The Canberra Enlighten Festival is described as a celebration of culture and creativity that runs over 17 days across February/March each year. Events include outdoor film screenings, live concerts, a hot air balloon spectacular and lighting up some of Canberra’s iconic buildings with giant animated projections.

We had just finished dinner and were settling in to watch some Netflix when we made a spontaneous decision to go check Enlighten out. Being a Thursday evening many of the smaller artistic activities would probably not be taking place, but we figured we could at least check out the building projections. After all, it was a beautiful evening that was begging not to be wasted by planting couch potatoes.

We consulted with Juno…..his tail made the vote vigorously unanimous.

In previous years we have always gone on a Friday or Saturday night (last year we…meaning I… screwed up our dates and turned up the day after it had finished) when crowds are generally thick.
Some of the terrain between exhibits tends to be pretty dark (go figure), and I would often find myself bumping into people, tripping over uneven surfaces, treading on small dogs and skewering small children with the legs of my camera tripod.

But not tonight.
Tonight there were just enough people to make to give a feeling of shared community, but thin enough to have plenty of room to move around without shish kebabbing kids.
Even so, I still managed to trip over a generator cable.
And a fountain.
And Juno.

Overall, a worthwhile excursion way better than Netflix. It was a lovely evening. There was live music. Some of the audiovisual projections on the buildings were stunning.
On arriving home we decided it would be a most excellent idea to get up the next morning at sparrow fart and go watch the balloons taking off down beside Lake Burley Griffin. Another unanimous vote.

Apparently someone tampered with the ballot counting process overnight, because by the time the 5 am alarm actually went off, the only balloons to be found were the cartoon ones full of ZZZZZZ’s suspended above Juno and Kelly’s heads.

Perhaps tomorrow.