Geelong Highland Gathering
Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Today we’ve been to the Highland Gathering in Geelong, about 80kms west of Melbourne on the Bellarine Peninsula. We quite liked the look of Geelong’s waterfront as a place to live when we came here on holiday a couple of years ago, but unfortunately it would be difficult to find work out there. It was nice to go back for a visit today and the location, Queen’s Park, was ideal for this sort of outdoor event.
All kinds of Scottish-themed activities were taking place: pipe and drum bands, caber tossing, traditional dancing, highland cattle and haggis throwing contests. There were dozens of stalls selling tartan, celtic arts and crafts and favourite Scottish delicacies such as “tatties and neeps”, McGowan’s Toffee and Irn Bru. 
Of particular interest was a stall called “Rob’s British Butcher”, based in Dandenong, who claimed to sell pork pies — something that doesn’t seem to exist out here — but sadly they weren’t on offer today, although he was doing a roaring trade in black pudding, cornish pasties, potato scones and Lorne sausage. 
It was a really enjoyable day out, particularly because the weather has now started to cool down — today was like a sunny English summer day, rather than a 30-odd degree scorcher. Which suited all the fair-skinned, ginger-haired, ex-pat Jocks nicely. 
