ANZAC Day 2019

Yet another early morning, setting my alarm for 3am.  Out of the house around 4am and off to the Glynn's to carpool for the day.

Although the street was pretty busy due to the vehicle cordons around the museum, we were able to find a carpark.  A noticeable absence was our Pipe major Tim.  As it turned out he had Shingles and was not able to make any performances for the day.

The Dawn service at The Museum went as normal, we played on the Cenotaph before the services entered.  There were noticeably less people this year than previous.  The below video has a quick shot of us during the service.

   

As for every year, after the service we were invited for breakfast at the Museum.  We got to meet the Major Phil Goff, who was key in letting us play on the Cenotaph while a lot of the other services were being cancelled.

The band then did the Newmarket Parade which was not cancelled.  This was because the service is organised by the Newmarket Business Association not the council and run as it usually does. The service was ok, similar to every year where Ngati Whatua open the service, the local MP and Minister say something, wreaths are laid, then the national anthems for New Zealand and Australia are sung before the service is closed.

We had to quickly move off to Henderson as this service started at 11am, half an hour earlier than usual. This was inside as the street march part was cancelled. We were late into the RSA, and stood at the back of the service.  We then played for 20 minutes in a semi-circle ending on the organisers favourite tune, The Gael.

Rodney Cameron's Family Photos

My Grandfather made this video when he was still alive, I have edited with cleaned high definition pictures and uploaded it for social media.

Latest Blog Activity Update

Just a quick note that I have a few post to setup on this blog, however have not had the time recently, I want to update the latest Clan Cameron events, as well as my accounts for the bands performance at the recent competitions ending at the Nationals in Dunedin. I also want to spend a bit more time in the genealogy space and produce more reports on my ancestors. There are a few people that I want to upload as pages to this blog showcasing my history. Also regarding the videos on the update regarding the nationals, there are only 2 videos on youtube, but I set them up as individual in the blog post to start at specific times. This has not worked as I intended and the videos either run from the start or where the viewer last left it. I will have to put notes in the blog on what times during the videos to watch.

Highland Cathedral played at the Clan Cameron Gathering 2019

Just in case you missed it on Facebook. Video has been uploaded to Youtube as well

Carving for the Clan Cameron Raffle

Here are some photos of a Tekoteko that I did for the Clan Cameron Raffle.  This was won by Carole McIntosh.

New Zealand Pipeband Nationals 2019 - Dunedun

[UPDATED]The Pipeband Nationals was pretty good for our band however the comments on the judges sheets did not really show the improvements we had made from last year.

In saying this some of the comments were valid and will be something that the grade 4 band will need to work on over the next year or 2. We did come third in the street march which means we are doing something right.

Below are links to our performances, however they are part of 2 Youtube videos, clicking the links should start the video at our performance, however you can move them around however you like to watch the rest.

Video Links

Just a note that I have updated the video links to start at the correct performance times.  These are MSR - 1 hour 10 minutes in and the Medley 3 hours 42 minutes in for the day 1 video. Street march 17 minutes in and Mace Flourishing 8 hours 15 minutes into the day 2 video.

Alternatively watch the whole video in YouTube using these links

Day 1 - Friday 29 Mar 2019

Day 2 - Saturday 30 Mar 2019

MSR

The first competition on Friday morning.

Medley

The second competition on Friday 11:30. 

Street March

Street march first thing Saturday morning.  A bit cold during warmup but sunny throughout the rest of the bands providing a good sound.

Mace Flourishing

We are a bit worn out here, as it is one of the last things of the competition and the temperature started to drop a we bit.

Other things to note, most of the pipers and drummers joined the grade 1 bands during their warm up, this produced a massive circle which at one point hit critical mass, and the sound leveled out to one tone.

If you watch 'Scotland the Brave' in the massed bands, the entire group stopped together.  This is unheard of at massed bands, usually get one or more bands continue in a repeat or several trailing drones.  I think the crowd witnessed something that has never been witnessed before, although most of them would not have been the wiser for it.  The video has an echo, which sort of ruins it, but the echo finish is clean if you listen for it.

All and all a good competition, definitely felt better coming off this one then any other. 

Clan Celtica Performance - Medieval Madness

Incase some of you don't have facebook, here are a couple of tunes we played early on in the day uploaded to Youtube.  This was at Kiwi North just out of Whangarei, on Sunday the 27th of January 2019