Memories from Byron.
August 15th, 2010
It’s been a while since I last blogged, but that’s because I have been really busy (okay, and a bit slack). I’ve got a bit to catch up on, but I’ll start with the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival from last weekend. And what a festival it was. In fact, I’d say it is my favourite Australian Writer’s Festival. The venue was fantastic, the crowds were large and appreciative, there were lots of interesting/funny/informative/controversial panels, some great dinners and parties and, best of all, the weather was simply marvelous. All the panels that I was in went extremely well with crowds over 500 for most of my sessions (which was somewhat daunting I have to say). All up over 40,000 tickets were sold for the 3-day event. Not bad for a small town of 9,000.
My panels were quite varied. First up was ‘Tall Travel Tales’ where my tales could hardly compete with Sam Cutler, the ex-road manager for the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. I may have been mugged a few times, but that’s not quite the same as being responsible for a Rolling Stone’s concert which had Hells Angels for bouncers that stab unruly patrons to death. Even more impressive is that Sam had partied the night before our session like it was 1967 and still managed to speak coherently. Or speak at all for that matter – his eyes didn’t look too good under his dark glasses.
Next up was ‘Family as Fodder’ with Tony Martin, Susan Maushart and Justin Sheedy. Tony is just funny no matter what he says, while Susan’s tales of six months without technology (while roping her three teenage children to do the same) were hysterical. I talked about my dad and his missing digits and about the time he greeted my rather large Aunty Diane, who was wearing a big red coat, with, ‘Don’t stand by the bus stop. Or sixteen people will jump on you. They’ll think you’re a red double-decker bus’.
My final session was a strange mix of panel. I described in the session that the organisers probably had a spare spot in the program so they threw all the writer’s names into a hat and pulled four names out. There was a muso, cook, voodoo priestess and a travel writer. It was fun, although it was a bit frightening when the six-foot Dutch voodoo priestess started dancing and chanting and putting pins in dolls (okay, she didn’t really do that).
I also caught quite a few other really good panels, but the most interesting was ‘Significant others: writing the life of an icon’ with Sam Everingham, Gretel Pinniger (aka Madam Lash), Murray Waldren and Reg Mombassa. And interesting it certainly was – there was almost a brawl on stage. Turns out that Gretel Pinniger hates her biographer, Sam Everingham (his book is titled ‘Gretel Pinniger’s scandalous life of sex, art and bondage’). I had dinner a couple of times with Sam and he is a lovely fellow, but Gretel kept going on about how much she hated him and how he ruined her life and how he ‘raped’ her (metaphorically speaking) and that she ‘never ever wants to see his face again’. At one point they were separated on stage by the very calm Murray Waldren and his icon subject, Reg Mombassa. Poor Sam (to his credit) didn’t retaliate against the barrage of accusations from Pinniger. He was sweating bullets but managed to respond gracefully, all things considered. And the Chair, Jill Eddington, did very well to keep the session going in some semblance of order.
My events were always popular.
Okay, this was my real crowd (although they were probably all there to see Sam Cutler)
Early morning at the festival site (and book sculpture thing)
Barbecue/chair/book sculpture thing.
The crowd builds…
… and builds.
Standing room only.
What a place for a writer’s festival.
And it’s goodbye to Byron for another year…
On August 16th, 2010 Epiphanie said:
On August 16th, 2010 Brian Thacker said:
On August 19th, 2010 Caroline Miller said:
On August 19th, 2010 Brian Thacker said:
On August 23rd, 2010 Epiphanie said: