I (sort of) went along to the 2013 Wandering Fair

Sometime before the weekend—probably about Wednesday evening—I was chatting to a friend on the phone and he told me he was going to tootle along to the Wandering Fair on the weekend. At the time this sounded like something I might like to do and I had nothing else happening on the weekend. Generally I have nothing happening on any given weekend.

When I mentioned my weekend plans to workmates who did not know who or what ‘Wandering’ was or is they suggested it might be hard going to a Wandering Fair. Like, how do you know where it is, if it is Wandering? However it is not that hard. Wandering is a small little country town SSE of Perth. It would be about a one hour drive from Armadale down the Albany Highway; and it is a long time since I have taken a tour down Albany Highway.

At one stage, at least 10 years ago, I was even toying with the idea of buying a five or ten acre block of ‘semi-rural’ land just south of Wandering.

Anyway, for the weekend, the basic plan between my friend and I was that we would somehow meet up at the Wandering Fair, which, at the time, I though would be easy. This was based on the assumption there would be about 50 people at the Wandering Fair.

So I arrived in Wandering around 11:15 a.m. on the Saturday after a really nice drive down the Albany Highway. A bit later than the planned 10:00 a.m. but not too late really.

The place was packed!

There were cars parked up and down all the nearby roads. In the end after driving around for about ten minutes—dodging all the people walking in the middle of the road who were totally oblivious to three or four cars trying to make progress down the road—I found a spot to park that was not too far away but still involved a pretty solid 400 meter walk. I went down to what looked like the main entrance and hung around there for about 15 minutes trying to spot my friend in amongst what looked like about 10,000 people. Okay. Not quite 10,000. But at least a 1,000 or so. Anyway a lot more than 50.

I should point out at this stage that my friend is mobile phone averse. By this I mean that he, and none of his family, are mobile phone enabled (i.e., ‘smartphone’ enabled for my American readers). So for those of you that are thinking at about this stage “Why didn’t he just call them on the mobile and meet up”, this was not an option that I had.

So my Plan B at this point was to find his car. This would (a) confirm he was in fact there, and (b) maybe I could leave a note on the car or something. After checking out all the roads I finally found his car backed up onto the verge on an corner near a pathway. As it was now about 12:30 I decided I would park nearby, thinking that by now he might be considering coming back to the car.

I stayed parked nearby for about an hour. But he didn’t show up.

To cut a long story short, at about this time I decided to head for home. But it wasn’t a complete failure. I got to see some nice scenery I have not seen for a long time.