Australia

Its not all sandstone in our second oldest city!

I didn't end up venturing far from the centre of town. On the morning of our departure I headed down to the Salamanca Markets to get two more balls of wool for my fluffy scarf; in the end my total spending from three visits to the Tasmanian Woollen Co was $52, which I guess isn't too bad considering the amount of wool I ended up with. The real bargain was the rather large hank of wool that still smells of sheep for $15. I don't know what I'm going to make out of it. There wasn't much happening at the markets but I guess everyone's still hibernating. My casual meandering meant that I got back to the hotel a bit late for our call to the airport; I don't know there must be something in the clean fresh air that slows you down...

But a few hours later and a couple of coffees at lb just off Chapel Street and I was back in big-city mode, impatiently power-walking past the big-label shoppers.

Tags: Hobart, Photos, Salamanca, wool.

It was a bitch getting to the airport. I had to drop my car off at PT's place again but had to pick stuff up along the way which took longer than expected. Made it with forty minutes to spare, not before witnessing the aftermath of an accident where a truck's trailer had toppled over. At the very least I made the flight, unlike some ;) but when we got to Hobart I realised that I had left my flexy bowl (tupperware) at home, my breakfast bowl. Bugger. Also left my razors at home, too.

Anyway, Hobart really is quite lovely. The people here have been so nice, recognising that we're Bangarra and wishing us luck (break a leg, which really isn't the most appropriate thing to say to a dancer but the sentiment was appreciated). Its not even that cold here; Canberra was worse. Anyway, on the first night I wandered down to Salamanca Place and Battery Point via the piers. There are some very cute looking shops, not least Tasmanian Woollen Co, but I also want to check out Astrolabe and Klektik. And the fairy lights on the trees are delightful. Oh how quaint! After wandering around taking random photos I stopped by Fish Frenzy to find some of the Bangarra mob finishing up dinner.

We had rehearsals at St Michael's Collegiate, a school well-decked out for the performing arts, before heading off to Theatre Royal for spacing. Australia's oldest working theatre, like the rest of the place it was small but oh so cute! Its a bit of a squeeze onstage but at the very least we're not flying rings, light boxes and sheets of corrugated iron in and out, and we're not stringing the place up with elastics and dancing under thick mats and balancing tins on our heads whilst chucking bags of flour across the stage...

Technorati Tags: Dance, Bangarra, Spirit, Hobart, Travel, Tasmania

I was enjoying a very late breakfast at the Cairns Art Gallery when behind me I heard that familiar vocal inflection that is the calling card of you run-of-the-mill poofter. It was no surprise; Cairns is by far the gayest place we've visited on this tour. Though Darwin, Canberra and Townsville also have gay venues (though, in Darwin's case, gay friendly, the local poofter bar being overrun by straights out for a more alternative night out when I went out) the gays here seem more visible, if not quite as out as Oxford Street. Not that I'm necessarily interested in a place just because of the visibility of its queens, it's just an observation.

A totally unrelated observation is that Cairns seems to be quite a body-conscious kind of place. There's more of a display of flesh and half-nakedness than other places that we've visited. And people here tend to scrub up better than your average Northern Australian Joe.

Anyway, on this totally lazy Sunday off, I got up at lunchtime, caught the bus to town and wandered around for a bit. It was overcast, a contrast to the traditional view of this place as a sunny tropical tourist town, but pleasantly mild. The tide was out and the bay was stripped back to reveal the muddy bog that it is. The prevalence of palm trees and a mountainous backdrop reminds me of Maui, the large hotel chains of the Esplanade are more like O'ahu though not quite as Honolulu chaotic. It is completely unlike its dusty fraternal twin Townsville just down the road, which I think I prefer more as a place to visit; Cairns is just a bit too tourist-oriented for me to like very much. Still, it's good enough for a few piccies!

Technorati Tags: Queensland, Cairns, Gay, Photos

I was almost bitten to death by mozzies for this panorama!

This is the Fitzroy River, the second largest river in the country. It's not the prettiest of views but, at sunset, the shadows hide much of the details.

Tags: Rockhampton, Fitzroy River, Queensland, Photos, Panorama, River.

I've had a surprisingly good time here in Rockhampton. The last time the company came here, we arrived at night, performed the next day and caught a bus to Gladstone. While this visit is almost as brief, we arrived early enough on Thursday to prepare a late afternoon barbecue. The motel is so cute, we've practically taken all of the rooms and us mob on the ground floor have rooms that open out onto the lawn. We could keep our doors open and randomly wander in and out of each others' rooms. I was getting quite alot of traffic because I have broadband in my room, but I also have the smallest room, it's like an afterthought, as if the motel owners had some spare space and decided to put in a bed and a toilet... Not that I really need the space and, besides, we're only here for two nights.

I like it here, it feels like we're on camp or something. Or maybe at uni, like we're staying on campus or something. And with all the learning that was going on that first night...

The Fitzroy River is just across the road from us and, at sunset, I wandered down to take some pretty pictures. The water was like a mirror and the boats were all resting, leaving the glassy surface undisturbed. The mozzies were a bitch though, huge, like the ones that we were suffering in Gladstone.

At the theatre the manager came to the Green Room to welcome us to Rocky. Awww, how nice! After the show he thanked us for our performance. That's what we like, us dancers, feeling welcomed! Elders from the Fitzroy Basin Elders Committee also came to the show and were particularly taken by the first half, they had their own experiences of mission life. Today was also the end of the NAIDOC week celebrations and they capped it off with a 2000 strong march. Unfortunate for us, we were indoors for the whole thing!

Technorati Tags: Bangarra, Rockhampton, Camp, Barbecue, Tour, Clan

What do you mean you don’t have Sunday trading? It’s only five o’clock, all I want is milk, why aren’t the supermarkets open?

No matter how pretty Toowoomba is, there’s a very strange vibe about the place. Being stuck there that late Sunday afternoon, walking around the Grand Central for an hour trying to find a way to get into Coles because there was no reason that a city of this size should go into almost complete shut down just because it was God’s holy day. The cinemas were open but I didn’t want popcorn I just needed nibblys and breakfast supplies for the next morning.

Very pretty place indeed. But it gave me the creeps walking on the streets at night, copping the occasional random yelling from lone cars driving by.

Oh, and I need to mention the hotel that we were staying at, the Quality Burke and Wills that does NOT have a one-off charge for local calls. What a bitch, especially when you’re on the internet as much as I am.

Pretty theatre the Empire, though, and lovely home-made biscuits.

Tags: Toowoomba.

I’m in Griffith with my new 3G mobile (Motorola RAZR V3x) and with no access to 3G services. The Company Manager is busy searching for a USB dial-up modem but all she can find are ADSL modems; meanwhile you could waste a whole day going through your emails with the speed of internet access available here. I set up a roaming dial-up internet account to use on this tour but, apart from Darwin where I’ve had access to my brother’s broadband anyway, I haven’t been able to use it because TPG doesn’t provide a local access number for the places we’ve been to. Carting my brick of a laptop across the continent took its toll on my purposely bought laptop-enabled backpack, one of the straps broke on the way to Geraldton, so I bought a wheel-around laptop-enabled cabin bag that I couldn’t even take onboard the Rex flight to Griffith because it was too bulky. This place is supposed to be cosmopolitan and multi-cultural but I still can’t find a decent cup of coffee.

Alanis Morrisette would call it ironic. I would call it a bitch.

(P.S. couldn't be bothered dealing with crap internet cafe so I'm posting this from Sydney. I ended up sleeping in and missing the check out call for the airport because, after setting the alarm on my new phone I didn't realise that I had to ENABLE it. Confusing!)

Almost two years ago we were at the Griffith Regional Theatre teching through Spirit after completing what seemed like a tough major-cities season of Clan. Looking at the cramped wing space and the unforgiving sightlines, one of us jokingly pondered “what if we had to do Clan here?” For those who didn’t get to see it in 2004, the first half of Clan involved heaps of technical trickeries, props, quick changes and lots of quick exits-and-entrances, all for the purposes of reflecting on the man David Unaipon. Difficult for everyone involved.

I guess we asked for it.

And it’s more difficult this time ‘round, for the second half of Clan 2004 has been replaced by Rations, which is its own logistics nightmare for a travelling regional tour. Besides the dancers finding themselves at certain times in the show dancing with tin cans on their heads, throwing large flour bags across the stage, being wrapped up and rolling about in blankets, and flipping over and under a ‘fence', there’s also a large ten-metre ring that has to fly in and out throughout the dance. FR really likes her props.

What if? It was an important question back then. At the time I was having all sorts of anxieties with dance and, even just doing the relatively cruisy Spirit, going onstage came with a feeling of unease and dread. My nerves couldn’t cope with Clan again.

Two years and many frequent flyer points later we’ve finished our one show of Clan in Griffith and, well, everything went alright. It’s a shame that the only thing I exert in the first half is my voice box and that I’m only partly involved in the second half (thanks to the injury). But even if I’d been fit enough, the idea of doing this show doesn’t seem as crazy as it was back then. That Spirit regional tour was a seven-week marathon with its own demands and pressures but I think it allowed us to consolidate all that we gained as performers in Clan 2004. And having just completed the Gathering program with the Australian Ballet, it seems that just about everyone in the company has taken steps up. There seems to be more of a sense of ease and familiarity of this thing dance. The difficulty is there but there’s less anxiety about the whole thing.
I can’t wait for Canberra, where I get to flex my newly repaired calf muscle. My roles have changed since the injuries but there’s promise of getting more stage time.
And back to that original question, “what if?” Well the exits and entrances weren’t as slick as they have been, and there are some elements missing (such as the fantastic light boxes that fly in and out at the start of Motion) but all in all it’s there. And I guess it worked because there was quite a lot of applause at the end.

Tags: Bangarra, Dance, tour, Clan, Griffith, Spirit.