Bundanoon is Brigadoon

Okay, I've never seen the play/movie, but now I've got to. We heard about this crazy festival out in a little town 2 hours northeast from us and D felt up for an adventure... so we set out to experience "Brigadoon" for the day. The tiny town of Bundanoon puts on this impressive annual event to which thousands of Scottish descendants flock to celebrate and participate in the games and traditions of "the good old days."

I've never seen so many kilts, plaid, or scotty dogs in one place before. It was an awesome spectacle - the kids didn't know quite what to think. But we rolled up to this one road town, found a side spot to ditch the car, followed the throngs and parked our blanket on the hill just as the myriad bagpipers were marching across the field by clan. 

It was crazy - there were strongmen hefting atlas stones and doing caber tosses, re-enactments of famous battles with clashing swords and flying arrows, shot putt / log throwing / hay tossing competitions, and jousting training to name a few. Total blast.

Claim to fame of "the Ultimate Scottish Experience" they've been doing this Scottish Highland Gathering the last 35 years. I loved that they provided relatively free kid-friendly games like egg toss, water balloon toss, haggis hurling, kilted races and more. But really a highlight was just seeing the confident young bucks line up to heave those cabers (basically telephone poles), only to have their egos promptly crushed when they could hardly carry the things (despite 5 fire fighters helping them lift and balance it), let alone toss them any distance at all. And man, those beefy strongmen racing to lift the enormous "Bundanoon Stones of Manhood" onto barrels. Now that was entertainment!

I wasn't doing any heaving that day, but I did join in the Scottish Country dancing demonstration out on the field with the girls. They thought it was the best thing since sliced bread as we weaved in and out in groups of three. Darren showed some people up on shot-putt and Will got two eggs in the face when he amazingly caught Dad's lengthy throws.

Worth a trip for a fun family Saturday and definitely a way to make some memories - more especially if ye've got any Scottish blood in ye!

the old "on the barrel backwards through the legs" stone throw

Kenna mostly spent her day avoiding all the mud and Sums was completely enamored with all the dogs :)