Haiz: glad you're back, and just in time for page 500.
Everyone who asked: the Mediaeval fair here is huge, and a lot of the folk who work there camp out on the grounds, often for several days before and after the fair as well as during it. It's held in what is a big, well treed, country town park and picnic ground for the rest of the year, in a town called Gumeracha. There's a small river roughly down the middle of the park, with a bridge, and the exhibits on the two sides of the bridge are completely different. South-western side of the river is more what you'd find in a Ren Faire, though there is some authentic stuff like the spicer and the falconer, also the tourney grounds, fighting displays and the food stalls. And an excellent bookseller. And often some other storytellers, mostly for the little kids.
Other side of the bridge is the Mediaeval Village, which is where I mostly hang out. The exhibits there are more living history stuff, highland cattle and sometimes other animals, spinners, weavers, dyers, a cooper, several smiths and lots of other craftspeople just going about their days work, in reasonably authentic costume and sometimes selling what they make. There's an archery range, and all the encampments of the various groups of fighters and crafters who come from interstate or sometimes overseas to join in. Lots of musicians and singers of many kinds, likewise dancers. Some years I do living history displays: fabric dyeing, perfuming, cider making, smithcraft, singing, helping out the other smiths or the falconer or the spicer, explaining food plants or herbs, and cookery. But the two things I do most of are running the apothecary and storytelling.
The fair runs for two full days, three if we have a Schools Day. Each night there are up to a couple of hundred people left on site after the tourists go home, and that's when we do all the stuff like telling the serious stories or singing the hundred-verse ballads that would bore or annoy a daytime audience, but delight us. Tired fighters around the campfire are good to tell stories to.
