Over Easter B and I took off for the Australasian Medieval Conference. This is a multi-period event held every two years "somewhere in Australia". It started out as strictly medieval, but as interests have changed over the years the span has increased - it now covers anything from Greek Hoplites to ECW. My group, the Routiers, ran this year's tavern. I've put some pictures under the cut. Unfortunately the camera stuffed up on the first day, so I don't have a great selection of photos to share and you'll have to forgive the cars etc. in the campsite shots because everyone was still setting up when I took them.
The site was brilliant - "Castle Mountain", an outdoor adventure camp about an hour and a half northwest of Sydney. We arrived Thursday night, a little too late to set up the tents, but we opened the bar anyway *g*. Things really got going early the next day.
We finished unloading the tavern equipment in the misty, moisty morning, put up banners and wrapped the dubious-looking plastic "curtains" in fabric so they wouldn't detract from the general ambience:
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Tavern, early Friday morning |
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Perky Kaimaki, Friday morning |
With the plastic screens tucked well out of the way we had a great view of the campsite. The tents were arranged in a horseshoe, with the Ancients encampment on the far right and our 17th century one on the left. All within an easy stagger of the tavern!
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Camping ground, L side of timeline Routiers, PRB, White Company, various NVG |
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camping ground, R side NVG, Fire & Steel, NEMAS, Europa, Sydney Ancients |
We had to put up various signs in order to comply with liquor licensing provisions, but we tried to make them as 'period' looking as possible:
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"The Evils of Drink" souvenir T-shirt sold well:
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Been there, done that, got the T-shirt |
As usual, the tavern was the natural meeting place for friends from interstate and even from across the Tasman:
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Ross (f), Damien, Andy, Sven, Jackie, Rob-from-NZ |
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Helmut, Damien, Spike, Rob |
... and people started chatting, as you do:
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Danni, Jackie, Jenny |
Spike got the gaming going early:
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No Conference is complete without some mention of historical politics:
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Alas, that's all the photos I managed to capture before the camera died. We were kept pretty busy running the tavern, but we did have time to put on a drill display, wherein I got very red-faced (I've put on a fair bit of weight since I last had my pike armour on, and I had to be squeezed into it) but managed to stay upright until the end. I organised a 17th century dancing workshop in the tavern and more dancing at the Sunday night feast which went OK, although I wish some people had taken the opportunity to actually learn the steps before joining in on Sunday - it's not very fair to expect walk and talk-throughs in the middle of a feast when the next course is waiting in the wings.
Oh, and we had horses! Talisien brought her utterly gorgeous Percheron stallion, Fenris. I couldn't find a picture of Fenris anywhere, but this is apparently his son, or maybe a cousin, I'm not sure - (Warning: too cute!). And Full Tilt Jousting put in an appearance as well. These guys are great:
I came back to a huge number of emails and unread posts which I'm slowly reading back through. Found myself completely distracted yesterday by
sineala's lovely Pros Roman AU novel - do go and read it! And it's now only 24 days until I get on that plane and fly to England. Whee! and Eek! So much to do. 