Queensland's Ren Fest

Last month some mates and I went to check out Queensland's answer to the Renaissance festival in the States. The Abbey Medieval festival was something cool to experience here because everyone already comes with an accent! They didn't have many fixed facilities, which I'll talk about later, except for a castle that looked like the one from Role Models.

One of the booths close to the entrance had this cool chance to make a coin. You take a round piece of metal, probably tin, and place it in a tube that sandwiches it between two stamps. Swing the hammer a couple of times and ... BAM! You got yourself a coin, buddy. I even got to do the work for a coin that is worth only the value of the metal. The guy made a dollar off me. Talk about having a license to print your own money.


We walked around looking at all the tents with stuff people had either made or brought to sell. They had heaps of food. My mate and I got this concoction, which ended up being just okay. Should have got the paella. What I liked most is the "environmentally friendly" cutlery and plates. Sure they were disposable forks, but they were made of some wood product. Fortunately I didn't get any splinters in my mouth.


We decided to check out the Turkish oil wrestling. They basically take some kind of oil (vegetable, olive, baby, motor) and pour it all over themselves. The object is to make yourself as slippery as you can so your opponent can't get a good hold of you. They wear a standard pair of shorts and end up jamming their arms into their opponents shorts and holding on to whatever they can get a grip on. The game is played a lot like wrestling where you try to pin your opponent, but you also get points for picking them up and walking three steps with them. Neither of these blokes won the day, although the guy on the left won the match.


After watching the male version of female jell-o wrestling, we wandered around to see the rest of the festival. Who'd have thought they'd have weapons at a medieval festival?


...and a big lady with a cannon. I'd post the picture I took just after she fired it, but I jumped like a morgue attendant seeing one of his customers sit up and ask for a light when I took it, and it came out all blurry.


Of course, you can't have a Medieval festival without jousting. They had balsa wood type lance, and got points depending on how many pieces their lance had shattered after ramming the opponents shield. Apparently getting three pieces is hard. This competition was unique in that half of the competitors were women. Let it not be said that Australian womens aren't tough.


The cool thing about this festival was that pretty much everything was little tents set up to show off peoples' wares. Unlike Maryland, the festival in Queensland has much more of a temporary, nomad feel to it. I liked how it seemed less commercial (although the whole festival is a commercial effort.) You had the sense people just decided to get together one weekend to relive a medieval lifestyle.


As we were walking out of the festival there was a fruit stand set up in the front of someone's home. I paid $6 (Australian) for this huge box of lovely strawberries. They had a good flavor and were pretty decently sized, a bit larger than walnuts. After a nice warm, sunny, winter day at the Medevial festival a few strawberries hit the spot.


I ended up using them to make this nice cheesecake with graham cracker crust. The blokes here loved it.


Easy No-Bake Cheesecake

1 graham cracker crust (graham crackers, sugar, butter)
1 pkg. of cream cheese (8 oz.)
1/2 cup sugar
1 pkg. of Cool Whip (8 oz.), or just whip some up using cream like I did for this.
1 tsp vanilla extract

Blend cream cheese and sugar together until smooth. Fold in Cool Whip. Again, blend until smooth. Pour mixture into ready made crust. Chill at least 2 hours. I also added some pre-made strawberry topping to the strawberries.