Lara:
‘We got up at 8 or 9 to go to Sydney and we got to Kay and Toni’s house at 12 ‘cause we were getting ready there while mum and dad went to a gallery. We went upstairs and got changed in Kay and Toni’s room because it had a bathroom with a mirror. Kay suggested to do our makeup first, we charged my phone downstairs and Rhea’s phone upstairs in the study, which was kind of like the same story in the room directly opposite. I went downstairs to get my phone and their cat was downstairs and he looked like he was about to attack me and then he went upstairs and looked like he was about to attack Rhea and then Kay put him downstairs outside. We did the makeup first then we put the dresses on then we put all the friendship bracelets on. I think we forgot a few things. We didn’t really have enough time – maybe an hour and a half – then mum and dad came to get us so we got in the car. We drew a ‘13’ on our hands ‘cause she did that on her Speak Now tour and people started doing that. I put glitter over it and sent Heidi a picture of us in the car, Heidi saw the concert a few nights before, she went with a friend on Saturday, then she called a few minutes after and we put her on speaker phone. We talked for a bit then hung up.
Then me and mum and Rhea got out of the car and got into the train station and there was all this Taylor Swift stuff, there was a giant poster with a background of some sort of Taylor Swift thing and you could take pictures there. We took pictures and there was this person and their entire job was taking pictures. Then we got on the train and it was called ‘Tay Tay Express’ and they played her songs. Then we were on the train and there was this person across from us and I traded a bracelet with her. I remember it ‘cause it was the first bracelet I traded and it said Look What you Made me Do, which is a song name.
We got there and got off the train and we went to a few merch stalls and we were looking for anything but since it was the last night that she was performing in Australia, everything was sold out and they only had Extra Larges. We tried a few different stalls and we picked one with the shortest line and we got this really nice lady serving us and she said that they were completely out of T shirts, completely out of everything except jumpers so me and Rhea were trying to convince mum to get the jumper. It was $120 for one jumper and it was too big, and we had to pay for it. So we got it but when we were paying, the lady went over and got another jumper and put her finger to her mouth and gave us the 2 jumpers. I don’t know why she did that, it was probably ‘cause it was the last night in Australia.
Then we looked at the food stuff and there were so many stalls because there was so many people going so a lot of places decided to set up stalls, so there were so many options to choose from. We hadn’t had breakfast or lunch and we got this really good burger for us to share ‘cause we weren’t that hungry. Then we got a drink then we had chicken chips. That took ages. We traded a bunch of bracelets, and we traded with a lot of people like police officers. They were really nice. A lot of people had the same costume, it was really pretty Lover which is an album. We got there at 4.30pm and went in at 6. Mum thought there wouldn’t be that much water so when we got in Rhea sent her a picture of the water ‘cause there were water-filling stations and cups and water.
The age limit to go in on your own was 15 so we were a little bit worried. The person next to us asked a 17-looking girl how old she was but the person letting people in didn’t ask us at all, so I guess we got lucky. We went in and they had different gates based on where your seats were and because we were on the floor we got a wristband and we also got a light up bracelet that everyone got that could change colour.
We went to our seats and put our stuff down, there were a few stalls inside but not as many as outside so we didn’t get anything, which is why we got stuff outside. We took a few pictures right next to the stage, we went up to the VIP section and took some pictures. I took a few pictures of that, then Sabrina Carpenter came out and played a bunch of songs. When we were up there, they started playing a video of her when she was younger, then she came on and started playing. She’s got a few pretty good songs but there wasn’t that many people because a lot of people didn’t mind if they missed her or not, so it wasn’t full. She came out to the part of the stage right next to us which was really cool. Then she finished and there was a half an hour break where we could go to the bathroom. Before she left the stage people started running to go to the bathrooms ‘cause there was this giant line. We got there and traded bracelets and then the person who was behind us left and we started talking to these really nice people, a mother and her daughter, and they were saying that they got tickets when they landed in Sydney because they booked their flights before they got the tickets then they got the tickets. It was a Monday night so the girl must have missed school, she was like about 10.
Then the intro started playing and the way that Taylor comes on is there’s these giant leaves it looks like, and people hold them, and they’re attached to their waist. The colour scheme was sort of pink and blue pastel colours. All of the dancers that were holding them all came out and they started putting them all in a pile so they were covering something, and the music was Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince which is a song. The way she comes out is all the leaves lift up and the stage is designed so it can be lowered down, it rises up with her on it so it looks like she appeared out of nowhere. Then she starts playing Lover. The outfit is a body suit with glittery things on the side. Our one was light pink and dark pink colour scheme, which was really pretty. Then she played The Man, which is mum’s current favourite song. For The Man, she has a jacket. To introduce The Man, she points at the crowd so they start doing the Mexican wave, then she puts on the jacket which is a blazer (we got a pink blazer) then she starts singing. We could see her when she was on the top level but not the other levels. There were three levels.
After that she played You Need to Calm Down, and the lights on everyone’s wrists went rainbow for that one.
It was light and it got dark ‘cause it was 7.30-ish.
She only plays about 3 songs for Fearless, or 4, which isn’t that much. Then she did Evermore, that was so good because she came out in this bronze dress, it was kind of faded and sparkling. Then she played. Two of the songs she played were Champagne Problems and Marjorie which is about her grandma, where people put their flashlights on. For Champagne Problems people try to cheer for as long as possible and I think it was about 2 minutes. It was raining a little bit, a sprinkle, for Fearless for half an hour, then it stopped. There was a band on the stage right next to us. It had a cover that they put over it to protect the instruments which blocked the screen, so I had to look at the main stage. Then it was Reputation which was so good, because there are a bunch of chants in Reputation that people do that aren’t part of the song. Then after Reputation it was Speak Now and she only plays two songs from that album, which is really surprising, and she wears a long ball gown dress that’s really pretty. She’s got multiple outfits that she changes every night. We got a gold Speak Now dress.
After Speak Now it’s Red. The first song in 22 she wears a black hat and she’s got a tradition of giving the hat to kids. They come up to the stage and she says hi to them and gives them her hat that she’s wearing and it’s signed as well. And in one of the songs in Red there’s smoke that comes out of the stage from different places. After Red there’s Folklore where she starts on the roof of a cabin and we could see her where she started on the stage, it was a blue dress. And then she goes down and ends up at the front of the stage which is maybe a bit less than 100 m. The last song is Illicit Affairs which is my favourite song on the album but she only plays half of it, she starts it about halfway so she has time for other songs.
After that it’s 1989. In one of the songs, everything goes red and fire comes out of the stage and it was so hot and we could feel the heat. Stacey was in the top very far back but she could feel the heat, I don’t know what they were, which was so cool. After that it’s the surprise songs, there’s two different surprise songs every night, one on guitar and one on piano and she plays the guitar and the piano for the songs. They are completely different every night. There used to be a rule that she couldn’t repeat the same two songs ever but now she’s changed that just so there’s more options. There were two backup singers on the stage right next to us, one of them was really nice, she kept turning to the crowd and singing to them. The 1989 outfit, if it’s green then the surprise song dress is green: it’s the same colour as the dress that she wears for the surprise songs. She played a mashup on the guitar of Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve x Ivy, where she transitioned into another song. On the piano she played Forever and Always and Maroon, which was Rhea’s favourite song on Midnights for a while.
After the surprise songs she plays Midnights where she’s got a few outfit changes, she starts off in an oversized T-shirt that’s different colours every night and it was light purple with sequins this time. Then she transitions into a bodysuit with blue tassels that has a cutout. When she was doing Antihero (I think that’s the most popular song on Midnights when Midnights was released), I have a video, she came over to us and she went to the stage that was 3m over and started waving and stayed for part of the song, which was so cool. In the video the camera starts shaking ‘cause I’m not paying attention to the video at all. That was before she went into the blue bodysuit. It’s really cool when she goes in to that ‘cause she’s got all these umbrellas that cover her then she comes out in another outfit that was under the outfit she was wearing before.
She plays a bunch of songs on that and in Midnight Rain, one of the lyrics is ‘He was sunshine I was midnight rain’, which is what me and Rhea dressed up as, I was in a blue dress and she was in a yellow dress. Then she plays another song, then she plays Karma which is the last song on the set list and she wears a jacket with tassles hanging off of it. There’s a multicolour one and she wore a blue one that matched her outfit this time. And then she and all her dancers and backup singers have a jacket on then they join her at the stage, then they all take a bow and they all leave and she stays for a bit longer. Then they release confetti out of the same things that release the fire, and it goes everywhere, it goes everywhere and we got some and put it in the bag. Then me and Rhea went out, I think we traded a few bracelets with people when we were out but most people were too tired ‘cause it was 11.30 by then.
We went outside and we had dad’s credit card so we got a burger from the same place as before, a chicken burger, and it was so good, that place has the best chicken burgers ever. Then mum picked us up, she met us there, she was going to try to get there before the end of the concert but she didn’t. We got on the train, we took one that didn’t go to the city ‘cause there were so many more people there than there were on the other trains, there were still a lot because there were 85,000 people, which is a lot, so there were a bunch of people going on the trains. Dad met us when we got off with the car, he and mum had dinner at Kay and Toni’s house while we were there. We drove home that same night which was so tiring because we left at like 12 and got home at 3am. Mum thought we were going to go to school the next day but we slept for ages, but mum had to get up at 8 ‘cause she had to work and she was giving a presentation.’
Rhea:
‘We went to Kangaroo Valley for the long weekend a few weeks ago. We got home from school and left a few hours later, and had dinner at a pub an hour away from Kangaroo Valley. We got to the house at 9.30pm and saw everyone (we went with Stacey, Max, Ellie and Madeline) and chose what room we were sleeping in. Me and Lara were sharing a room and we go the room mum and dad stayed in last time, and Ellie and Madeline got the room next to us and there was a door that connected the two of them. Stacey and Max got the room next to them and mum and dad got the room Lara stayed in last time, which was across from Stacey and Max.
All of the rooms had a door that went outside to the wrap-around deck apart from Madeline and Ellie’s. There was fresh bread, eggs and honey when we got there and Stacey brought some bread that she had made, so there was a lot of food. There was also butter there, which we used the next morning. In the morning, me and Lara both woke up pretty early and went to the kitchen before everyone else. Max went to the river: when you went out to the deck there were stairs that went down to a giant garden and there was a hill that led down to a river. There was also a pool to the right of the house. Max took some really good pictures and he came up after half an hour of us being awake when Stacey had already woke up and she was in the kitchen.
The first morning I had honey and fried eggs on toast and I put some honey on top of the fried eggs which was really good. When Madeline and Ellie woke up, we decided to go in the pool even though it wasn’t really hot. We all played with the handball for a bit and then we played Marco Polo and we decided to finish our game at night when it was dark and turn on the pool lights. All the kids went on a walk and dad gave Lara his credit card to get some lollies from the 2 lolly shops that were there. It was raining so we took some umbrellas but it didn’t rain that hard so we didn’t need them.
The first one we went to, the person who worked there had a French accent so I asked her if she could speak French and I said yes, and I talked to her in French for a bit. Afterwards we ate the lollies that we got at the shop and we decided to save some for later. We walked around the town looking at everything. There were some jewelry shops and clothes shops and we also found a bookshop that was hidden down a road to get to it. There were a lot of old books that smelled like that too, so we didn’t stay for long. We walked down both sides of the street and the second lolly shop we decided to get some lollies that you can put into the bag to share, then we walked down the rest of the street which took an hour and a half or 2 hours.
We came back and ate something then played hide-and-seek around the house, which turned into tips with a pillow, then we all ended up on the bed outside which had a curtain around it, looking at Madeline’s phone.
We played a game that Stacey brought called Exploding Kittens for a bit, and then a different game I can’t remember that Ellie suggested. Mum and Stacey got back from their walk, and they had lunch and mum practiced some piano for an hour.
We had dinner together that Mum made, and then Me, Lara, Madeline and Ellie all got changed at 9 to go in the pool. We turned the pool lights on so it was lit up, and they were bright blue. We got the handball and we were going to play a game with the ball but then we decided to just continue playing Marco Polo. We didn’t end up using the ball but sometimes we threw it around next to the person who was in to make them think that someone was next to them. Lara was good at it and she didn’t really get in that much, and Stacey brought chips out which we half ate and left the rest for later, but they got soaked because we were splashing so much. We were going to finish the game but we kept on saying ‘Second last round’ because no-one wanted to be the last person to be it, so we ended up playing for another half an hour. We went in at around 10.30 or 11 and everyone had showers. Madeline and Ellie in the outdoor shower which was really relaxing. They left moisturizer, shampoo and conditioner so I used that and got into my pyjamas and went to bed around then. Stacey was in Ellie and Madeline’s room so Lara and I went in to say goodnight but I ended up lying there and Lara lay next to Ellie at the other end of the bed. We were talking for a bit but then we all ended up accidentally falling asleep and Max was walking past and got a picture of it.
Me and Lara got up a bit later because we were both cold and we went in to our bed.
The next morning was Sunday which was checkout day. Me and Lara woke up again pretty early and Stacey, who was going to get up at 5am with Max to take pictures of the sunrise, got up at the same time as us which was around 8. Last time we went, me and Lara woke up and we went down to the river and tried to cross it but we couldn’t, so we did that again that morning. Last time Lara fell in up to her waist and she was wearing pants so they got soaked, but this time we were both wearing shorts so it didn’t matter too much if we got wet. There are rocks across the river so we used them as stepping stones, but at some places the current was strong. We were about halfway across the river when Ellie came and we all 3 tried to cross it. We did make it across the river but there was a lot of bush and none of us wanted to go through it because there were a lot of spider webs that had been hanging on the trees that were hanging over the river. We ended up going back but I slipped a bit and Lara caught me just before I fell in to the river. When we came back I had the same breakfast as yesterday. We all went in the pool for the last time when everyone was packing but we were only in there for around half an hour before we had to get out to go.
Me and Lara went in Stacey and Max’s car with Madeline, Ellie and Max. Madeline was driving because she’s on her Ls because she needs practice. She has a playlist that we listened to for the hour before we got to the sculpture park we went to. It was a bit windy so we all had jumpers, but it was a bit hot too so we ended up taking them off and walking around with them. We found this cabin that looked abandoned but when we went in it was just shelves. We stayed there for around an hour and we had a picnic for lunch, and then we went to a café where Madeline, Ellie and Stacey had been to when they had been in the area.
Everyone had some more food there, some people just had drinks like smoothies. I had a kids cheeseburger which was good.’
I was going to also describe our weekend holiday at Jervis Bay with Mum, Dad and Marcus the weekend after Kangaroo Valley, but I will have to share that story another time.
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