Festivals
Opposite the outdoor basketball court, the Karungkarni Arts Centre is selling dot paintings by Gurindji woman Biddy Wavehill. Later at the riverside acoustic stage, Peter Garrett steps unexpectedly from the long grass to sing ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ with Paul Kelly – a song about the Wave Hill walk-offs in the 1960s lead by Gurindji man Vinc ...
There was a genuinely celebratory air to this year’s Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival, and why not, given that the Festival was marking its twenty-fifth birthday. When the city first hit upon jazz as the basis for a festival back in 1989 – a somewhat arbitrary decision, based on the fact that most other musical forms had already been snapped up – few could h ...
1 When you go to the Salamanca Festival in Hobart remember to take a suitcase of factory-made clothing and household items. The migration of weavers, potters, glassblowers, and carvers down to Tasmania means that the people down there have only craft-made things to wear and to eat with and will kill to get their hands on a factory-made, perfectly symmetrical, cup and saucer. You can do some good deals in polyester clothing — most Tasmanians arc suffering from goats’ wool and shaggy weave clothing. With wine say, ‘I hear you are making a few decent whites now.’ But don’t necessarily order them. Refer to the ‘mainland’ or to ‘the Big Island’, not to ‘Australia’. Remember to refer to the importance of Island Perspective in Australian writing. Don’t make jokes about i*c**t. Talk about the quality of the light in Hobart.
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