). At the time of writing season 2 was not yet confirmed but The Peripheral overtook The Rings of Power as Prime's top streaming show, so that is very promising for the show to return. Based upon a William Gibson novel of the same name, which I have not read, but I am aware that Gibson is a big gun amongst influential Sci-Fi authors. I've only read his book Neuromancer many decades ago which influenced the rise of Cyberpunk in popular culture during the 1980s...

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls. The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

Commodore Computers Are On Their Way Back With a New CEO and Many of the Original Team Founders

Commodore 64 Ultimate: Starlight Edition. An updated C64 for today. C hances are, if you grew up in the 1970s and 80's, the first computer your family owned was a Commodore 64 (or possibly the Vic-20, also by Commodore, that preceded it). I taught myself to code in BASIC on our Commodore 64 (C64), making ASCII based games (i.e. graphics made from the letters and symbols assigned to the various keyboard keys). I coded a Tic Tac Toe two player game, a simple shooting gallery game, and a flash card game to help me learn the Periodic Table, which (much to my... I want to say horror... got me bumped up to an advanced science class in high school). Later I'd go on to dabbling in true 8 bit, and 16 and 32 bit, graphical games, when we upgraded to the C128, Amiga 500, then Amiga 600, but I never actually finished anything because, by then I'd gotten into skateboarding, so I was trying to make my ultimate skateboard game - ambitious much? It was Commodore machines that showed me mak...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog