Liz Tregenza works for a philanthropic education foundation in Seymour, Victoria, and wouldn’t miss Mad March in Adelaide for quids. She’s a regular at our Grand Final Lunch, uncorking the bottles at a table shared with her sister Rosemary and brother-in-law Paul Nankivell.
D’Laide does the Festivals so well, the Adelaide Festival, the Fringe Festival, Writers’ Week, Womadelaide, that the Festival is considering extending to six weeks to accommodate the annually increasing crowds.
This year there were contingents from the Liverpool Plains in NSW, from Adelaide and Alice Springs. Three Knackers were present- me and sister Rosemary and husband Paul aka Nank. Pip Murray and Clarry Baker made up the Liverpoool Plains crew.
David Marr made a good show of positivity, leaning back in his chair introducing Nicholas Jose’s The Idealist “Isn’t this just so Adelaide? All my memories of Writers Week are of seeking out the shade of these trees to avoid the heat.”
It was hot, and occasionally surreal. The surreal started early for me, driving across the Wimmera through the Murra Warra wind farm turbines silhouetted against the extravagant red-gold sunset of the Beaufort fires, listening to Robert Le Page on ABC RN on the eve of directing Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and other Stories, the puppet opera which opened the festival. “It’s not about communication with the audience” he intoned in his French-Canadian accent, “It is about – communion with the audience. I have a young diva who says to me ‘Can I cry, at this point?’ and I say to her ‘Only if the audience is also crying with you.’”
Reminds one of the first two Collingwood games of this season.
The opera is a rich collage of Stravinsky’s music and children’s stories with animals as the main characters – a farmyard burlesque The Fox (Renard) 1916 and The Nightingale (Le Rossignol) 1914, told through finger puppetry and traditional Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and Japanese puppetry techniques with an extreme-tech, swimming-pool-sized river on stage, around and in which the orchestra played, as villains and heroines were declaiming, dancing and dying.
On Saturday we eschewed WW’s “Grandes Dames of Letters” for the annual family outing to the Ocean Film Festival at the Capri on Goodwood Road. Yeti the Nepalese restaurant near the Capri is under new ownership and it was the new family owners’ first night. The food is homecooked and delicious, the wine list curious. There is only sparkling on offer and it is not chilled. It’s 36 degrees. Eventually, in response to the request for feedback, we suggest that white wine might usually be chilled. “I know that,” says the young maître d’ miserably, “I told them so, they didn’t listen.” We commiserate, eat too many momos, and find our seats just in time to catch the last bars of Tony Fenelon OAM playing the Wurlitzer pipe organ as it sinks majestically through the floorboards before the curtain rises on two hours of films on surfing, scuba-ing, sailing and whale song. [Worth going to the Capri just to see the organ – Ed]
Sunday it’s back to Writers Week to worry about the threats to democracy with Susan Close and Noah Schulz Byard, and the threats to the Murray Darling River system with Richard Beasley, Margaret Cook (author of A River with a City problem – the history of the Brisbane Floods) and Kate McBride of the Darling Baaka.
Writers Week offers some 21 events a day over six days, based on books published in the last year. Sometimes it’s impossible to choose. It is also an excellent time to catch up with family and friends…
Rosemary and Pip Murray were a star turn in wrangling plastic chairs on Wednesday. We sat three rows from the front, guarding our seats and taking it in turns to buy the coffees. Polly Toynbee told a delicious story about being put off motherhood by the sight of the baby Boris Johnston. Pip Williams introduced us to the word ‘pastinaceous’, having the personality of a parsnip.
The Brisbane River featured again with Melissa Lucashenko talking about her latest novel, Edenglassie. The Turrbul and Jagera people’s country also featured in David Marr’s history Killing for Country as he ranged over the length of the then colony of New South Wales to detail, unflinchingly, his ancestors’ role in the massacres of Aboriginal people in the frontier wars. I think Marr has set the benchmark for truth-telling in personal histories with this book. Page one commences on Kamilaroi country, as his ancestors claim land along the Mooki River on the Liverpool Plains. Rosemary, Pip and I grew up in that country. So did Kate Grenville’s grandmother, Restless Dolly Maunder, another story close to home.
Don’t mention the war. Louise Adler AM, Director of Writers Week, was criticized for not presenting any Israeli authors to balance the Palestinian representation. She responded with a pert tweet that the focus of Writers Week is on books published in the preceding twelve months and there were no pro-Israel books published last year. This may or may not have been the case, but I did think that the discussion at Writers Week would have been enriched by some further geo-political and historical information.
It should be noted that at the time of Writers Week the number of Palestinian casualties in the Gaza war was reported as 28,000, a figure which understandably overrode every other consideration for many people.
By Thursday afternoon Writers Week was ending and the four-day heatwave was official. Paul and Clarry had done a road tour in my car and having an hour or two to kill retreated to the Kentish Hotel. We must have been dragging the chain as we met some others from the Plains and stuffed about a bit. However we gathered ourselves once I received an SMS from Paul: I’ve left your car keys with the barmaid at the Kentish. She’s a bit vague but you should be right. We’re heading to the British.
Off to the Kentish then. Guess what Paul and Clarry hadn’t moved but had lots of new best friends.
Womadelaide next.
The Greens called for Womadelaide to be abandoned for the sake of the flying fox colony in the Botanic gardens and for the Adelaide Cup to be called off for the sake of the horses.
Sprinklers on all round, according to Ian Scobie the Director of Womadelaide and Tony Koenig the Chief Veterinary Officer for Morphettville.
Of the opening Friday night concert of Womadelaide, Paul and Rosemary reported too much techno “like going to a gym workout” and “where’s the four bar blues with back beat”. Others concurred.
On Saturday afternoon people were shoulder to shoulder. The Chilean band Ilapu had everyone dancing, maybe 2,000 people in front of the western stage with the afternoon sun beating down.
10,000 people attended Womadelaide this year.
I went to buy the Ilapu CD but of course CD’s are now a thing of the past.
The fashion award for Womad went to the dad in the Hawaiian shirt wearing the leaf of the Monstera deliciosa plant as a hat, dancing with his three-year-old on his hip.
Fashions on the field on Adelaide Cup Day were harder to pick – the aforesaid tatts, the usual array of indefensible ‘fascinators’, a lot of beach wear.
Jamie Kah rode beautifully to win every one of her races including on Niki O’Shea & Will Clarken’s grey Boognish, except for two races when the other Irish struck. John Allen stole the win on Prairie Flower in the last 200 metres riding hands and heels past the post, and Richie Cully seized the Adelaide Cup with Excelleration, Harry Coffey up, from Jamie riding the favourite The Map.
Only in Adelaide can you walk out of the biggest race day of the year, cross the road to the free carpark next to the feed store, and be home in time for tea.
Here’s to next year.
[Apparently, Nank claims he edited this – but I don’t believe it. JTH]
Liz Tregenza is also the author of Boundary Lines, the story of Charlie McAdam and family. By coincidence, John Harms wrote a review essay about this book when it was first published in 1995.
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This is a terrific reminder of what’s good about the Adelaide Festival. I bought Boundary Lines in Alice Springs in 2002 and very much enjoyed it.
Thanks Liz, cracking read! Adelaide certainly is the place to be in March, a beautiful city with delightful weather, and a wonderful array of culture and artistic activities to participate in. I’ve attended Adelaide Writers’ Week for the past six or seven years and I thought this year’s event was the best one I’ve attended. Never a dull moment, always stimulating and enlightening with plenty of food for thought.
Excellent Liz – yes no doubt whatsoever -Adelaide does a cracking job.Loved the line re Nanks and your keys did not surprise at all
Great read. I WOMADelaided for four days, which is fairly usual for me. A different vibe this year, maybe due to the prelevance of “techno” you alluded to. There were still some gems if you did your homework. I welcomed the heat. Had been waiting all summer for it. Nank gets everywhere, doesn’t he!
Enjoyable synopsis of Mad March in Adelaide.
Love the link made between Stravinsky and Collingwood.
David Marr did not hold back. Important book.
Comment of the week, apart from any profundities from Nank, was from Anna Funder who said it was exciting to be in a city bedecked with banners bearing her initials.