Townsville - shows, cars and rock music

10 days is the longest we've stayed in one location since Hervey Bay, and Townsville offered us some great opportunities even in the short time we were here. North Queensland towns are currently enjoying their annual shows at the weekend, which for us means 2 or 3 days a week of easy cash in hand work. (Easy if you don't mind standing for 12+ hours of the day).

Aussie shows are awesome. The first one we attended was in Toowoomba with our au pair family (mentioned in a blog post that I have written but lazily not yet published and now published). A similar event in England is a fairground, but they are nowhere near as good. Think of one of those, but with less chavs and more animals, woodchopping, chainsaw championships, horse shows, boots, hats, jeans and large belt buckles – the only time Australians wear jeans. We found work on these shows selling corn dogs, or dagwood dogs as the Aussie's call them. I'd never tried this deep fried American delicacy before, my first experience was a pleasant one, but already I'm sick of them after living on them each weekend. Joe worked on a different van, selling slushies.

This weekend was a show of a different kind. The Townsville Castrol Edge 400 V8 Supercars Championship. I felt so swish walking through the front gates with my free 3 day pass that I almost forgot this doesn't quite get me into the VIP corporate area too (though I did get access to their toilet!). This is an annual event held in Townsville every year, with a lot going on, but the main event of course being the supercar racing. Not being a huge car fan myself (typical female, if it drives and it's a nice colour, it's good) this was the first event of it's kind I've attended. Though I worked for 2 of the 3 days, I had an awesome time and it was exciting to watch some madmen drive way too fast on roads way too small. My personal favourite were the stunt cars, which went flying (literally, at times!) round the track doing stunts and jumps that definitely aren't what cars were invented for, but it was fun to watch anyway. Being able to see into the garages as the races took place was particularly interesting. Not quite as quick with wheel changes as the Formula 1, but still pretty impressive.

Obviously this guy wasn't as interested as I was...

Choirboys lead guitarist

Saturday night saw celebrity guests to the show, Choirboys and Icehouse performing a concert, and though I'd never heard of these two Australian bands before, music is far more my forte than cars. Choirboys were on first to warm up the crowd. Formed in 1979, Choirboys are a hard rock band with a few hits in the 80s. Their sound is quite typical of the genre – fun and exciting and sounding to me like a mixture of ACDC and Thunder, two of my favourite bands. They performed a good cover song of fellow Aussies, ACDC, as well as a great range from their own library.

Icehouse came on and I didn't know what to expect. The lead singer looked like zombie character, Blaine, from TV series “izombie” and that

couldn't possibly be a good sign. Following Choirboys, my ears anticipated a style of hard rock – but once sound commenced, the first thing I noticed were the synthesisers. New wave? There are still new wave bands in 2016? Well that's fine by me. This band, formed in 1977, were like a blend of Ultravox, Gary Numan and Duran Duran, with much more pleasing vocals than that of Choirboys, and a good bit of rock to remind you that the whole band had talent and not just the guy on the synths. Oh, and it doesn't get much better than a guy in a cowboy hat playing saxophone. Oooh, tantalising!

After the show, we packed up camp and headed further north. Our next show is in Cairns, but we've got plenty more adventures to be had before then. My next post will be about our trip from Townsville to Cairns along the tropical rainforests and great barrier reef. As I write this, we're about halfway there and it's been such an awesome experience that I'm already excited to tell you about it!

Until then...