Waterlogged

Given the parched nature of most of the continent, and the long drought we’ve been suffering through, you would have thought that a free, outdoor festival in Melbourne at the moment was a safe bet, despite our notoriously fickle weather. How unfortunate, then, that the drought appeared to break at the start of the main weekend of the Festival of the 12^th FINA World Championships last Friday.

People were thin on the ground as I walked through Federation Square and Birrarung Marr in search of entertainment that evening, and those that were present were soon scared off by the deluge that bucketed down shortly after 6.30pm. It’s indicative of how scarce rain has become, though, that the majority of people being drenched were laughing and smiling as they alternatively ran for cover or walked delightedly through the downpour.

The inclement weather meant that crowds were also low on Saturday, so that by the time French pyrotechnic outfit Groupe F performed their underwhelming Flame Players late in the evening (imagine smaller versions of Crown Casino’s fire-belching towers moored on the river, synchronised with a pleasantly discordant electric cello soundtrack, and you’ll have the perfect mental picture of the event), less than 150 people were gathered to see the show.

Thankfully, by Sunday, sunshine and blue skies meant that Melbournians and visitors alike gathered en masse, attracted by the combined forces of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, and the free FINA program events, so much so that passage along the Yarra banks was seriously congested in places; a traffic-jam of prams and tourists.

Despite the disheartening weather in the early stages of the weekend, though, for those as aesthetically obsessed as myself, the festival offered many shining moments.

Circa, a circus trio, performed 31 Acts in 30 Minutes several times over the weekend: a delightfully frenzied series of events that left numerous small people and their adults in rapturous, wide-eyed wonder. Those like myself, for whom physical feats were a challenge even when young, were simultaneously awed by and jealous of the performers’ agility, flexibility and – to be blunt – raw physical appeal.

The always-entertaining Snuff Puppets (a company previously lambasted by arch-conservative Andrew Bolt and the Herald-Sun over a September 11 inspired performance which raised more than $4000 for Indonesian earthquake victims) were followed by mobs of nervous but delighted children everywhere they went during performances of Nyet-Nyet’s Picnic, featuring a magnificently menacing Bunyip and the generously-bosomed Nyet Nyet Women.

Queer singer-songwriter Lou Bennet, a Yorta Yorta-Dja Dja Wurrung woman originally from the Barmah region in Northern Victoria, dispelled misconceptions about indigenous music (“Too many people think it's all about didgeridoos and clapsticks, but it's much more than that,” Bennet told me last week) with her band The Sweet Cheeks, while elsewhere, the Hilltop Stage transported the crowd to New Caledonia, with a performance by Celenod.

Given that it was an arts festival programmed in conjunction with an international swimming competition, perhaps it was poetic justice that the Festival of the 12^th FINA World Championships was sometimes waterlogged. However you look at it, once the weather encouraged rather than dissuaded visitors, the festival was a roaring success – or was that just the bellowing of the Snuff Puppet’s Bunyip?