When it comes to favourite days of the year, popular choices for most people are New Years Eve, Christmas, Australia Day, or their birthday. My favourite day of the year occurs in mid-July: The Festival of Fire.
The Festival of Fire (FoF) has been run since 2000 by my uncle on his farm in Geraldton with family, friends, colleagues, and neighbours invited to attend and create a display involving fire. This year there were about 15 different displays.
The FoF is run on a Saturday night, and I went up on the Wednesday with my brother, cousin, and another of our uncles (who is 3 years older than I am). The trip seemed doomed from the start, as we were the only represesentatives from our family going this year; everyone else was struck down with illness and other disasters. We camped out on the property and experienced the joy of setting up our camp at evening time in the rain. The weather worsened and we found our very large camp tarpaulin blown over twice during the night. Camp morale was a tad low and got worse when on the Friday night while fishing (I caught a Tailor and 3 crabs) my cousin fell ill. Saturday morning saw us disassembling the camp and the three of them going home. I stayed on, the only representative of our large family, other than my uncle who was running it and his immediate family. This was fine, as his immediate family included three of my favourite cousins.
Anyway, enough doom and gloom. That Saturday morning saw the weather finally clear into one of the finest days that the middle of winter has to offer. At almost spot on noon cars began to rock up, so that by evening we had in the vicinity of 50 -60 people.
At dusk, the displays began. Displays included
-a rocket show (rockets being like fireworks but set off using electrical switches at a distance);
-a large sheet over a frame that burnt away to reveal a long-burning image of a Ned Kelly helmet;
-a rope with crackers and flares wrapped around it (this one was a bit of a fizzle. The next morning, we found an aerial flare that had not gone off. When we then set it off, it careened off a rock, and then missed our head and a 4WD by a couple of feet)
-A 9-foot statue of a man made from hay bales
-A family of 4 life size statues sitting on chairs (this one was good, but needed accelerant - it took too long to get going)
-An effigy and a train rising up a spiral (I felt that this one sullied the event, as the effigy was of a political figure and the train which looked cool carried political sentiments. The people who made it should have left their political convictions at home (along with their poncho). There’s a time and a place for politics - and it’s NOT during a fun-natured event, and NOT around me);
-A series of 10-20(?) viking vessels with canvas coverings that contained candles (A great effect was achieved that made them look as if they were glowing ships sailing down the horizon)
- Three perfectly proportioned 2-3 foot statues dancing in a circle (I saw these earlier in the day and it was a shame that they had to be burned - I thought they looked evil - as if they came from a nightmare)
- A structure that once lit shone out the Southern Cross
- A log cabin! (This one won the first prize for the night (a sandalwood trophy with a silhouette of a man burned through it)
- A trefoil-like spiral made from hundreds of matches (with the matcheads all touching, so the fire ripped across it)
- A full-sized trebuchet!! (Or a big-ass catapault for those not in the know. It was something like 9 feet tall and was loaded with boulder-shaped objects which were on fire)
I had two displays:
- A scarecrow with a papier mache head that flailed it’s arms as it burned (You better believe I had fun making the papier mache - it has a calming effect as you regress to Grade 2 arts and craft. Oh, and Clag glue still tastes as great after 20 years)
-A bird sculpture with a four-foot wing span (My brother made the sculpture, but intended it to be a static piece - I wired it together so that when i pulled a wire, the wings would flap while it was on fire. After rubbing 2 litres of kerosene into it, it was spectacular - the fire rolled down the wings when they descended and the flames joined together above the body as the wings rose. It’ll be a while before I have access to any of the photos or video taken of it - but when I do I’ll post it on the blog)
For the past few years, my uncle has made a large statue of a man out of cast-iron mesh and covered with wood (this year wicker) for the finale. It is huge. I am 5′10′’ and barely passed it’s knees as you can see in the photo. It took around an hour to erect using 8 people, metal wires, a tractor, and a ute. It took much longer last year. As it burned, the iron mesh melted so it crumpled in upon itself.
Afterwards, we played Flaming Soccer with kerosene soaked toilet rolls. The games has two teams (most players wearing coloured balaclavas indicating their team) and is played on a circular field with raised hoops (like Quidditch goals) for goals. I didn’t get one of the balaclavas and never really worked out which side I was on, or who won, but I came away with the hair still on my arms unlike last year.
The pics at the start of the article are of your truly making a fiery drop-kick.
Afterwards, I stayed up til 3:30am, chatting with my cousins (who were also camping out), and then looking up at the most amazing stars I have ever seen - we were in the middle of nowhere and it was a perfectly clear night.
The next morning after taking down the tent and other gear, we had a rifle-target-shooting competition and clay-pigeon shooting with the shotgun.
Phew…what a long blog…I’m spent.
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