Bowraville

We went to Bowraville today to watch Evan play in the Coffs Harbour City Orchestra.  They were giving a performance in the old theatre there.  Bowraville is a lovely quiet little town inland from Macksville on the NSW mid north coast.  It still has lots of its original buildings, like a boarding house, a wash house, an emporium, and of course the theatre. It has a reasonably high Koori population and as yet seems to not have been discovered by the alternative community people like Bellingen has been.  I was really surprised at how quiet the town was today.

The logistics of getting to Bowraville today were a little challenging. Evan needed to be there early to set up, and being a hour's drive away, it wasn't feasible to drop him off and the rest of us come along later.  Also, to further complicate matters, our 'big' car, the one that can actually fit in all of the family, was out of action.  That left us with the small car, which can only seat 5. As a family of six this meant we needed some advanced planning.  We weren't keen on leaving anyone behind, so Steve managed to organise a lift for himself and Evan with someone else from the orchestra.  They left quite early and had a long day at Bowraville.  Steve chewed up some time at the Bowraville museum, learning that the town was originally called Bowra.  When it got its post office the name was changed to Bowraville in order that it was less likely that it could be confused with Bowral.

Sarah was the driver for us today and she drove Harry, Ellie and I.  We left much later than the others and got to Bowraville about ten minutes before the start.  Along the way, Sarah and I discussed the outline of the story that we had thought up while travelling Australia in 2007.  Sarah reminded me of a lot of details that I had forgotten.  We nutted out a few more ideas and I wrote a bit of a skeleton of the story.  Sarah had various writings of the story that she had attempted in the past, and was able to show one of them to me that she had stored on her laptop.

The concert was very entertaining and we had great seats close to the front and right in the centre.  The theatre is quite old and still has its original style.  The acoustics seemed to be really good too.  The orchestra played a number of pieces such as White Christmas and Polar Express.  Then we had a sing along of Christmas Carols with orchestral accompaniment.

Ellie has a ball climbing the steps in the aisle and made herself a little friend when she discovered a little boy around her age.  He was a little less able on the steps, so Ellie had a great time showing off her prowess by standing and walking and getting herself up and down the steps.