Once in a blues balloon
From a dynamic Blues festival to heavenly ballooning in the hinterland, a trip to the Gold Coast is much more than golden shores.
The hot air balloon lifts silently above mist rising from the dams and the farms and outhouses below, which begin to look like Legoland. It’s freezing cold and I’m grateful for my gloves and cap, but as we watch the sun come up, the balloon rises higher and higher, and so does the temperature. We are inside Queensland’s stunning Scenic Rim near the town of Beaudesert. To the south are the Border Ranges, the north Brisbane, the west the Great Dividing Range and to the east is the Gold Coast.
FESTIVE FUN
A day earlier, I was in a crowded pub pumping with the sounds of blues guitarist Simon Kinny-Lewis at Blues on Broadbeach, the annual free music festival held all around the parks, streets and venues of Broadbeach. I went straight to guitar legend Tommy Emmanuel’s masterclass where he talked about his musical influences, including Chet
Atkins, and how his mum taught him the guitar at age four before taking the whole family on the road.
Later, the Major Events Gold Coast Director of Festival and Events and selfconfessed music nerd, Mark Duckworth, walks me past some of the 16 stages and venues from the Broadbeach Mall piano bar to the main stage at Kurrawa Park, all within a four-block square, towered over by high-rise buildings and fringed by that famous surf beach.
Duckworth explains the festival began in 2002 when local businesses wanted to fill accommodation in the winter months and has grown to have more than 60 musicians playing blues, funk, soul, folk and more.
One of the festival’s support partners is Memphis Tourism, but the city of soul might lose its headliner Marcus Scott & The Bo-Keys. Scott tells the late-night crowd he’s been talking to local real estate agents as he’s “gonna move here”. Other big names over the years have included Canned Heat, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and Don Walker. 8 Ball Aitken – a Queensland musician who lived in Nashville for nine years and has toured the world for “22 years
Take to the skies © Tourism & Events Queensland; HOTA, Home of the Arts © Hotel Miami; Heavy Wax performing at Blues on Broadbeach
© Bianca Holderness; the event is free to the public © Tourism & Events Queensland