Sheryl (Kitt’s mom) recently had her 60th birthday, Janet (Sheryl’s stepdaughter) was turning 40 and Tony (Janet’s husband) will be turning 50 soon. Given this, a plan was made to have a big outdoor bash called “Woodstock at Bell’s” with bands, food vendors and stacks of people in Janet & Tony’s back yard. A stage was hired, sound system setup, bands arranged and some foodies brought in. Tents and tarps were rigged, cars & vans parked around the place and a huge crowd was expected (oh, did I mention their back yard is about the size of a football field located in native bushland in the hills & valleys behind Tweed Heads?).
Sadly, instead of the bright blue skies and beach weather we’re told about, Tweed Heads decided to demonstrate why there are no water restrictions here and provided rain, more rain and still more rain. While most of us were lurking under tarps and shelters, Tony wound up having to put a huge tarp over the top of the stage. Seems the idiots who set it up put the roof on backwards – it slopes down from front to back to allow the rain to run off with the water flowing off the top panels onto the middle ones then the back ones and away. Sadly, instead of starting with the back panels, then the middle ones and then the front ones, they’d done it the other way around. As a result, the rain ran down the panels and fell straight onto the stage. Like, DUH!
Eventually the tarp was up and the water was swept off the stage so things could begin. More people began to arrive and the rain backed off a tad. There was some hope that perhaps it was clearing but no, it just kept coming through in waves. Absolutely bucketing down. We spent most of the afternoon getting water off sagging tarps, hanging out at our tent and walking around occasionally with umbrellas to catch up with others. Towards the evening it backed off further and actually stopped – more people started arriving and some were out dancing around in front of the stage.
We wound up leaving around 8pm as Kitt wasn’t feeling well and Andrea was still jetlagged (and had a flu building). We begged a ride off a friend who dropped us home with Nykolai who had decided that spending the night in a tent in the rain wasn’t going to be all that great. During the drive we noticed that the clouds were very low and we were frequently driving through patches of them. It seemed that while the rain was holding off for now, it might not be for long. Sure enough around 2am we woke to the sound of another major downpour – at least we were in warm beds and not trying to spend the night in tents.
I’m not sure how the night wound up with rain, wet ground, mud and music. I imagine that those who stayed will have had a blast but I’m very happy we left when we did. I’m just not cut out for camping at the best of times so a night at “Wetstock” would not have been a wonderful time for me.