Australia Day 2006

Last year for Australia Day I joined the masses at the shore to watch the regatta and see the shows at the rocks, before hitting the bars. A very traditional way to spend the day.
This year I did the other very aussie thing to do - I joined hundreds of thousands at the olympic stadium for Big Day Out.

It's a massive roadshow that travels Oz going to all the capital cities. The venue itself is huge - they held the olympics there a few years ago after all.

There was a map of the events and tents, but I didn't pick one up, so I probably missed half of it.

There was the main arena which was the triple j (like radio 1) arena.
View image, View image, View image, View image. They were going through their hot 100 from the last 12 months. A lot of it was playing live - and it was def the main attraction. The crowd in there was massive! They were being hosed down at the front by security.

Other areas had View image live dj's and more of a dance feel View image.

A big indoor rave seemed empty, but there were actually a lot of people there - the building was enourmous though. (this is where the easter show was held - if you saw that entry - pretty much this whole place was filled with barnyard animals - all a bit different now)

My personal favourite part of the whole day was the Silent Disco.
The basic idea is that you wear headphones with 2 channels to chose from. There are 2 djs - and the beauty of it is that everyone is dancing away like you would normally - maybe singing along etc etc - but noone else knows what you are listening to. We stood and watched it for ages before having a go - excellent entertainment and very funny to watch. When we were there they played a bit of blur - a hundred people all yelling 'woo hoo' at the same time with the rest on the dancefloor with no idea why, raving away to something else. top entertainment and i'll be going to one again if i can find one!
View image, View image, View image.

The rock type tent had some random in his pants on stage View image.

The entire place was crammed with entertainment - even the food stalls were surrounded with bands and live music. In the queue to get in we were serenaded by a couple of guys on top of a bus with pretty much a kareoke thing going on.

There was a chill out bit were I wandered to eventually for a nice holistic massage involving laying on of hands and had my fortune told. The future's bright apparently :oP

Just dotted about randomly were interesting sculptures View image

It was a fab day out - I got sunburned (nothing new there) and we all had a great time.

here are some more random shots of the day
View image, View image, View image, View image, View image, View image, View image, View image.