Ye Olde Medieval Times Festival

27 years ago, North of Brisbane in a place called Caboolture, a festival took place to encourage the re-enactment of times gone by. This festival was started in conjunction with the Abbey Museum.
The Abbey Museum has its roots in England in 1934, when Abbey Folk Park was established by Rev. J.S.M. Ward. In 1940, during the London Blitz, the park was forced to close and it never reopened. His collections were sold to pay for his relocation to Cyprus, where he later died in 1949.Members of his community relocated to Australia in 1956 and in 1965 they relocated to Caboolture, Queensland. In 1978 it was decided to put the remaining items on display in a museum, known as the Abbey Museum. 

It is a wonderful event that we have been fortunate to attend four times now. Previous years saw many Elizabethan costumes, mostly by visitors, but this year it was pleasing to see the event more medieval based - except for the Tardis at the entrance!

The festival takes place every year on the second weekend of July, the last weekend of the Queensland school holidays. There is so much to see, the colours, the artefacts, the people....

Visitors often come in costume and ye ladies and lords are seen walking around the paddocks (the event takes place in a farmer's paddock) surrounded by actors re-enacting and explaining how and why things happened. So many artefacts and implements to touch and feel, some even to try.

There are so many sayings that come from medieval times - for example, Xerox, not a new word, but a word to mean a scribe who copied Norman and Saxon history into the language of English, German, or French. The smells as one walked around were initially of smoke from the many village cooking fires. When in the food areas the smells of the many lovely foods made one hungry and eager to try some fare.

The farm paddock becomes Abbeystowe for the weekend, and the actors stay for one or two nights and live the way people did during the times.

One walks around the field visiting different villages along the way. There are performing minstrels and jesters and talking trees walking around the village. There is a jousting tournament, dancing, Turkish Oil Wrestling, archery and many performances in the main arena. The sounds of the performers singing and swords clanging, the meat sizzling on the fires, the fires crackling. The sounds of traders selling their wares and jesters jesting. One is taken back in time.

Food stalls are available with food from olden days. The last place to buy a modern can of coke is outside the ticket sales area. I didn't get photos of the food stalls, not sure why, maybe busy eating. I has a savory Fudalatal - which was pineapple, ham, cheese, and onion on a flat bread. Yes, like pizza. It tasted great, hot, cheesy and sweet. There was also a dessert Fudalatal with apples and cream. Peter tasted some elderberry beer and Jonnie had apple cider. I tried some of Coopers 'red drink', not sure what it was called, but it was cold and refreshing. Cooper also had a toffee apple and Jonnie had some churros. All very yum and reasonably priced.

The festival hosts many educational programs and re-enactments.

 I was particularly drawn to this display :)

My Lady was very informative about the sewing of garments and the olden implements used.

Getting there by car was a nightmare, and it took us almost two hours to travel what would normally take us 40 minutes. At one stage we thought we would forget it and continue to Bribie Island for the day. Leaving at the end of the day was worse, with us sitting for over two hours in the car-park queue that was going nowhere - we moved almost three car spaces in 2 hours. All the traffic was leaving via one road via one exit only, and with thousands of people all heading on the same road it was a joke. I'm not sure what could be done about the traffic, other than allowing the traffic to flow both ways back to the highway, or even some car controllers to allow all cars access to the road out.
We needed to pitch a tent like this for the wait :)

Would we go again? Of course we would, the day is well worth it. Only wish there was a van park attached where we could spend the weekend.