Back in October 2008, popular afternoon radio comic duo Hamish and Andy were doing another caravan trip around Australia. You can have a look at their website here: http://www.hamishandandy.com/
And read more about their background on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamish_%26_Andy_%28radio_show%29
Around the 27th of October, they were due to be passing through South Australia. I missed them being in Adelaide, which I was a bit annoyed about.
Given my penchant for long afternoon drives along Port Wakefield Road to take truck photos, I was regularly tuned into their afternoon show, which was good for providing some laughs while I enjoyed a nice drive around sunset. So on the 28th of October, I was driving up Port Wakefield Road, intending to just take some truck photos. But then I heard that they were in Williamstown, a small country town about 45 minutes away from where I was at the time. I completely missed them being in Adelaide for the first Caravan of Courage tour, so after having a quick look at a map, I made the first suitable right turn off Port Wakefield Road and headed east towards Williamstown.
It was hard to tell how long it would take to get there, so I was just hoping it would be a fairly straightforward trip, and that I would make it in time to see some of the show. After impatiently driving at the speed limit for quite a while, I arrived in Williamstown. Hamish and Andy were doing the show right outside their van in the Williamstown Caravan Park. So I pulled into a gravel carpark across the road, grabbed my cameras and hurried over to their campsite, by this time there was a pretty decent crowd of a couple of hundred people crowded around the caravan.
Photographer: Rohan Phillips
Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED
(all photos)
Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED
(all photos)
Obviously most of the time was spent doing the radio show around ad breaks and songs.
In between segments, Hamish and Andy both quickly went into the crowd to sign some autographs and have some photos taken with their fans.
Hamish was a very nice guy, profusely apologising for not being able to get to everybody for autographs and photos.
This part of the show was very funny, with Hamish doing some wine tasting. While going through these photos for this blog post, I remembered it being a good laugh and wished I'd taken a video of it.
But then after clicking through a few more photos in Picasa, I discovered I actually did take a short clip. Excuse the dodgy quality, I was trying to hold my D300 rig and the compact digital camera while being jostled by other people.
There lots of people there by the time the show had finished.
Once the radio show was over, Hamish and Andy were both mobbed by the adoring fans for photos and more autographs. With Andy being the straight man, Hamish was more popular as the more silly and funny one.
It took quite a while to get to the front of the pack, but I managed to jump in for a quick snapshot of me and Hamish. The D300 rig I used for the rest of the shots was too heavy to hold like that, so I used my little Canon P&S. As luck would have it, in the rush of quickly taking it the photo is pretty blurry which made me sad as it's the most important one, but it's still a good record. Watching them on TV, you don't realise quite how tall both Hamish and Andy are. I'm 5' 10", and as you can see Hamish is substantially taller.
So after finally getting a photo with Hamish (I don't have a man-crush on Andy) the boys had to head off to tape some TV segments for Rove, so it was time to head home, I was pretty worn out by this point, although my stomach was behaving itself for the most part.
On the way back from Williamstown I passed through Gawler and spotted this very cool 1950s Chevrolet tow truck.
Have a look at this blog post to see more photos and read a bit of a background story:
