Hobart Christmas Pageant       Saturday November 17th, 2001

This pageant is held every year and takes over an hour to pass though the City. This year, the HHPB was Number 29 in the Parade. The day was cool with threatening clouds, but fortunately, no rain fell during the parade. In recent times, we have won the "Encouragement Award" from the Hobart City Council. This year, we won the "Best Band" competition. We have had to extend our trophy cabinet to cope with our (latest) award.

We formed up outside our practice rooms at Scots Church and got rid of a few nerves. We made our only fingering errors of the day here! One of our pipers, Wayne Gatward (second row, second from left) had his first major parade. He was pretty relaxed about it actually, and couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

From Scots Church we marched down to our starting position outside the Theatre Royal Hotel (they do make it tempting for us!). Yes, some of us strong types only had two beers before we started. Is that too many drinks to have at this time of the morning?

(above) Marching down Campbell St. For once, we weren't going "up" a one way street

The march is quite a long one and we are pretty tired by the end of it. The photo below was taken near the end (Collins St near the major Hobart Hospital). By this stage we were pretty sick of Christmas Carols.

 All photos by Geoff Taylor, one of our new drumming recruits. Thanks for the great job, Geoff!

Oatlands Christmas Parade 2001

Oatlands is an historic town about one hour's drive north from Hobart. It contains many old stone buildings and cottages. It also serves as a commercial centre for the surrounding farming areas of the "midlands". This year we led the Christmas parade down the main street. I am told our Band used to do it many years ago.

The March was quite long. It ended up at a park where most of the townsfolk gathered. At the end of the march we assembled for a group photo, before heading off to BOTH of the pubs in the town. Hope we can get back this year!

Photos courtesy of Wendy Krause. Thanks Wendy!