(7) SUNDAY 19^TH MARCH - LAST DAYS OF TOWNS AND A BIG COMPASS

Walking up a steep mountain allows you to appreciate the time spent studying and reading in those soft, comfortable chairs found in libraries. 

The walk begins at a winery. Along the trail are information signs providing interesting details about no longer existent townships and the beginnings of different railways. Basically, information not far short of really fucking cool. According to the signs, those who ran the vineyards of the area used to have huge winery balls. These winery balls were often held in underground storage bunkers full of wine. There is said to be an underground bunker where these were held in the area surrounding the walk. 

And they can no longer find this bunker. 

Knowing this and being hopelessly fascinated by the prospect of finding an underground bunker filled with vintage wine I almost lose interest in seeing the end of the walk. But I push on only because there are more signs closer to the top of the mountain and I've been told there is some kind of bamboo creation John Head has made. From halfway up it looks like the type of structure found at a bush doof. There are colourful flags and intricate struts overlapping to raise the structure from the ground. It looks huge. 

At the top I find it is a compass. John Head has used the bamboo to form a huge compass. It is representing the numerous and far away places those who now inhabit Shepparton have came from. It also represents my feelings toward John: what the hell can't this guy do. 

Then I take a second to look at the view from the mountain, and take this satisfied selfie.  

(6) SATURDAY (EVENING) 18^TH MARCH - CONVERGE 

I arrive early at the very grounds of my horror volleyball dream (though I still believe it to be nightmare, I am beginning to find more evidence which suggests the plausibility of it actually having occurred) and am relieved to enter the grounds populated with those interested in a stable and actually relaxing environment. The Converge on the Goulburn Multicultural evening is set on Lake Victoria, and in the dying afternoon sun I am happy to say without fear of sentimentality that the immediate scenery is beautiful and somewhat tranquil.

5:00PM - Traditional Aboriginal Smoke Ceremony - I am solo and  chatting to an older fellow as a great convergence of people, lead by local elders, enter the festival grounds. 

5:14PM - The kids are stoked - Though I've always found indigenous dance athletically impressive and—more to the point—interesting on a narrative level, I have forever been slightly intimidated by the manoeuvres incorporated into the different dances. It is the conviction of the performance which does it for me. The tools for narrative are limited to the performer's bodies, and story is carried not by props and effects but by the tone of body language and facial expression. The most apt metaphor I can use to describe my feeling of intimidation is the indescribable difference of effect between two guitar players of unmatched mastery bending an identical note. It's the same, but one one player is just damn more convincing, and the more convincing player has that effect art can have where you kind of step back and say, damn. 

The kids obviously have not arrived at this interpretation of dance and art just yet. But they are front and centre, laughing and screaming at the playful antics of the younger dancers. The dancers begin feeding off this, and emus and kangaroos leave the dance area and come within inches of the captured faces. I look around. Everyone is smiling, but not as much as the kids. 

5:30PM - ZORBA - The Greek performers begin their singing and dancing. They appear to have both the oldest and youngest performers, and are no doubt the loudest.

6:10PM - DINNER - I am hungry, and get two kangaroo burgers from the Indigenous food stand. 

7:30PM - BOOGIE - All of a sudden there is a hundred people dancing to one of the most upbeat and funky bands I have ever heard. The lead singer is even coming down to the crowd and dancing with the little kids. They're Columbian, extremely charismatic and confident onstage, and I am certain everyone in the crowd has fallen in love with them.

8:45PM - PEOPLE STILL GOING - I am an enthusiastic dancer but I cannot dance without wine and cannot fathom how all of these people are still dancing and smiling and having fun as I'm tired and ready for bed. They've not even had any alcohol to fuel them. 

(5) SATURDAY 18^Th MARCH - BRIEF ARTIST EXPOSE

I find myself again achy and tired and in a Latrobe seminar room at the Shepparton campus. My writing classmates and I are talking to two artists involved in the festival. The first gentleman, John Head, is the former festival director and now treasured festival patron.  An interesting bit of Shepp-Fest trivia: the upside down harmonica trophy was made in honour of John, apparently a keen harp player.  

John is another one of these freaky achiever types. Unsatisfied as just a podiatrist by trade and the former director, he yearly lends his time and skills to the festival in both organisational and artistic capacities. He writes plays, raises funding, and has apparently this year constructed some unusual sculpture at the top of a mountain out of Shepparton. Some tidbits of hearsay I happened across at a local cafe leads me to understand that John has a rare medical condition where he is unable to sleep and which still somehow allows him to function without any signs of sleep deprivation. 

The other artist and gentleman, Gerard Van Dyck, is really no less impressive. I find myself writing fewer notes while Gerard is speaking and asking more questions, perhaps because Gerard is fresh from his performance in the festival. His show from all accounts had been great. I did not get to see Gerard's show due to my poor organisation skills, and had to settle for an online trailer. Knowing I've missed Gerard's show makes me want to be more like John and Gerard.

(4) SUNDAY 4TH MARCH - REFLECTIONS OF BRIEF STARDOM AND THE SPECTACLES OF VOLLEYBALL

  I open my eyes to the beige roof of my car for a second night, completely washed with mosquito bites. The night was too hot to sleep with the windows up, and the trade for airflow from protection against insect annihilation seemed to be worth it in the strain of the early hours. 

It was not. 

I am achy. Is Ross River Virus still a thing? I also have certain vivid images in my head, vast and uninterrupted, definitely Coleridge-esque. Almost as if Sammy had never been disturbed by that bloody person from Porlock. They may have all been a dream, but the memories go something like this: I'm playing onstage with my writing classmates and five or six unknown kids. We are on a large stage fronted by four musical virtuosos with over one hundred elderly people (perhaps not elderly, but at least 92.7% were 50+) rapt with our performance. I was at the rear of the stage in a raised and prominent position, and had been entrusted with a subtle yet crucial aspect of the performance: the atmospherics underlying the complex arrangements of the numerous sophisticated orchestral pieces we put on for the crowd. I don't recall exactly the instrument I was playing, but I can for some reason muster without difficulty the smell of rain and pictures of a killer on the road. 

And, remarkably, I remember volleyball. 

It was a great spectacle. I was lonely, surrounded by a large crowd. The Australian women's volleyball duo were playing the German equivalent. It was loud and booming. The vibe of the place was familiar but somehow different. I was in Shepparton, but where was the orchestral music and speeches? Where was the art? And the cows . . . nowhere to be seen. 1.

The organisers of this match had given the microphone to some half-tranquillised cretinous troglodyte. It was like he was trying his best to be the prime begetter of obnoxious and racist behaviour amongst the crowd, a crowd already drunk and rowdy and terrifying and not needing to be any more excited than it already was. In my vision I watch three Australian youths rip an Australian flag from the rear of the grandstand and begin waving it over the heads of a couple who're visibly supporting the German duo. The German supporters turn and ask the youths to put the flag back but get nothing even close to a positive response. 

I realise the youths are undoubtedly spurred on by the ruthless capitalisation of German stereotypes by the ape-like announcer: 

The Germans, so stone cold and cool out there right now. 

Right there's another ice cold point by the Germans.

One for the Deutschland right there. 

Ohh . . . Cool, calm and collected by the Germans on that rebound right there. Nice guys. 

Give it up for the Aussies!!! 

I begin to sober from my sleep and feel happy with the comfort of knowing I have never actually played onstage and embarrassed myself in front of one hundred people. I also feel glad to know such jingoistic rowdiness only exists in the nightmares of goodhearted Australian sport fans, and that such rude nationalistic behaviour is not a common trait of Australians when in contact with far away foreign cultures . . .

1. I cannot explain where this photograph of a cow in volleyball attire came from.   

(3) SATURDAY 3^rd MARCH -
BOVINE BILLET 

Fortuna would have me lose the meat raffle for good reason. Any meat no longer living would have fouled beside me as I slept in the Subaru overnight. The Outback as a wagon is not built for efficient airflow in Shepparton's searing night heat.  

Technically homeless for the weekend (no portable camping hygiene facilities = very unhygienic) I shower and sauna at the Aqua Moves aquatic facility. I then get breakfast at a local cafe and afterwards brush my teeth using their sink. My schedule for the first day of the festival is light: two classes in the morning, lunch, then a musical workshop with the same musical virtuosos I discover had played before the opening speeches at the pub courtyard last night. This I am worried about. I play guitar (completely self taught) and know enough about music to know how non-virtuosic I am at playing music. A musical workshop with musical freaks does not excite me at all. 

I worry I will be exposed. 

                                          

                                          ***

10:00am - Class at university campus - We bunker down in an empty Latrobe seminar room. Our lecturer, Sue, tells us we are waiting for Ros Abercrombe—the festival director—to come in for a chat. 

  

10:30am - Ros arrives - Ros comes on time, looking relaxed. She is the senior Red I had seen ask the boys from the pub to leave last night during the speeches.   

10:35am - Despair - I realise there are some people in life who do things and then there are some people in life who do a lot of things. It becomes evident that Ros does a fucking lot of things.  

11:50am - End of class - I leave the class feeling both inspired and very guilty. My poor work ethic makes me feel quietly embarrassed. Ros does an amount of work equivalent to that of about five people. 

12:01 - Hungry - I am looking forward to eating lunch by myself and introspectively reevaluating my life with the view to one day becoming a productive member of society like Ros.  

                                         ***

I arrive at St. Paul's Lutheran church in east Shepparton. The sun at midday means the hood of the Subaru is fit to substitute a chef's skillet in pure searing fry-power. I leave my towel and shorts from the morning swim out to dry on the bonnet and enter the church. The church is air-conditioned. It is my holy saviour from the deathly heat of a hellish day. 

I am here for the musical workshop with The Inventi Ensemble, a group of enthusiastic and freakish young people who make very nice sounds with their instruments. My classmates are already gathered in the church hall waiting to start. At first I cannot see the instruments. No saxophones or trumpets sit on the table, no Farfisa organs sit in the corner nor are there any kora's strung and ready for us dilettante Jalis to embarrass ourselves. There are instead a variety of materials lifted directly from a primary school's art cupboard. The scene reminds me of rainy crafternoons spent with the five other people in my year level at Nicholson Primary School, East Gippsland. 

Here the aim of the workshop becomes clear to me: we have come to this church to play instruments made from craft materials under the supervision of the musical freaks.    

We start, and the afternoon spirals into a frenzy of scissors and ribbons and otherworldly sounds reverberating across the hall. I elect to make a rainstick, borne from the desire to replicate the eerie atmospherics of a certain track by The Doors. With the help of the musical geniuses and classmates it comes together well. The sound of the rainstick's rice allows us to feel as if we are truly Riders on The Storm. 

Looking around I can seen others are constructing a variety of  harp-like instruments made of rubber bands and cardboard. There are also these bassoon-inspired horn abominations some kids are making, which sound to me like nothing other than the cries from a cow. This bovine touch is fitting given Shepparton's prominent love for cows, something made clear by the number of cow mannequins displayed around town.  I cannot decide amongst all the noise whether these bassoons actually replicate the misery from an abattoir bound cow (whose name I always imagine to be Daisy) or perhaps the rising ecstasy a farmer might hear from a heaving bull during an instance of natural bovine insemination. I find this thought to be somewhat interesting and relevant, but decide to keep it to myself.   

I then realise—in either a great coincidence or definite instance of divine intervention—that the collective making of stringed instruments in this particular hall of this particular sect of Christianity would mean we could be known as the Lutheran Luthiers with no fear of inaccuracy or appropriation. 

Here we are. The Lutheran Luthiers. 

We gather once again and test our instruments. The musical geniuses all declare that our crafty instruments sound great, and are well fitted for the public performance scheduled for 5:00pm. 

For the public performance scheduled.

For the public performance scheduled.

For.

The.

Public.

Performance.

Scheduled.

…

(2) FRIDAY 2nd March-
COURTYARD OPENING 

The sun is braising the pub's courtyard, toasting a very splendid Friday afternoon full of people who seem happy to be alive on a Friday. The launch of the Shepparton Festival—the largest and longest running regional cultural arts festival in Victoria—is due to take place in half an hour, and there are free drinks at the bar.

I order a gin and tonic (which I immediately feel guilty about, being  far more expensive than beer) and attempt to stand shoulder to shoulder with who I assume to be the Shepparton art crowd. On first survey they look to be very Melbourne, not country at all. I am sweaty from my drive up the Hume and nervous others will notice my perspiration and wide, surveying glances. I am a voracious stickybeak and eavesdropper. 

The first responsibilities of my role as roving journalist I flounder. My fellow students are asking questions, but I am too scared and neglect every opportunity to the red-shirted organisers (The Reds) questions. I favour finding a good spot for the opening instead.

At my new position I'm confronted by a group of blokes. They ask me if I'd like buy a raffle ticket for two dollars, but it's not exactly clear what I stand to win. They're in footy training gear and I assume the prize to be variety of cold meats on a meat tray, something I have no safe way of taking home in the off chance I get lucky. Home for the next two nights is the back of my station wagon. I cannot fit a fridge or even a small esky in my station wagon. 

I'm facing a dilemma. I don't want to win, but I don't intend to snub these locals. I have terrible luck, but I hate wasting food. I go with my bad luck, and after tipping my drink onto the concrete ruffling through my pockets for change they let eventually me have the thing for sixty cents less than normal price. The PA projects the testing, testing line and the group of boys wish me luck and to have a good one. I can't tell if they're genuine or not. 

We are treated to a traditional welcoming from a local Elder and I'm forced from my position by the bulging crowd, the latecomers. I meekly move aside. 

 A lady climbs the stage to begin her talk. I can't help but notice her unusual choice of clothing. It's her dress. It kind of looks like the cheesy blue shower curtain you'd find in a budget coastal hotel, in Merimbula or Lakes Entrance or somewhere grey nomads flock to. This is not a criticism. The fact is she looks great in it—in the shower curtain. I'm not sure if it is some kind of anti-fashion statement, but she looks great, probably better than everyone else in the courtyard. And she speaks well, so well that I actually forget what she's wearing just minutes into her address and I've actually missed her name from my trance. Maybe this is part of her onstage charisma? Her gimmick to hook the audience? Like or loathe her clothing choice, it is hard to look away. 

 I do eventually look away toward the end of her talk, but only to see if anyone might show signs of similar feelings toward our speaker. I see my classmates looking observant, taking constant notes and holding their phones up to capture audio recordings of the speech. I follow their lead and begin to write bland details of the festival (21 years old, the John Head award, cool upside down harmonica trophy) but trail off to some chatter to my rear right. A group of boys, potentially the ticket sellers, are talking obnoxiously. I predict the talk is coming from the ticket sellers because these dudes are talking about footy. I like footy, but they are loud and rival the PA for auditory dominance over the courtyard. The speaker persists. I spy The Reds scouting the culprits from the behind the stage. They are about to leave them be, before a very common derogatory term for a certain part of the female anatomy belts across the immediate area. Heads turn, but the gentlemen are still oblivious. It's a strange moment, a total culture overlap. This is what festivals are for: bringing us together! I reason. 

The boys are nicely asked to leave by a Red who I assume to be the senior Red, judging by the amount of Reds constantly seeking her approval. The Reds all seem very competent. They are the type of people who likely have five kids and two jobs and volunteer on weekends while completing their PhD. They are all smiling constantly, and seem to be make good use of the bar while running the place. 

We are soon directed to the rear of the courtyard to watch an artistic video piece. It's a compilation of HD footage taken from drone flyovers across the Goulburn valley region. A local engineering firm has provided footage for the artist to respond to musically, and I have to say it comes together well. I do however become distracted. The video reminds me of other drone videos I've seen. They're everywhere online. In one video a drone delivers a Bunnings snag to a very relaxed gentleman, reclined back in a bubbling spa. This video became an internet sensation and the story goes the spa gentleman was eventually charged thousands of dollars in aviation fines for flying in restricted airspace. Hopefully the makers of this video had permission. Another video I recall is similar to the artists' in composition style. It also is an interesting compilation of flyovers zooming above picturesque locations, but in this film adult performers are performing adulterously among the numerous beautiful locations. The drone careens above vineyards, white cliff faces, fields of corn etc. while various positions are performed by very fit and athletic young people. I do not know how I happened upon this video.

It appears people are rapt with the video. I am too, but I can't help looking for bodies on the banks of the Goulburn River in the engineer footage, hoping to find some kind of easter egg for attentive viewers. My strained eyes cannot however spot even a single naked toe. 

The video finishes and there is enthusiastic applause. 

It is almost dark. The temperature has to be still above 25 degrees. I am tired, and leave for the car to get some sleep for the next day.

(1)
PREFACE:
SET UP FOR PARADISE

Local government municipalities would have not known in permitting construction of the huge shaded truck weigh-bridge along the Hume Highway how welcoming a sight it would be to the hellaciously bored driver.

The dry spread of landscape is shaped into edible pieces by this thing—into two bites of palatable road. A driver darting corpse-straight along the Hume northwards from the city—likely bored by endless hot-as-Hades paddocks and flora preferred in paintings of settlers boiling billy cans on hand-sawn stumps—can draw titbits of inspiration like go on, go a little further from this reminder of civil life.

If one were to spend some time analysing the structure (as I have) they may also discover it stands for the hope of replenishing shade and the marvellous jewels of civilisation like it which await the fatigued driver at their destination. But who has time for that? Well, many. In fact all those who take the Hume have the space and time for such deliberation. But they do not. I have found I am alone with my experience. I am continually saddened to hear friends who've driven the Hume fail to understand my admiration for The Bridge, Saviour of The Hume (T.B.S.O.T.H)1.

For those who may or may not already know: the Hume Highway is repetitive and hot, and this weigh-bridge stands for nothing other than paradise just ahead. 

Long live T.B.S.O.T.H. 

1. After hours of empathetic reasoning, I have wrestled the assumption that people do not engage with The Bridge because unlike me their car radios and air conditioners very likely work. Therefore their minds have never been forced to squabble over inane structures for psychological survival on the world's hottest, toughest motorway (located between Melbourne and Shepparton). Lucky them.