Band Tour – Day 1
Hello all. Back from a wonderful band tour. I’ll just talk a bit about it, shall I?
Date: Tuesday 26th August, 2008.
As people slowly turn up at school, we milled about waiting for the tour band roll call which happened at 8:30 am. After Dr Cryole marked us all off, we moved all our gear down to the bus bay where we waited for our coach to turn up. 8:55 am, we start loading the coach with our bags and instruments/gear. By 9:30 am, we’re off on the 2008 Band Tour to the Mid-North Coast.
After picking up Mark Barnsley, we head off to our first stop: Heatherbrae. There we had our lunch (which we brought with us) in a park on the river bank. Some of us went off to the nearby shops to buy food and do a little bit of shopping. In the shopping mall there was a $2 shop where Tammy, Tim, Bryan and Mitchell bought themselves foam swords. They had a sword fight in the park before we set off again for our first Performance at Wirreanda Public School. Also, Tim Graham gave Anthea a small bunch of flowers for her birthday that day. How nice of him. She was one of 2 people who had a birthday on Tour.
All through the bus trip there, people were handing around lollies and chips, playing cards and being loud. Eventually we arrived at the school around 1:15 pm. We set up and got ready in the COLA (Covered Outdoor Learning Area) before the (noisy) primary school children filled up the seats that were lined up in front of us. We started our show with ‘The Muppet Show’ theme, and slowly went through our repertoire which included ‘Mama Mia’, ‘Motown Forever’, ‘Eighties Flashback’, ‘Star Wars Saga’, ‘Reach Out, I’ll Be There’, ‘Spider Pig’ and our favourite, ‘The Stripper’. Throughout the show, Mark had one person from each instrument group to give a small talk and demo of the instrument. When the Tenor Sax was being demoed, a kid asked “Can you play tennis with it?”. A gag we did was Spider Pig. Bree had a pillow the shape of a pig which folded up to look like a pig. The kids loved it (and were really loud about it).
At the end of ‘Eighties Flashback’ Mark got two children to come up and conduct the band. That was fun. They sure loved it. For ‘The Stripper’, Mark got the teachers up and we gave them percussion instruments to use while we played. They danced around a bit, and I noticed one teacher stripped off his tie. At the end the kids were cheering really loudly. Some of us agree that they were the loudest school. Some of us were surprised by how few Asians there were around, and so a game for the rest of tour had started: spot the Asian. There was one little asian kid in this school.
Afterwards their canteen provided us all with a small Moove and a piece of a bun. Because Mark had mentioned to the kids that they could ask Eka or Mitchell for autographs since they were in the Millennium Marching Band, heaps of the kids came over to us asking for autographs. That was something I had never experienced before… OH!! And in the boy toilets there on the urinals there were TARGETS!!!!! We were laughing for a while about that =]
By 3:30 pm we had packed up and were leaving for our accommodation at Motto Farm Motel and Conference Centre. By then, Mark had played the Power Thirst video over the microphone twice, and he was (jokingly) expecting us to know it word for word by the end of the tour. A quick band rehearsal before dinner and then Mark got the Stage band to practice while the Flute ensemble and Clarinet ensemble rehearsed their pieces.
Dinner at 7 turned out to be dinner at 7:30 (pm). It was a random choice between beef or chicken, with half a potato and sweet potato and some veges… not the best dinner. Desert was pavlova or chocolate desert cake. Some of us watched a movie after dinner with Mark and Dr Croyle, others played cards in our rooms or watched movies (the yr 9s watched ‘The History Of The World: Part 1′). Soon (at 11 pm) we all went to bed, and the first day of Band Tour was over.