It’s been great watching the story unfold between ‘our own’ Beto (one of the Aussie fan club members) and Kaarija from Finland. They look uncannily alike, to the extent where a BBC reports actually mistook our Beto for the real Kaarija , and interviews him on the telly. Some of that saga is here : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-merseyside-65547620

I’m delighted to say that yes, they finally did get to meet, which was just awesome. I think that’s one of th lovely community things about the Eurovision crowd – the stars aren’t always holding themselves high above the crowd, most are happy to mix and get amongst it, which is really nice. And dare I say for many, outside Eurovision, perhaps they’re not all such famous stars in the outside world so they don’t have a big staff of minders and security marking their every step.

Anyway. Liverpool put on its best weather – it was raining. But luckily it cleared up just in time to walk to the Arena. It was the usual hurry-up-and-wait, but it felt like for many people if was their first show so a lot of excitement in the air. Thought I must admit it was funny, after seeing them get through the security check so any of them went sprinting off, thinking they were going to get a great standing position in the arena, only to realise a bit later on that no, they had successfully sprinted only to the next place where everybody to wait together, not in a queue, so rushing gave them basically no advantage at all. They’d not read the Tortoise and the Hare, obviously. 🙂

Eventually the stadium doors themselves opened, and with cautionary shouts of “DO! NOT! RUN!” from the staff, all the bring young things ran as fast as they could into the stadium .. again to find that through the doors everyone gets lumped together again ready to take the stairs down to the actual stadium floor. I took my time and, pretty much by luck I think, manage to get one of those very rare spots that only had someone short-ish like me in front, somehow I managed to be one person from the front, at the side of the pointy-outy bit of the stage, I couldn’t have been much happier with that.

Perry chose to hang out at the back of the arena again like last night, it is a great way to soak up the whole atmosphere of the place and to get a wide view of the performances.

This time around, the stakes are higher as all us Aussie Eurovision fans are now quite emotionally invested in the success of our entry, “Promise” from Perth band Voyager. The song is a banger, the presentation last night at the preview was brilliant, so all we can hope is that it will give us enough votes to drag us over the line into the Grand Final. It’s always a challenge for Australia because I’m sure there’s a big “They’re not European so I’ll never vote for them” contingent in Europe (I mean, can you blame them, really?), and we don’t have any other countries to depend on for some good old fashioned bloc voting (Hi there, Greece & Cyprus!). So despite having the odds stacked against us, I know they’ll give it their all, and hopefully turn out triumphant. (See – that’s exactly the same thing you can say about your favourite team on Grand Final day – it’s the same thing, only with a few more sequins.)

As for the performances – just like last night, the bad ones were bad and the good ones were even a little bit more epic, due to every performer knowing this was their last chance, to give it their all, in the hope of making it to the grand final. Unlike last night, this time the votes very much mattered. All the people out there in television land have the futures of these musicians held in their little voting fingertips. There was no jury of professionals taking part in who moves to the grand final, it was to be decided purely on the popular vote. This doesn’t usually do us any favours.

The last act to perform was Australia, and it was a thrill to see the whole crowd get very much into it singing along, and giving them an enormous cheer at the end, which was a really good sign. Then it was time for the voting to open and for the interval acts to start. They were the same as last night so I took this as my chance to get some water (I was parched as!), and then make my way to the back of the room where Perry was, hanging out right next to the Australian delegation’s Green Room area, to lend out support.. There were tons of aussies there this time including the bit of the Aussie Eurovision family we’d met before, which was great. The band appreciated us all being there too, stepping forward and saying hi to let us know they knew the fan base was there 🙂

Man, when it came to reading out the results it was kinda nerve-wracking – because you just never know if it’s gonna work out or not. To try and do a bit of a fake-out, there were always two camera crews in front of two different countries before each announcement, so you wouldn’t instantly know which one was going to be announced as the winner. Australia had the camera crew in front once but then another country was announced … and then again other countries would be announced, and we’re all getting in to a bit of a nail biter.

Next minute…Australia! There it is! It was like winning the Olympic bid or something – our little corner just lost it, so did the band, there was this explosions of Eurovision joy, and all the people around in the crowd being super gracious and giving us their congratulations as well, it was just the happiest, most joyous thing ever. The band were quite clearly over the moon, as were we, and really could there have been a better way to end the night. Talk about leaving on a high. And then getting roped in to be typical raucous Aussies for some British TV programme – all good fun.

Even after we’d grabbed a bit to eat and returned to to the hotel room, you could still hear people walking past singing the Australian Eurovision song. The key lyric of the song is – “Promise me it’s gonna be alright”. They did, and, it was. Much more than just alright.