Sparrow Lorelei and Robin Artemis photo gallery

Port Lincoln and the National Druid Assembly, 5-11 October 2011
Day 4 and 5: Druid Assembly part 2

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Saturday morning at the beach

Saturday we went to Greenly Beach over on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. It was nice to be on a west-facing beach again, and smell real ocean. While us Ovates disappeared off into the dunes to a hidden little grove amongst the sandhills, everyone else had a nice beach morning. Robin went with me, but Sparrow stayed at the beach and played and played. When we came back there was lunch, a little time in the sand shelter that Marianne kindly put up for the babies to use if they wanted and then James and I put the kids in the car and drove them back. It was their nap time, so we let them sleep for the drive (it's about forty-five minutes drive from Port Lincoln to Greenly Beach).
I was pretty exhausted that afternoon, it had been a particularly trying day(neither Sparrow nor I were coping well with our meals always being delayed by more than an hour). So I didn't take any photos of the time back at Cooringal - there wasn't anything particular on, just plenty of music-making, quiet time and resting. Most people were getting tired, I think, though a large-sounding chorus sang sea-shanties and sea songs late into the night (the Assembly had a Manannan Mac Lir, god of the sea theme so there was lots of sea stuff throughout the whole time). I found out the next morning that there had been only two late-night singers - but everyone listening thought there had been anywhere from five to twenty.

Sunday morning at the animal park

Those of us who had made it into the Druid grade went off for a circle on Sunday morning. That being three out of twenty five or so, the rest of us were free to go on excursions. Because we were starting to all get tired, they abandoned plans for a big group excursion and a lot of people just stayed quietly around and slept or talked or made music. We took the chance to do some things on our own family's time schedule, at a pace that suited us, and that was nice. There was an animal park just down the road so we went and had a look there which turned out to be just the right thing to do. We also found a geocache on the way there and on the way back. Sparrow enjoyed talking to the animals and trying to feed them, though it took a few goes for her to work out how to hold her hand so that they could eat the food, and not to turn her hand over as soon as they started tickling it. My favourite moment I think was when she saw the pigs and ran up to the sty saying "Hello pigs, say hello, I love you pigs". I didn't know she had any interest in them. (Three minutes later she didn't seem to remember them at all, so maybe she doesn't :-)