Clunes to Melbourne

30th April 2022

We went to the Clunes Book Fair.

Saturday, We were amazed that the entire, quaint, former gold rush historic town became a book fair.  All the streets, shops, offices and clubs, were lined with books, apart from the only shop named a book shop which is now a clothing shop.  The locals created this in 2007. They came together, came up with a vision, cleaned up the empty shops, and voila.  For the first time ever they had 9,000 people attend. They had to call on local support from neighboring towns to help out with catering at the last minute as nobody expected such big numbers. In 2020, pre-covid the numbers had grown to 25,000. It´s incredible considering there´s only about 2,200 people living there.

There´s something magical when communities come together ?

They had loads of second-hand books of all descriptions and even some French-language classic philosophy books. It was great to meet some authors. One author Laura E. Goodin was wearing a bowler hat and her energy was larger than life. I asked her if she was a comedian as she was really funny. Laura said she wasn´t however loves writing about humor. Of course, We bought her latest book “Mud and Glass”, and also a fun booklet based in the North of France “The dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders”.???

Shortly afterwards we noticed a lady pushing two dogs in a pram which reminded me of France. She said she´s starting a new revolution ?

Laughter is so important for health as is being in nature.

We really loving the countryside of Australia.

Seeing lambs in peoples backyards reminds me of Wales.

We went for a bite of lunch at Daylesford before heading to Melbourne.