Sun, 18th Dec, 2016 Ross & Lara’s, Wattle Grove, WA (Carols by Candlelight)

8am 20 degrees in the van – weather forecast for a top of 25 degrees.

Quiet morning pottering around and catching up on my blog.

In the afternoon we caught the train into the city. Lot of buskers were playing in the Mall. This chap played ‘Sounds of Silence’ – one of my favourites so videoed him. The little boy in front was having a wonderful time dancing – it was so cute.

Down past the Supreme Court Gardens – spotted some Gumnut Babies in the garden.

Walked along the Swan River foreshore to Langley Park where the IGA Carols by Candlelight for Variety are to be held tonight.

Found a spot for our rug as I thought school students were going to be singing but it was just kid entertainment.

Another item ticked off – Carols in a Capital City.

We moved to a park bench for a while – had to put our rug over it to stop the strong cold wind whistling through chilling us. Wore jeans and had to put my jumper on by 6pm.

Watched 100s of people arrive. Went around to the other side to get some dinner from a  Hog’s Breath van. The main entertainment started at 7.15pm just as the sun set. Comperes were from Channel 9. The big screens were handy.

I bought my songbook & candle for $2 – fundraising for Variety Club.

Found a spot in the middle – they say there are 20,000 people here. This is the first year it is free so the crowds have come.

They started with Little Drummer Boy and a few kids came on beating their drums – videoed it as I love that song. Had a ball singing all the carols.

The Variety Youth Choir sang Song of Joy and everyone waved their candles so I took a video of it too.

The main attraction was Anthony Callea, who sang a few carols and his hit, The Prayer.

They said all the candles looked so great they wanted to do a selfie with the candles in the background – oh the world of social media.

The fireworks were scheduled for 9pm. Luckily I looked at my watch and it was 9.30pm and we still had a few songs to go but we needed to get back to the train station as the last train left at 10.17pm. Got going and then the fireworks went off as we were walking up through the city. The sound was bouncing around the buildings was amazing. People were looking about waiting for bombs to drop!! Shame they couldn’t keep to their time schedule as the fireworks went for a long time and would have been great to see. Oh well – joys of using public transport.

Got the train ok then back to our truck and home to the van. Great night except we should have taken chairs as we are getting to old to be sitting on the ground!!