they reckon the sun is always behind you when you look at a rainbow. but on this saturday morning on a property just out of beaufort, they were oh-so-very wrong.
the day started off cool, grey and [for me] with trepidation in my belly. but it started to get exciting when, from amongst the tarps and beanbags of kamp kraZy, we spied a rainbow completely encircling the sun. without google at my fingertips, i half-believed steven's assertion that they really had done a lot of preparation for this festival. but i was left with a lingering doubt...are billie jazz and his unpaid cohorts really that powerful?
i've since learned that what we saw was probably a coronae which, it has been firmly established, are formed due to diffraction by the minute particles of moisture and dust suspended in the atmosphere actually formed by the refraction of the sunlight in the ice crystals in some high altitude clouds ~ whatever the hell THAT means...
and yea, this kind of side-rambling haze was pretty much the order of the day ~ it took alice a good half an hour to brew our morning coffee. but, not long after the coronae excitement, the sun came out of hiding and the day continued happily in a muddle of marketeering, corffee in the shade, the world's most comfortable pants (do thai fishermen REALLY wear them though?), and journeying in to beaufort on an emergency cigarettes and beer mission.
by the time we got all this out the way, it was about six o'clock and alice was due at work on the front gate. and y'know, that's gotta be one of the things i love most about these kinda festivals, the numbers of people that work to pay for their entry. estimates from billie jazz, himself a volunteer coordinator for five years, have the numbers this year as high as 250! for a festival of about 5,000 people, i reckon this is a pretty nice figure.
and it's just great when you see the same crazed zippy* on rubbish duty who was hi-jinksing around the night before in frenzy of bliss & hysteria dressed up like a giant teddybear on stilts, a dancing robot or even a white witch...well, it just seems like the universe has finally worked itself out.
so, alice & birdeenumnum high-tailed it to the gate and i found myself wandering the site aimlessly, drinking beer and impatiently awaiting the opening ceremony, scheduled for 8.30pm. when the time finally rolled around, i made my way to the main stage along with most of the occupants of kamp kraZy and a few thousand other curious doofers jostling for a view.
the main stage was roped off so we couldn't get too close and create trouble, and the proceeding began without any introduction. a representative of the traditional owners of the land stood alone in the centre of the roped-off area. to his side, a large bowl of earth and a pile of burning green leaves emitting a cloud of smoke.
soon, a parade of dreaded, winged or otherwise dolled-up rainbowites starting coming through the roped-area, slowly, one at a time. each person crossed to the middle of the area where they first ran their fingers through the earth in the large bowl and then stood for a moment over the smoke of some burning leaves, fanning the fire, breathing in the smoke. as they left the area, the man conducting the ceremony reached out and touched them on each shoulder with a leafy branch.
after this, the indigenous man (or should i say, black fella? - i'm really not sure about correct terminology here) took to the stage for the welcome to country. this speech, now respectfully part of all public events in australia, is where the traditional indigenous owners of the region give their blessing for the event to take place on their land. he also spoke to us about respecting the land and the three indigenous tribes who are the traditional owners.
this man explained that he had begun with a spirit-cleansing ceremony to rid the area of bad spirits and then jokingly said that he could see there were still quite a few around! his speech was very well received by the crowd, the rainbow serpent representing not only this festival's namesake and philosophy but, more importantly, the rainbow serpent is the protector of the land and the source of all life according to the stories of the dreamtime (go here for more information).
this, was the good part of the opening ceremony.
the next part was an over-choreographed wank of a dance routine that i think made the participants feel pretty damn important and the rest of us pretty damn impatient. it started really slowly with about ten doof-dancing princesses and four white-flag-toting bare-chested men. luckily, it wasn't long before the music cranked up, the dance routine was over, the rope torn down and the masses excitedly grooving to the psytrance tunes of aaron smiles amongst the aforementioned giant teddy-bears on stilts, white witches, dancing robots and any number of imaginatively fascinating creations.
there is no way i can do the music, the lighting, the anything justice with words that are weeks old now and a distinct lack of experience of the trance/doof community. my personal experience was amazingly fantastically beersoakingly filled with dancing and random wanderings; the strangely delightful and surprising company of a multitude of both knowns and unknowns; the astonishing discovery of a dimly-lit gobblyn house adjacent to the main stage which was serving gobblyn's chai and mulled dragon's blood a beautiful sunrise which came, went and was watched from a wet grassy hill-top on an unavoidable pile of wildlife droppings; ear-plug and eye-mask wearing sleep managed only in four-hour stretches; baked-potatoes; a bit of janis on the big screen and last, but certainly not least, a non-existent shift driving a shuttle-bus...yup, that's right, my *job* evaporated!
i came home on monday in the darkness of a kombi with too many occupants; the driver a long-lost but (happily) now-found green-bearded pete, the others half-sleeping and me too excited and full of stories to tell. and what keeps coming back to me are the cries of one particularly impassioned rainbow dancer when the market stage was winding down, "noooooooo", he wailed, "not another twelve months!!"
others, methinks, will be needing the rest.
go here , here and here to see pictures.
*oh, and zippies, yea...t'was when i was marvelling at the combination of dreadlocks, fisherman's pants and hi-tech digital camera gear that alice informed me, these types are no longer considered "hippies" but are now known by the much more modern term, "zippies" ~ i don't know if this is a commonly used term or not but we spent the rest of the day making up other names, BMW driving doofers became "dippies", for example, whilst...oh, nevermind...
peeee essss - sorry this took so long, campers. hope it didn't detract from your enjoyment
xx
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