SATURDAY 3 AUGUST     FORREST BEACH

It rained really heavily through last night. Those clouds yesterday were really serious. As a result, this morning was really humid and not pleasant. I drove to the shop for the papers, rather than walking.

John went off to bowls at Macknade.

I did some housework – so much easier without anyone else in Bus! Defrosted the fridge, which led to having to wash the floor.

Couey and I went for a long walk along the beach at low tide, going almost to the mouth of the southern creek. The beach by the park was more populated than usual, but once we’d walked about five hundred metres, had it to ourselves.

John was right! Two circus trucks and two animal trailers arrived to join the strange trailer. A few people proceeded to set up a marquee – about thirty metres from us. Unbelievable! It seemed to be a small affair, maybe a family group? They tethered a llama, alpaca, and a couple of goats about the place. Couey was not impressed by the smells of these strange critters, wafting up, and looked distinctly puzzled. Their terrier dog roamed loose about the place, which meant that I was not impressed, either.

One of the other campers, who I’d spoken with a few times, summed it up when he commented in passing: “This place gets weirder by the minute!”

John came home from bowls with winnings of three bottles of beer. He was amused by the circus – literal and figurative.

We ate our roast chicken dinner to the background noise of the circus “music” and a very noisy group of revellers at the hotel.

The circus put on an evening performance, which was very noisy, but mercifully over by 9.30pm. They did not seem to have many people attending. There were competing events on at the Festival in Ingham.

In the early evening, the Ladies was jam packed with females getting ready for a night out – and with circus people getting made up for the performance. Bedlam.

We heard, later, that the terrier dog was supposed to be an important part of the performance, however it had absconded in favour of visiting other dogs around the park! It definitely seemed to be rather an amateur operation.

I’d done some computer research and found that the Cohen concert in Geelong was being put on through the Day on the Green organization. So I’d joined that, in order to access pre-sales tickets through them. Phoned friend M about doing this. She was already a member and, as pre-sales closed at 4pm tomorrow, said she would get the tickets. Some friends of hers might be interested too.