Adventus.

Day 1. The arrival.

After a frantic night of packing and desperately trying to read as much of Peter Goldsworthys 'Three Dog Night' as I could, the day of my departure to Mildura arrived. By a stroke of poor timing that seems to follow me (I am always either desperately busy or full of free time, sort of like a millionaire, but without all the money), I had to attend a job trial at an Optometrist in the morning before driving up to Mildura with the mysterious couple Emel and Vincent. Having only met on Facebook through the WIA forum, there was a small chance that they would bail me up and chop me to bits the moment they got in the car, Natural Born Killers style. Fortunately this was not the case at all and Emel is a vegan so I think this would go against her nature anyway. So after a few brief introductions, we piled our stuff into my tiny yellow car and set sail for Mildura. I was excited to find out that Emel and Vince were filming a documentary on the festival, and while they played around with cameras we talked about our hopes and hesitations for the festival. After speaking with other group members later on, we all seemed to have the same fear that we would be spending a week sitting in lectures by day and eating microwave dinners alone in our seedy hotel rooms at night. As you will find out in later posts, this was not the case at all.  

After what felt like weeks of driving, we finally arrived in Mildura at 7pm. I dropped Emel and Vince to their hotel room and drove to the house I was staying at for the week. A local couple had offered up a bedroom in their house for the week free of charge and I jumped on the opportunity due to my lack of funds and deep fear of seedy hotels. As I knocked on the door, Jenny answered and informed me that she was having a Tupperware party that evening and I was welcome to join in. The array of fancy salmon toast and champagne meant that I settled into their home instantly. After a lovely night of mixing with the local women of Mildura and hearing about some pretty nifty cleaning products, I climbing into an enormous queen size bed and sunk into a deep sleep.