Stevan: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to the Bonzaar Podcast, a podcast show about the burner culture and its localized communities in the Asia Pacific region. My name is Stevan Lay or silent disco on the paddock. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and New Zealand, and we at the Bonzaar Podcast acknowledges the continuing connection to land, waters, and community, and we pay our respects to the elders past, present, and emerging.

So for this following episode, we thought we hit over to Melbourne Victoria and take a closer look at emerging arts and community space that was formed by a bunch of burners situated in Melbourne. Now, I do recall there were talks online in 2018 or 2019 Yeah. About co-creating a Victorian arts community, and I was invited to this private group page on Facebook and I, yeah, yeah.

I remembered saying something snarky like, is everyone real in this group? Because you know, Facebook at the [00:01:00] time was known to have plenty of bots and fake accounts, which it still does. I know. 3.1 billion monthly active news, eh? So it turns out, fortunately everyone in the group chat, everyone in the group was for realz and serious about building a community and arts culture from the ground up on a farming paddock.

Pretty much though Melbourne based. So let me quickly, I'll quickly say something about Melbourne. For those who haven't visited before being a Sydney sider, the best thing about Melbourne or the best thing to come outta Melbourne is the Hume Highway. No, but seriously, uh, Melbourne is a great city to visit, really.

It has a unique tram system, fourth largest in the world. Apparently Melbourne has a passionate sporting culture, hosting big events. It seems like the city shuts down on a Saturday for the A FL or footy. They have the Formula One Grand Prix, the Aussie Open Tennis, and a statewide public holiday for horse race called the Melbourne Cup.

It's very multicultural, has these narrow lanes and alleyways with murals and street graffiti, beautiful [00:02:00] botanic gardens, and it gets voted as the most livable city perennially, even though it's known for its unpredictable weather. So that's debatable and has a population of around 6 million people. So with that number of people, uh, more localized, Vic Burn.

Makes sense. And in 2025, though, still in its infancy, we have an emerging arts community space and a new burn event to add to the calendar. Now, before we get into the conversation with jc, who is the current president of Common Art Victoria, there's also T-Rex Terry, who is the vice chair or vice president, and we are also joined by Narelle and Bekah.

Uh, we do have. We do have to apologize upfront about the poor audio quality and sound due to technical and connection issues for this episode, particularly towards the end there. But there's still plenty of valuable information about co-creating a community arts and cultural space from the grassroots level.

And please do stick around at the end for the outro segment. Where We chinwag some more and where we debrief this episode and [00:03:00] share with you information on upcoming burn events, how to get involved in a bonzaar podcast, and a preview of the next episode. Okay, here's a chat with Cavi. Enjoy.

Stevan: A big bonzaar. Welcome to everybody. Uh, this episode will focus on Common Art Victoria. Uh, its background, its organization, and of course, Underland With me, I've jc I've got Narre and Terry, how you guys going?

Narelle: Doing well, frankly, Stevan. Yeah.

Terry: Very well. Thanks for having us.

Stevan: Yeah. I, um, appreciate you guys all getting together this, it's been, uh, uh, silly seasons after New Year's and, and Christmas.

So what I wanna talk about first is everyone's background. How did all get involved in the Burner community? Uh, and, and then also how did you get involved in forming Common Arts Victoria?

Terry: How did I get involved in the Burner community? So there's a bit of a story to this for me. I don't remember what year it was.

It's gotta probably be 2010 ish is my guess, or around, around that. I built this crazy contraption in [00:04:00] Melbourne in, uh, my spare room in, I was living in Fitzroy North at the time. Spare room backyard created this crazy contraption, it was called Hobo hifi. It was a shopping trolley sound system. This escalated as it does.

I've had speakers all the way around this thing. I ended up buying a shopping trolley, so it was actually legit. Had about 250 amp power seal lead acid battery on it. It was motorized 'cause it was too heavy to push. I used to take it down to Edinburgh Gardens in uh Fitzroy North, uh, often got up to a lot of mischief, got a bit of a reputation, also used to take it all around protests and street parties and all this stuff.

Had a fantastic couple years with it. Anyway, one time, I mean, I'm pretty sure it was Edinburgh Gardens, it may have been some other, other random happening. And this girl comes up to me and says, starts talking to me and goes, I think we, we talked before and everything. And she says to me, you have to, have you heard a burning man?

And I said, no. Um, and she goes, [00:05:00] well, you have to come to this thing. You, you need to meet these people. Uh, so she invited me along to, I had no idea what it was. I think maybe I'd had heard a burning man. I can't remember. It was a long time ago. Can't remember if I heard a burning man or not. But if I had, it was really on the, on the fringes.

Uh, so I, I just built cool shit. I had fun, uh, and whatever. And, uh, so she invited me to this thing and it ended up being a, uh, I met some of the guys that started burning seed. Um, I went to a meetup that they were having at the Footscray Footscray art space or maker space or something. There was an art community in Footscray down on the river.

I. And I met with some of the people there, and we sort of, uh, I was brought up to speed of what they're trying to do. They were trying to start up, uh, burning seed. I think it had a night. It was, they hadn't had the first event. It was pre Matong pre burning seed. They had a few gatherings. And, [00:06:00] uh, got to know these people.

I realized I had a great vision. I wanted to do something. I realized what was gonna be involved in coming to this. I think they'd found Matong, but they hadn't actually run an event there. So I helped with, um, we had a pre compression, uh, party. There's a fundraiser to try to help, uh, get burning seed off the ground.

Um, went to that and then I realized that for me to execute the vision that I had at the time about, uh, creating art on a paddock, it's like, Hey, what is this? How do I get involved? It's like, oh, this is gonna cost a lot more money than I planned. So I ended up, uh, disappearing off the scene, off the burner scene for a little while.

Um, change jobs and all that sort of stuff. And then, um, reappeared and started going to burning seed, uh, and snowballed from there. Uh, ended up doing that for many years. Uh, multiple art installations. Uh, effigies rolled on into, uh, becoming involved with this lovely crew at Common Arts Victoria and putting on Underland.

Stevan: Mm. So so you were spotted. So you were spotted and someone said that [00:07:00] you were great for, for this community. Yeah. And, and you connected through arts?

Terry: Yeah, and I connected through arts. Yeah. Yeah. And it was really ing having, having seen that, like having someone identify that creative streak in me, just going, Hey, this is a community that you need to come to.

Stevan: Yeah, that's right. Yes, yes. You, you, you are meant for it. You are meant for it. Yeah. And Narelle, uh, were you also spotted, did someone also like approach you and said, well, you, you are perfect, perfect fit for it, for this community and the people around it as well?

Narelle: Absolutely not. Which is great. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely not.

So I had a misspent youth. It was fantastic. I spent a lot of time in the late, uh, probably actually the early nineties, um, underground race scene in Sydney. Uh, had a ball, uh, grew up a little bit, had a little person that's now a very big person, and friends of mine had posted their photographs from Burning Man [00:08:00] on Facebook.

And I'm like, I've got a 18-year-old now. Um, I'm ready to get a bit crazy again. And really philosophical, ideal. Burning, you know, radical self-expression, uh, radical inclusion. And that was probably the one that I really picked up on the most. I had to look for it here in Australia. I found burning seed.

They were calling for volunteers. I don't consider myself to be any exceptionally artistic slash creative human being, but I really do enjoy community and I've volunteered in a whole lot of other organizations. Um, so I thought, fuck it, why not? I'll give this a go. And I'm so glad that I did. I volunteered with DPI for Burning Seed and, and that got me in, so

Stevan: around what year was this here?

Narelle: I'm still trucking along. Still probably. Uh, so this would've been 2015 still engaged. [00:09:00] And I think it's really great because you don't actually have to consider yourself to be a particularly artistic human being, to actually be involved and find a space where you can be productive and give some input in.

Stevan: Yeah, that's right. So how did you get started with, uh, common Arts Victoria Narelle? How'd you get involved?

Narelle: So, yeah, so that's a really, really good, um, question. I had heard rumblings, I had done some of my own personal research on the organizational structure, um, that didn't sit well within me, and I absolutely jumped at the opportunity.

A burning event that was community based from the ground up. It really spoke to me that common art is a registered not-for-profit, uh, I'm sorry, and, and incorporated association where the members have complete involvement with our [00:10:00] organization. And that was something that was really important to me to see.

Um, as I said, I had been involved in other community organizations that run along these lines. Um, and so there was a fire in me that wanted to see it completely operated by a volunteer organization with high levels of transparency. So I started off on the very first engagement phone calls and have been here ever since.

Stevan: Was this 20 19 20?

Narelle: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stevan: 2020 I think it was.

Narelle: Uh, so 20, I think it was mid 2019.

We started with when the organization was formed.

Stevan: Is that right, Terry?

Terry: Um, it was formed during COVID, uh, from memory. Um, so because there was about three years

Narelle: COVID Yeah.

Terry: Of, yeah. So yeah, it was kind about three years of, of discussion and nothing happening, um, due to, due to COVID and sort, kind of allowed us a bit of planning.

I think the, the first camp out, uh, at Tony's place in, um, wherever it was, [00:11:00] was. 2019, there was a break in the COVID lockdowns and we managed to get out there. And I think

Stevan: that was 20, it would've been 20, 20 something like April. Yeah. Back in April, 2020, maybe.

Terry: Not sure. I could have a look through the photos.

Narelle: The, the discussions about the organ, the discussions had started well before the first camp out, um, with just a, a generic call out to the community. Yeah.

Stevan: And can we talk quickly about the, the structure? Like, uh, what's your current roles now with Common Arts? Victoria, jc uh, are you back?

Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, I'm here.

Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I'll do my, my, I guess my introduction and how I end up being, uh, absorbed into the burner community here in Australia. Yeah. So for me, it happened back in 2018, um, and it came through a lovely, wonderful Tinder date as it happened. Um, and I met, yeah, I met an incredibly amazing and beautiful person, and she introduced me to burning seed.

Uh, I'd [00:12:00] sort of, I'd been involved in various festivals and events and parties and warehouse raves and stuff like that for the past 20 years. Um, sort of in, in Glasgow, Scotland, in the uk, and then a little bit up in, in Brisbane when I came to Australia. Um, but I'd never been to a burn. I knew about Burning Man.

Um, never really appealed to me, but the, you know, the format of a burn. Just once I found out about it, became something that I, I really enjoyed and really sort of sung out to me. Um, and I think it's, uh, the best format I've come across for, uh, an artistic expression, uh, type festival. So yeah, I went along to the 2018 burn seed.

I volunteered and helped out with the scratch crew, uh, which is the, the huge L-G-B-T-Q-I crew. And yeah, I went from there, met awesome people, had a blast, blew my mind. And then after that I went and worked at the Decom party at series, uh, on the bar. And I come from hospitality, so I ended up just rampage the bar, met a couple of people, guy Alan, John, [00:13:00] um, in particular and Justin McGhee.

And yeah. So from there they very quickly started tapping me and saying that I should get involved more. And yeah, 2019 rolled round I put my hand up to join DPI, uh, 'cause yeah, had a guy, Pauly, um, who was running DPI that year. I met him at the Decomm party and I joined on as his two IC and

Stevan: I think he dropped out.

Okay.

Jamie: Uh, sorry, am i back.

Stevan: Yep, you're back. Cool. Thanks.

Jamie: Yeah, apologies about that. My phone keeps going to standby. I'll keep an eye on it better. Um, so yeah, I went to 2019 as, uh, on the DPI crew to IC and was still on site for five weeks. And it was quite the experience and that yeah, it was, it was full on, but it was, it was amazing.

It really was one of my fondest uh, memories, civic memories and experiences that I've had. And yeah, so that was 2019. And then of course, yeah, COVID happened. Mm-hmm. Um, also, you know, born and Sea was sort of going through its, um, a lengthy progress of its own changes and stuff. And [00:14:00] I actually was on the Town Council for about six months as well, at the end of 2019 into 2020.

And yeah, that was a, an interesting experience. And yeah, early 2020 I got tapped by Justin McGhee. Um, he said to me about the, you know, desire and potential formation of the Vic Burn. Uh, which is now Underland, and if I wanted to join, uh, the board and be a founding member. And so I did and joined on. Um, and just to go back the, we got our certificate of our corporation, um, which started on the 7th of February, 2021.

Just to go back and clarify that.

Stevan: Hmm.

Jamie: Uh, we had the camp out at Tony Ma...'s place, uh, in September, I think it was, uh, 2020. Um, so we'd been discussing it as a sort of founded members for several months during 2020. And the lockdowns and the lockdowns actually, uh, in my opinion, helped because it, it gave us time to really focus on the organizational structure and, you know, how we wanted to structure it.

And, you know, eventually we got [00:15:00] to be an incorporation rather than a co-op, for example. So that was, that was that. And yeah, then I sort of naturally took on the role following on from, from DPI, uh, doing the Vic Burns version Yeah. Of DPI, um, which ended up, uh, I like called it SPAM, which stands for site planning and maintenance, just as a bit of a, you know, fun, hearty little look at the, uh, the, the, the site run and site management stuff.

And yeah. So that was, that, that was, that was how I got involved was originally through a tender date, which was pretty cool.

Stevan: Yeah. You, you, you mentioned the, the, uh, during the pandemic, the recalibration that we had and time off. I think that was very important. Um. Did you, did you guys have anything to burn?

Did you have an effigy or something at the, at the camp out? Did you burn anything?

Jamie: Yeah, totally. I reckon, uh, Terry's probably the best to talk about that.

Terry: Yeah. So, um, the camp out was, um, at Tony's, Tony's place. Um, and he was connected to us [00:16:00] via Glenn. Now, Glen, Glenn. Todd, he's been heavily involved in, um, a lot of the effigies and a lot of the art.

He kind of kicked off the whole art burn concept, which is, um, the pre the, so you got the Effigy temple and then the one that happened before that at burning Seed. Um, so he kicked that off. I think it was, it kind of seemed like him. He wanted to build more things, uh, and open up. So he, he's been heavily involved in that.

Uh, he connected us to Tony's place, uh, and while he was there, he also organized to build a, uh, a, a version of a, of a effigy. We had this, uh, plague doctor. Which was, um, probably about two meters high, is my guess. Um, and he, he had the, a big log that he found and he actually, uh, carved it, uh, carved it into a, a plague doctor, like, you know, period, era smallpox kind of thing.

Um, doctor's nose. Um, so that was pretty impressive to, to have him create that for our little camp out. I think we had like 30, 40 people. And yeah, so it was pretty cool to have [00:17:00] a, have a, a burn there as well, even at the, you know, the, the thing that wasn't a thing. It was just a, a planning, let's get together and, and camp.

Uh, we even had a burn then, which was great.

Stevan: Cool. Okay, Bekah, you're next. Uh, welcome to the podcast.

Bekah: Hi.

Stevan: What's your backstory and how did you get involved?

Bekah: Yeah, uh, so similarly I heard about Burning Man and Burning Man culture through a, um, dating experience. And, um, that was when I was living in Sydney. I moved to Melbourne in 2012 just for a change of scenery.

Um, spent a few years. Adjusting to the new city. I had some mental health issues when I got here too. But, um, while I was here I was, um, lurking online quite a bit and uh, you know, I had been doing my, some snooping around on Facebook and social media and such things to see what the local, um, burn culture was all about.

So I did a bit of lurking and then went to a few Melbourne parties and, you know, saw what the local scene was like. And then in 2017 [00:18:00] decided to take a bunch of time off from work and went to the states a couple of times. And when I was over there I went to a regional burn in Ohio. It was a tri-state burn there called Scorch Nuts, which no longer exists, but it's um,

Stevan: that's a funny name.

Bekah: Yeah. And so, and the effigy for that one was basically a squirrel with sitting on a pile of nuts, which was great.

Stevan: Mm-hmm.

Bekah: Um, and I had a really cool time. Met a lot of people, um, including a ranger who was, knew a few Australian burners. And he mentioned to me about modifyre, which was happening, you know, a few weeks after I got back from that trip.

So I got back from that trip, dragged my brother along to modifyre and met a few more people from the burning community in Australia. And then from there, met a. An old school burner from the states who'd been going to the big burn, you know, for pretty much since the beginning. And he invited me to come and camp with those guys, which I did.

And then met more people, came back to Australia. Um, and yeah, so then I started exploring the other burns. I went to Blazing Swan after [00:19:00] that. And by the time I got to burning seed, I'd already had a bit of a network of people from all over the world and from other parts of Australia. Um, so that was really cool to rock up and have that.

Um, and then from there I somehow found out about the Vic Burn thing that was happening, got invited along to the camp out, which was really fun. And, um, thought that the, well, I was interested in the community engagement side of things and, and just getting involved a little bit more. So yeah, reached out to Justin again.

Um, seems to be the linchpin for all of this. And, um, said I was keen.

Mm-hmm. And then from there it became, um, yeah, just got more and more involved with the engagement side of things and then, so yeah.

Stevan: And now you're on the board.

Bekah: That's right. Um, somehow a bit of an acceleration in the last couple of years.

Stevan: Congratulations.

Bekah: Um, yeah. Thank you.

Stevan: So we quickly talk about, uh, the passing members as, as well as the new members. [00:20:00] Just acknowledge some of those, these people.

Jamie: Yeah, definitely. Um, I mean, recently, uh, Narelle herself stepped down, um, in she, uh, and prior to that we had, uh, Justin McGhee as well, who did the first couple of years as the president.

But yeah, I think, you know, Narelle would be good to speak to as she's one of the, the old board members, if you will. Mm.

Narelle: Sorry, I, I, my it glitched out then was there a question?

Jamie: Yeah, we're just talking about the previous board members, um, like yourself, Shaye and Justin. Um, and yeah, just thought that it'd be good for you to talk about it as well.

Seems as you're one of the former board members.

Narelle: Absolutely. Um, I. Have a lot of anxiety and I chose to go on the board, which was a, a pretty big and bold move for me to do. And I'm so glad that I did, I joined the board because I strongly believed that you can't be what you can't see. And I just, I, I wanted to, to [00:21:00] be involved in a more constructive way than being in the background.

And that's really what encouraged me to step up to be on the board. It's been a really ama it has, I'm stepped back now. I did four years on the board and I'm, I'm really proud of that. I stepped back now and I'm, and I'm really grateful that be stepped in because it's really important to see diversity and inclusion happen in real time.

So yeah, that's my story with the board.

Jamie: Yeah. Thank you Narelle. And I, I just wanna, you know, talk to, to Shaye Justin, who were original founding board members as well as Narelle and yeah, I, I think, you know, a lot of credit should go to Justin for the amount of work that he's done in the background. You know, from the conversations that I had with him, um, over the, this past few years, um, I think burning sort of always been something that he'd wanted to set up and do and, you know, given what was going on with sort of burning seeds and then, you know, COVID.

Uh, it really just for [00:22:00] him seemed like the, the, the best time to, to move forward and implement and, and set up a Victorian burn. Um, so yeah, a lot of props and shout out to, to Justin for doing that. Um, the initial, the initial push for it. Um, and Shaye as, well, you know, she's a, she's a veteran, really well known within the community.

Um, highly experienced, um, across the board with things like, you know, health and safety theme camps involved, you know, CocoPocoLoco, which is a multinational theme camp. And again, that experience and wisdom that she brought was, was vital at times. Um, and yeah, again, props and, and hat off to, to both of them as well.

Stevan: And we also got some new members, uh, Toby as well,

Jamie: correct? Yeah, so Toby winter mute, um, he's done a, a double roll step up. Yes. Um, so he'd been involved with spam, um, since the, the sort of first burn slash second burn. Depend how you look at it. Uh, James Hawkins place, um, out past the Grampians. Um, yeah, he was, he was on the spam crew back then and he's [00:23:00] obviously still going strong.

And I, I stepped down from the site lead, uh, site coordinator actually this year, um, after this, this year's underland. And he stepped up and into that role moving forward, uh, which is excellent. And he's also stepped onto the board as well, which is, which is fantastic.

Stevan: Yes. Yes it has. And Rebekah, your involvement?

Bekah: Uh, yeah, so I did center camp lead last year. Um, just saw that. There was a need for some energy and focus on that one. I think we had a bit more resourcing, um, available, more funding. So that was great. And yeah, I got a really nice setup happening with that big stretch tan and we got gifted a whole bunch of rugs and um, bits of fabric and yeah, pretty much the whole thing was done very, very cheaply and it was really fun.

And yeah, I think the, um, stepping up onto the board is a natural progression through the engagement work that we've done and center camp. So yeah,

really happy to be here. [00:24:00] And I was encouraged, um, by Jamie and Narelle to step up. So it was really nice to have their mentorship and their, um, their support.

'cause it is a bit of a stretch, you know, you gotta, you stick your neck out, you become more visible in, in the scene and, you know, people start messaging you with all sorts of random suggestions and opinions and you know, some, and it's great to have the, that engagement, um, you know, people feeling comfortable to reach out is really, really important.

Um, but yeah, that, that, that's part, part of the role. You become that figurehead people come to you.

Stevan: Yeah. You guys are well organized with your Slack communication. Uh, let's talk about how, how folks can become a member and, and get access to. To Underland for this year.

Jamie: Terry, do you wanna take that one?

Terry: Um, I You just talk about like the membership process.

Is that what you're

Stevan: mm-hmm.

Terry: Yeah, so we decided, well, we've decided that, um, we wanted to try to avoid, um, one of the pitfalls of larger festivals in that anyone can [00:25:00] just grab a ticket last minute as they're flying in or, or whatever. Um, so we really wanted to get a process in place where we can encourage people to be actually part of the community.

And because it's not just about partying, it's not just about making art, it's also about community building, uh, and connection in a society that has trouble connecting with, with each other. 'cause we're so busy and everything that's happening, it is about building that connection. So we decided to go with a model for, for that reason as well as the other legal reasons and, um, you know, not-profit sort of stuff and, and security about, um, managing to keep an event running.

Uh, we decided to go with a membership model. Uh, we started out, initially we started out as a, uh, $20 membership fee as a way of raising the initial capital for us to be able to run, uh, just the, not the event, just to be able to run the organization. You know, there's insurance costs and, um, subscription fees and, and whatnot.

So we just needed some way of getting money in. Uh, we started with,

Stevan: I think 20 dollars is fair.

Terry: [00:26:00] Yeah. So we started with a, a $20 membership fee.

Stevan: Yeah.

Terry: Um, and what we ended up finding was that people were really keen to see the, the, uh, community. Grow and actually, uh, build, um, and the event, go ahead. And we actually end up, we've got, we've got a huge member database.

Um, and we've finding that people were actually becoming members and not actually planning on coming to the event. You know, maybe they lived overseas or different state, and they kind of, at a different stage in their life, they were never gonna come, but they really wanted to see it grow. So they became members and paid their membership fee, which was fantastic, and allowed us to actually get off the ground and grow.

However, with the, the multi-step process of becoming a member, paying your, your fee, then once that's done, then you get, uh, a invite to buy a ticket. It was just lots of steps. So we wanted to try to streamline that a little bit because there were lots of hoops to jump through and it could take up to two weeks to, you know, go from, Hey, I want to come become a member, do all this stuff and actually buy a ticket.[00:27:00]

So we have streamlined that. Um, we could probably still do some technical streamlining. Uh, however, I think it's nice. Uh, so when I say technical streamlining, I mean, um, more efficient ways to buy ticket, uh, and all that sort of stuff. But I think we're pretty happy with the membership model. Uh, it means that people have to buy in to the community, at least in a tokenistic level.

Um, they're not able to just go, Hey, let's just buy a ticket and go and not care. Um, they have to, there's that little, that little barrier to entry, which, um, uh, seems to mean that people. Have to jump through that first before they can buy a ticket. And it can't, it's working to build that community. So, I mean, the, the process now is we've got a, it's, we're gonna rebuild it to make it a bit better, but basically you fill in the form, uh, on our website, uh, the membership gets approved by the, uh, the board, and then you'll get an email out with, um, information about that.[00:28:00]

So long term, what we're looking at is, uh, because Common Arts Victoria was created in, in a sense that we're more than just, uh, one event. We want to create a membership base and a community that we can do one event, multiple events, art fundraisers, all this sort of stuff throughout the year. So if you're a membership, you're buying into that community, not just the event.

Stevan: Right? Yeah. So there'll be several, several engagement activities for you to also attend and, and get involved

Terry: eventually. Yes. At the moment, we, we still, uh, underland is, is our flagship event. Um, we are creating a vehicle. The common arts is, is the vehicle for us to do multiple things. And it, it's in the name right?

Common Common Arts Victoria. It's about connecting through arts and encouraging creation and creativity throughout the entire state, not just running an event on a paddock. That does some cool shit. Um, so it really is about that community building, um, and c community building and community building through [00:29:00] art.

Um mm-hmm. So it would be fantastic. It's, you know, the, the multi-year dream of, of having underland maybe a, a local event and using the fundraising, sorry, using the money from those things to then put on other skill building. Skill sharing, yes. Community connection things throughout the year.

Stevan: Yes. Yes. And is it still 20, 20 bucks?

Terry: Uh, free, free, free to be a, now we've, um, we've managed to, uh, to the event has not made us rich in any way, shape, or form. Uh, but it has managed to cover, its, its costs of, uh, the organization throughout the year. Uh, we still have to be very careful about not spending too much. Mm-hmm. Um, like all good not-for-profits.

Um, but it is now so that one of those barriers has been reduced. So it is a free, free membership.

Stevan: Mm. And I know the ticket release dates are not set, so, but how do, how do people. Like get informed or the tickets? What, what, when's it available you think?

Terry: [00:30:00] Um, tickets, uh, uh, we're not sure when tickets will be opening.

Uh, we're in discussions. Um, the latest it'll be opening is in July. We have some issues with having it in the financial year. Um, so we're trying to get around that, um, and bring the ticket sales earlier. There's also some technical issues with, um, having tickets on sale. And it's a bit of a manual process for our ticketing people.

Um, they have to man the emails and manage complaints of people, not the emails are gonna spam or whatever. So if we can iron those bugs out, I would love to have it in kind of May. Um, but due to some technical issues, may not be to July. Mm-hmm. Um, but the best way is to, um, uh, jump on Facebook, uh, go to Common Arts.

Uh, join that. We've got a brand new spanking, uh, um, Instagram account, which, um, came up last week. I'll pass over to Beck in a sec. Um, and [00:31:00] sign up, become a member. We, we have a pretty active, um, marketing email list, so you'll get, um, updated with what's going on in the community through that. Yeah, that's, uh, I, and that's probably a better one to, to answer the question about the community engagement.

'cause there's a lot of stuff happening there.

Bekah: Yeah. Last year we, we ran a, um, a community market, uh, on a Sunday at a local, um, community hall. And I. It was a really big success. We kind of were a bit surprised by actually, we didn't put that much, um, effort into the marketing of it. Um, and truthfully, the organization of it was pretty straightforward.

We didn't spend a lot of time curating it, but it all came together. We had several store holders who came in with their market wears, so festival clothing, arts, bits of camping equipment, just random bits of theme camp stuff. Um, and we had DJs playing the center camp crew had a sausage scissor, which raised some, raised some money, and it was just a really nice vibe.

People brought their kids along and [00:32:00] yeah, it was just a bit of a surprise and I think we're quite keen to do something similar this year and, you know, invest a little bit more time and effort into making it even better. But I think it was a really good foundation. And, um, yeah, last year we also did some, um, we went to a couple of fundraisers and just had like a presence for Common Arts Victoria, um, just as a, hello, we are here, come and talk to us if you're interested.

And that had, you know, some pros and some cons. It was, it was quite labor intensive to set it all up, stay for the event, and then pack it all down when you're tired and, you know, thirsty. Um, and we found that most of the people at those fundraisers were already well aware of, uh, common Arts Victoria, but there were a few people there that were like, what the hell is Underland?

So it was worthwhile. We learned a lot from it, that's for sure.

Stevan: So the, the name Underland, I'm curious, how did, how did it become about and. Were there other choices of naming this event? It was like underpants or something like that. That's what.

Narelle: I, I would speak to this, my, [00:33:00] my world, not quite Stevan. I wanted Vic Burn.

Vic Burn for Life. That's not where we ended up. Definitely it was through consultation. I'll let somebody else speak now, but Vic Burn for Life. All I have got say

Stevan: it's a great name. I love the name Underland though. What's the story behind this?

Terry: Um, uh, we, we had a wall. Um, we had a wall at the camp out where we had to plague doctor.

So what was that? 2020? 20. Um, Marty, uh, Marty, our secretary, he's a gun. Amazing man. Can organize anything, which is absolutely astounding. 'cause generally this community is sparkly cats. Um. So he, he had this thing planned. He had, we had workshops, we had, uh, interaction activities. We had brainstorming sessions to really figure out what, what the community, what we wanted as a community, uh, what the vision was for both.

The organization, which was unnamed at the time, and the event, which was unnamed at the [00:34:00] time. Uh, and then one as part of that, we had like spitballing names out there, and I think we had to write down on a bit of paper and whatever. And anyway, um, we hadn't decided on the name yet at that point. This probably on the Saturday.

Uh, and then the Saturday night when we finished, wrapped up the formalities for the day and cracked a few drinks, sat around a fire and danced away. He had this board, um, in the paddock, like with the camping area. I mean, there was only like 30, 40 people, this, this thing. And there were all these little name tags, uh, these bits of paper and people's had names and we had a tally thing.

You could like mark down what your favorite thing was and this process. Um, so it wasn't mine, it wasn't my first one. It definitely has grown, uh, grown on me, the name. Um, I'm quite a fan now. Uh, didn't like it at the start, but, um, yeah, I think it's the right name for the event, but I was quite, quite impressed at the organization that Buddy had, uh, had teed up and, and the way that it, the way it made us really wrestle with, with words and what they meant.[00:35:00]

Um, yeah. Fun.

Stevan: Yeah. Did you, did you have any options in mind?

Terry: Uh oh, I, yeah, I had one, but in hindsight, yeah, I, I kind of lacked the idea of oxidize, um, with my mind because, uh. It's a, it's a process that creates the, um, uh, it's, it's rust basically, but it, it creates the red Outback of Australia. Um, so I like the idea of like, oxidize as a, as, as a name.

But, um, I think, uh, Underland one, uh, and I think it's a fantastic name. Um, I don't know who proposed it, but it was, uh, hands down

Stevan: was it, wasn't you JC Um, it's this voting process sounds like, uh, it's more complicated than squid games. Did you, did you have any, any, any other names in mind? Jc

Jamie: Uh, no, it's not really my Forte.

I just gonna let other people do the thing when it came to that.

Stevan: Yeah.

Terry: I suspect thank him. I suspect I know who it was, but I don't, but I don't actually know if it was him.

Jamie: I think it was Brandon.

Terry: Oh, okay.

Jamie: I think, I think it was Brandon, if I remember rightly well, could I from,

Stevan: kudos to him Yeah. From Mel Burners.

Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:36:00] He's, he's, uh, the president on the board, if I remember correctly. Still for Mel Burners at the moment. But I, I think, I think it was, it was his initial idea. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was, it was Brandon.

Stevan: Right. Can we talk a little bit, bit of history of, for the first, uh, two years, so Underland is in its third iteration and it's fourth iteration now, 20, 25.

Yeah.

Terry: Uh, correct. Yeah. Coming in its fourth. It depends what Yeah, the, yeah. This will be the fourth. Fourth, yeah. Event.

Stevan: Yeah. So for the first few years, um, what was the effigy and what, what were some of the challenges that you guys had running the event?

Jamie: Um, yeah. Well the, there was the plague doctor, but that was the campout, it was really unofficial.

Mm-hmm. Was the sort of actual burn itself. And then, yeah, the, the first sort proper one that we did that had about 230 people, uh, James Hawkins place, uh, that was the effiMU FM U, um, which, yeah, it was an f and it burn quite right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was rad. And the, I mean, to be fair, I think probably, again, dare say Terry probably the best to talk about this 'cause he was involved with the, the actual build [00:37:00] crew and stuff like that.

Um, and his partner to me was heavily involved in the design. Um, so do you reckon, Terry, you'd, you'd take this one again?

Terry: Yeah. Yeah. I can take it. I wasn't so much involved in the build crew, but, um, my partner, I was kind of on the peripheries of it. I think this was before I was, uh, on the board. I was bringing my own art installation.

Um, Glenn and Axel were overseeing the, the build. I believe we only had the one. The one burn that year, we didn't have two. Uh, so there was no temple, correct? Um, yeah. It was a case that, no, they had a build crew and they didn't really have anyone to design a concept. So, um, I was, uh, talking to my partner who doubles in, in art stuff and creativity, and got talking about this problem and she was keen to, to put up a, I can't remember if she got, uh, tapped on the shoulder and said, Hey.

Be involved or not. And yeah, so I sort of gave her some ideas about way different ways to design a concept. And she ended up [00:38:00] modeling it. Um, actually physically sticks and some wire and some bits and, uh, pieces and, and twigs and that on our kitchen table, and used that as the concept. So when she was meeting with the crew to, uh, they were working as a, as a collective to kind of come up with the idea and develop the processes of, of building and, and, and designing.

Um, so that were kind of spit walling ideas and come up with the, the, um, EMU idea, um, which they kind of ran with. They really liked the little model. And there's a, a photo float floating around of the giant, you know, three meter high, uh, emu with the little model, little scale model that she's created on the ground in front of it.

So I use that as a, as a design thing again. Uh, yeah, some of the challenges of that. Um, I mean, new location, new landholder.

Stevan: Was that similar terrain? Was it,

Terry: um, as the current underland probably more, probably more foresty. There were, we kind of more in a treat area. We were on the side of the forest, uh, sorry, side of the paddock in the treat area, but it was similarish was, you [00:39:00] know, a couple hundred Ks from the current location.

So not too far. It would've been an hour and a half is my guess. Different location. But yeah, again, you know, shoestring budget. Uh, where do we get materials, um, how do we fund this thing? We've got no money. Uh, I think that year we didn't have to worry about permits 'cause it was a kind of, kind of a proof of concept that we were working with.

We kept it pretty, pretty low, pretty small private party, uh, sorry, private event I should call it. Um, ticket sales were small cost, were small, so fortunately the crew, they managed to contact the, the landowner. Um, and, uh, found some, we, we got old building materials that for, you know, a hundred year old houses that had been knocked down and the building materials lying around because also, 'cause it was close to a, um, a, a treat area, we could go on site early and just collect a lot of wood.

So, um, I guess the first one it was kind of having that mix of like, we have no [00:40:00] money. How do we do it super cheap? And then creating something that people really enjoy and having its own artistic vision within that. And I think it worked really well.

Stevan: Yeah. Um, having that kind of constraints give you a bit more creativity, I think.

Yeah. With the budget, with the money. Yeah. And, and the, and 2023, the effigy was the moth. Yeah. The rain moth. Yes. And the Nautilus, uh, temple. That was beautiful. Yes. Both, both of those were beautiful.

Terry: Yeah. So the rain moth was the design of, I've forgotten her name. Do you remember her name? Jamie?

Jamie: Uh, Rosie? No,

Terry: I think it might have been Rosie.

Yeah. Or was she the one collecting the flowers?

Jamie: Uh, yeah. Rose. Rose. Rose Feely.

Terry: Yeah. So we had the concept, someone came up with the concept for the moth. Uh, so the rain moth is an indigenous, well, not an indigenous moth. It's a Yeah, it's it's an indigenous moth to Australia.

Stevan: It's native. Yeah. Yeah.

Terry: It's native, is the word I'm looking for.

Uh, and we weren't sure if we were allowed to use it as a, as a symbol because we weren't sure if there was any, um, indigenous, uh, relationship to the moth. Uh, I think we tried, we've tried to get the [00:41:00] permission for the emu. We tried to get permission for the emu as well, and we were given the, sorry. Go quickly to go back to the emu.

I totally forgot a massive part of the story there. So the land that, uh, James' land that was on was not far from the Grampians. And there's a dream time story, uh, about, uh, the emu and the crow. I, I won't retell it 'cause I'm sure I'm wrong. Wrong. Uh, I'll get it wrong. Noelle might know more. I know it's not her land, but she'll probably know more about the stories than I do.

Uh, but there's a whole Dreamtime story about how the land was formed, and it was this battle between the crow and the imu, um, and this, this big story. And, and so having that story there was kind of a bit of an inspiration. My partner was also working as a teacher at the time and, and was teaching some of this, sort of, these stories.

And we created the EMU. And fortunately when we had our, uh, the elder came to do the, um, welcome the country. He, he was happy enough to, to allow us to use the story. [00:42:00] He told the story of the emu, um, which was fantastic. So, again, following on for the following year, when we did the rain moth, we were trying to reach out to the local communities to see if we could have permission to use the moth.

Turns out it wasn't a problem 'cause the moth, the rain moth is just a, it's a source of food. Um, so it was nothing special, uh, to the moth. So we created this amazing structure built largely from an old, uh, shearing shed that, uh, got demolished. Um, again. Super cheap, no money. Uh, much prefer to use recycled materials where possible.

The build crew, um, was on site early. They went down, uh, and helped demolish this, uh, this shed grabbed a whole bunch of materials. One of the crews, she worked at a florist, so she's been collecting, um, banks of leaves and flowers for months beforehand. Had these couple of trailer loads full of, um, flowers and leaves and, and packed the vest.

The, the chest of this rain moth just looked [00:43:00] absolutely stunning. Yeah.

And the, I could talk, I could talk

for hours about this stuff. I'm aware there's other people on this.

Stevan: No, it's fascinating. With the story.

Terry: Yeah.

Stevan: And, and the, and the temple was, uh, the nautilus temple. Was that done by. Tiffany?

Terry: Yes. Yes. So that was Tiff.

That was, uh, a tiff led design. So Tiff is Glenn's partner, obviously. Um, uh, and yeah, so one of the constraints again, so one of the things about creativity is I really like putting constraints on things because you put constraints on things and it, it's where creativity really comes out. It's like, right, I can't do this, this, this, and this.

What can I do within these boundaries? So one of the boundaries of the 22 burn was we weren't allowed to have a structure bigger than a three by three by three cube. So they were trying to work out how do we make a temple that is, um, immersive that you can go into and feels big? So they came up with the idea.

Tiff came up with the idea of the [00:44:00] Nautilus. Because it's got that spiral shape on the inside. Mm. And so they created a, again, recycled reclaimed materials. Um, managed to have this thing within this three by three by three cube. So it was within our permitted structure size. Uh, but you walked in and you went through this spiral around and around and around and around and around and around until you came to the middle.

And it was, you know, people had put their notes up in there, things, I can't remember the, what the little thing in the middle was, but it really captured that sense of space and discovery and it looked phenomenal as it burnt. Um, yeah, it was just a lovely within the, the, within the restrictions that was placed on us by our event permit, I think they did an amazing job.

Stevan: Yeah. I, I, I love s spirals, especially when it's osculating, like a DNA, but the best angle I saw was from the top. So you can see the formal Oh yes. Design and the whole structure is because open top,

that's aro. Um, yeah.

Terry: And then there was a, again, Glenn had carved another Nautilus, which was probably, you know, [00:45:00] uh, two feet long and foot high or whatever, excuse me, if for using feet.

Uh, and that was in the middle. So you can see that from the distance in that, um, top down shot you're talking about. Um, you can see the Nautilus sitting on top of the Nautilus. Yeah.

Stevan: Yeah. Cool. Um, and I've actually designed a quiz if you guys wanna play a little, a little multiple choice quiz. You've got some, several options.

So how Aussie or Bogan are you? And let's, let's see how you fair Yeah. Who wants to play?

Narelle: I'm the bogan one. Oh, fucking one.

So keep me with it, Steve.

Bekah: How, how are we, um, question providing our responses in the chat, or are we just gonna pipe up

Stevan: so well, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read out the questions. The first question, let's, let's see how Bogan or how Aussie are you?

And you know, we we're all Aussies here, right? If someone who couldn't run a chook raffle, so this question one, if someone who couldn't run a chook raffle lacks what? Okay, so the, the multiple choice. A, is it enthusiasm? B, organiza organizational skills, C, hard work [00:46:00] or D talent?

Narelle: Ah, I would say organizational skills, but I think you've left e off the end, which is a bunch of chooks.

Jamie: I'm gonna say A. Yeah.

Stevan: Enthusiasm?

Terry: I'm gonna say talent.

Stevan: That's d.

Anyone go for hard work? If, if, if you couldn't run a chook raffle, what are you lacking? Uh,

Bekah: I think that's organizational.

Stevan: It's actually B, organizational skills. Ah, so you're right Bekah.

Bekah: Yep. Yep. That was an obvious one. A chook raffle would be a massive headache,

Stevan: right? Yes.

Bekah: Maybe like wr wrangling cats.

Stevan: It's pretty obvious. Okay, so what, so what is question two? Is amber fluid? Is it a oil? Is it b beer? Is it c alcohol or is it D Urine? Amber fluid.

Bekah: It's a, that's, there's multiple answers to that. Can we have two?

Stevan: Well, it could be all, I guess, but No, it's only one. You're not Aussie enough

Terry: Beer.

Beer, right,

Narelle: but is it VB?

Stevan: It's beer.

Jamie: I know. Like it's beer, but then it's also piss, but then piss, also [00:47:00] alcohol, so yeah,

Terry: it's all the same.

Stevan: Well, alcohol can be used as, as oil as an engine. Yeah. Um,

Bekah: golden Amber, was that the name of it? Amber. Amber. Fluid Gold. Amber, yes. I've heard of, I've heard of it as Golden Amber before.

Stevan: Yeah.

Terry: Liquid. Amber,

Stevan: question three. Question three. If I'm giving the Aussie salute, what am I doing? Aussie salute. A, am I swatting away flies. Am I saluting my mates? Am I saluting a police officer or am I pulling a beer?

Bekah: It's the flies.

Terry: I always gotta go give it the bird. But, uh, I'll go with the flies.

Stevan: Saluting a police officer. Yeah. No, it's actually, yeah, it's swatting flies. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what it's known for in Australia. Too many flies. If someone offers you a cuppa and you say Yes, what do you think you'll get? An Aussie cake, a punch in the nose. An Aussie hug. Or a cup of tea? A cuppa.

Jamie: Cup of tea.

Terry: Cup of tea.

Stevan: Well, that's obvious. Yeah. That's, that's an obvious one cup of tea. If someone calls you galah, what are they saying about you? Do you wanna guess it? [00:48:00] Straight up? Are you a champion? You're a fucking, are you an idiot? Are you're an idiot person? Are you criminal?

Terry: Are you an idiot? You galah. It's actually a, it's kind of like, it's not kind of an idiot, is it?

Bekah: It's both. I think it's that rude, loud idiot.

Stevan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right.

It's rude.

Terry: Yeah. You're being obnoxious.

Stevan: Yeah.

Terry: Being an Idiot.

Stevan: You being galah Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Number six. What does a a bit dusty mean? Is it hungover, thirsty, tired, or angry? I feel a bit dusty.

Jamie: Ah, definitely Hung over.

Stevan: Correct. What does chokers mean?

Chas, sorry, sorry. Pronounce it wrong.

Terry: Chockies?

Stevan: What does chockers mean? Is Chas ah chockers. Full to the Brim? Yeah. chockers. Full to brim. Cookies, chocolate bars or necklaces.

Jamie: Full to the brim

Stevan: Full to the brim. You're pretty Aussie there.

Bekah: There's also the word chook. Chookers is a similar sounding word and that means good luck when you're going on stage to [00:49:00] perform.

Yeah. Instead of saying break a leg here in Australia they say chookers.

Stevan: Right. Okay, cool. Never heard of that. Not aware of that. Yeah. What does it mean to be flat out like a lizard? Drinking, blackout drunk. Sleeping Exhausted or busy.

Bekah: It's the morning.

Stevan: Flat out like a lizard. Drinking.

Bekah: Where did you get these from? Steven?

Jamie: Yeah. Busy.

Stevan: Yeah, you're right. What is, uh, what time of the day is it? Is it when it's a sparrows fart? Is it very early in the morning? Very late at night, midday or afternoon? What do you guys reckon? Sparrow's fart.

Terry: Morning.

Jamie: Morning.

Terry: Um, how bogan are you dot com.

Stevan: And then, and then we'll take a break. Okay. Um, because I wanna get to this year's underland or last year's Underland. Talk about that. All right. What does hard Yaka refer to? You guys can guess, get this out. This is easy.

Terry: So when someone's been lazy,

Stevan: hard, hard day, hard work. Awful food or hard helmet.

Jamie: Hard work.

Stevan: Hard Yaka.

Bekah: Yeah. [00:50:00] Hard work. Yeah. It's also the, the brand of a, of an old, um, workwear, Australian Workwear brand. Hard yakka shorts and hard yakka work shirt.

Stevan: Is that, was, is that made by King G? Was that King G brand?

Bekah: Possibly. Possibly. Very possibly. Yeah.

Terry: King G might have been the subbies, but they may have done, they may have done hard jacker as well.

Stevan: Yeah.

Bekah: Yeah. But super iconic. Haven't heard the word King G for a long time. They should make a comeback along with Dunlop vollies.

Stevan: You probably get them at best, best and less though.

Bekah: Bring 'em back. Bring 'em back.

Stevan: Okay. Let's take a short break. We'll be right back after these short messages from burners in the community.

John: Hey. Hey, it's John here. Um, you guys would all know me as Big Red or MacGyver Blazing Swan's My hometown burn. Uh, first burn was 2015, so nearly 10 years now. Uh, moved over to New South Wales. Met some wonderful people, but, um, I really, really miss on my, my wonderful [00:51:00] blazers. Just, yeah, you guys are the bomb.

Um, hope to see you this year.

Lumi: Hi, my name's Lumi. I'm from Ngunnawal Country in Canberra, Australia. My first burn was burning seed 2017 with the space in between. I then became polycamperus with the unicorn orphanage and became a camp co-lead for a number of years before taking it on as a theme camp for third degree and also burning seed.

My shout out this year goes to the Africa Burn Crew of the Flying Dutchman, who I will be sailing with later this year.

Stevan: Shall we talk about, you guys have got any facts and figures about the 2024 Underland and just have a look back at, at some of the things that that happened as well.

Jamie: Yeah, I've got some of them up.

They've not been officially published. I won't give exact numbers, but I can give percentages and some, uh, stuff like that. What do you wanna know?

Stevan: Oh, um, just the, the, like, for example, [00:52:00] the attendance, how much was ticket price and just a few other facts that, you know,

Jamie: uh, yeah, so ticket prices were, oh, good question.

280 if I remember correctly. Is that right, Terry?

Terry: Yeah. Uh, two 70 I think. I think. Um, two, we had to put it up by 10% this year. So, so it's about right. I, hang on. No, it was two, it was 300 this year.

Stevan: 300, I think 2023 was two 50, right?

Terry: Yeah. Hmm. I don't know, something like that. Can't remember.

Stevan: And it goes for three, four days.

Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. So that's from the Thursday to the Monday it was, uh, the ticket price excluding GST was 272. So it would've been, yeah. $300 ticket. Yeah, that's right. We we'd, uh, allocated and budgeted for our 500 ticket sales. The final ticket sales was around 450. Uh, I think that was around about 25 to 30 kit tickets, uh, included in that.

Um, on sales. Out of that, uh, our [00:53:00] art and theme camps, they got 28.5%, uh, of the takings, um, site got, uh, was allocated about, so for op, uh, site operations, if you will. Um, and rather than the event operations was about 17.5%, um, event operations was 8.2%. And then there's year round and must haves, which are, you know, stuffing things, sanitation.

Uh, security first aid, stuff like that.

Stevan: And compared to 2023, how much has it grown?

Jamie: Uh, so 2023, attendance wise, I think it was about 330, so it was extra.

Terry: Oh, well that was taken.

Jamie: Yeah,

Terry: yeah, yeah. I think it was three. So about 2070 ish and then four 50 last year. Yeah. Does that sound about right?

Jamie: So, uh, uh, possibly.

Gimme a second. I'll get the other, it'll take me too long to look for 2023. Um, but yeah, it was about 20% growth with, uh, [00:54:00] yeah, increasing ticket sales from two 70 to 300. Uh, we did make a big purchase, uh, after 2023 as well, which is a shipping container. So that was our large, our first major asset purchase as well, um, for storage, uh, which was, you know, really important and great.

So that's in the, the community asset, if you will. Uh, yeah, this year we bought five generators. Um, you know, the whole crew kitchen's fully decked and good to go almost as a almost fully operational sort of commercial kitchen. Um, yeah, that's, um, we definitely, you know, the thing that we've been talking about moving into next year is given a lot more focus, attention and love.

Uh, so, you know, financially for, uh, Rangers, sanctuary and, uh, center camp to an extent as well. They, or SPAM got. Quite a, quite a bit of attention in those initial two, three years purely as the sort of the, the foundation to allow the event to [00:55:00] actually operate. But now that that's set up and doing really well and healthy, there's gonna be a lot more Yeah.

Focus and attention going towards the other, uh, as important, you know, during the event, um, departments as well.

Stevan: Yeah. One of the, one of the things that I, I, I thought was a, was a good improvement was the layout of the, the site. Now we talked, I, I talked to you this, uh, about this Terry, um, at the time. Yeah.

Um, you did a great job.

Terry: Thanks. I nearly killed me.

Stevan: Tell us, tell us what we, you know, uh. What were some of the things, the issues or some of the things that you had to do differently?

Terry: Yeah, so the, the big, the big issue was we, um, we thought we had more time. Um, so we thought we had more ability to, so the, the layout that we set when we got the, so we have a four year permit for the site.

Mm. And the, the layout that we submitted, the map plan for that site, um, we submitted to council.

Scope, we have to redesign the site layout, um, within that map. [00:56:00] So we thought we had more capacity than through negotiations, things. So volunteer organization, right? So things happen when they happen. It can take a bit longer. Um, then you'd like it to. And what can often happen is, uh, if someone, you know, you plan a, you plan a meeting.

And if, if someone's sick or someone can't make it to that meeting, suddenly it's four weeks later, it's another month on and you're going, oh crap. You know, this is due now. So these things roll on a lot. Um, we weren't really happy with the layout previously. There was a a lot of issues. We didn't know the site properly.

We'd never been there before. We'd done a, a, a site visit, but never had a set it up for hundreds of people to be on the paddock. So we learned a lot. Then, um, last year when we were talking about the layout, we were looking at what we can do for a redesign. Um, but what happened was that the, we'd missed the deadlines to be able to, uh, change the map layouts.

You know, this, this is a process. We had to go to council to get it approved. Uh, and we weren't sure what our [00:57:00] capacity was to actually change the complete road layout and all this sort of stuff. So we thought we had more, more scope. Um, and then we were told that. We can't, we, we don't know. It's too late to, to start talking about, um, talking about gonna council and, and figuring out what we can do with the layout.

So we were locked into the layout that we had the previously year. Then when I'm talking layout, I'm talking the, the, the key things like where, where the roads are, where the effigy temple is, where the main structural elements of, of the, the site are. Um. Things, things happened, um, you know, voluntary organizations stuff happened.

Uh, it ended up coming down to a, to a bit of a crunch, and it was like, all right, cool. There was some miscommunications in there. Um, and people were designing, uh, some people who were planning layouts were like, not really communicated with the restriction elements that we were working within. Um, and so they were, they were, um, planning, [00:58:00] planning, uh, a layout based on incomplete information.

And so when it was getting down to, to the crunch, it was like, okay, we have to streamline this, uh, this process. And, and by because of positions, you know, we actually bought that process back into the board. Um, some people weren't happy about that. It was centralizing power a little bit. Um, but due to having to, uh, speed the process up, it was just easier.

Rather than having to talk to multiple departments and, and slowly get approvals and everyone on board, it was just like, let's just bring it internal for the board where we can make these decisions a lot quicker. Um, so we did that, um, had to look at how we could shuffle things around to try to open up the, the layout and actually bring the community together to actually interact with each other.

It, I ended up, uh, many, many hours in front of Miro. Fortunately, I have a, [00:59:00] um, a park across the road from my house. So there were many times after work I was out pacing around the park trying to understand what 20 meters is, what a hundred meters is, how big a campsite is, how many people you'd see in this location there.

Um, so it was a bit of a,

Stevan: you used a park as a simulation?

Terry: I was using a park. I was visualizing it in the park. Yeah. It's like, okay, cool. How? Because I knew, I knew how wide the road was and I knew the, that we were limited like the here and there and. This gap between the road and do we use that for camping or do we use that for art?

Or how do we use these spaces? So I was just sort of trying to replicate the map layout on the park across the road as I'm pacing this thing out. The, I guess the, the key thing that we were trying to do, so we end up having like what we termed a causeway or a boulevard, I think was, uh, Toby's phrase. We actually ended up moving the camps completely from where they were the previous year and having the,

Stevan: the general camping,

Terry: the, well, the general camping as well.

But that central [01:00:00] corridor that we had this year, right. That was all camping last year. Mm-hmm. So we tried, because the, again, when I, what I was saying before about the limitations on, on creativity can make things more creative. We knew that we didn't know how many tickets we were gonna sell. We had no idea if we were gonna have 300 tickets sold, or 700 tickets sold.

So it's really hard to design the layout on, um, on, it's like, Hey, 700 people. It's a very different layout to 300 people. So try not knowing that it was really difficult to come up with a design concept that allowed growth, but allowed the community to stay close enough together that it felt close and, and, you know, community oriented.

Um, so I met with, uh, with Nitty from Sin City, who used to run the, uh, theme camp layouts at, um, burning Seed. Uh, had a couple of powwow sessions with him, try to get an understanding of that. Um, [01:01:00] the, um, and we had, I think we floated about four very quickly, floated four different design concept that we approached to the board.

Um, uh, and, and they would about scaling the event. You know, is it 300 people? Is it 400, 600, 700 people? And we ended up working again in, in my position on the board, i, I work, I oversee the, um, theme camps, um, at Artery. So I was kind of in this position where I knew some of the things that were happening and could actually kind of lay out theme camps and artists together and how they would interact with each other.

Um, but the, the Boulevard thing that we worked, so we split the, kind of split the site in two and had this big, long, wide. Boulevard thing, which we ended up putting art installations on. And the idea there was to try to get people to come together to see, to actually bring the art in the middle, but also have a space that you could showcase the art on the pad and allow, allow that to be, 'cause you've got to [01:02:00] have destination art.

People have to be able to go somewhere and discover art. So you can't have everything right out the front of your campsite. It kind of becomes boring. Then you had to have the things where, like you go as a group and you go over and see something and hang out and experience that art, but you also had to have art in around everyone so you could interact with it as well, quite a lot.

So there was a lot of competing conflicts, uh, about how we lay out the site. Um, we also changed things, um, a little bit with the theme camps. Um, moved it around again, issues with sound and noise, uh, problems that we were kind of only figuring out as we went, which way sound camps could face, uh, what neighbors we had to be aware of and noise problems, all of these sort of things.

It was really happening fast. Um, but yeah, the, the, uh, from the feedback we got from everyone actually having center camp right in the middle, having a bit of a center camp ranges, sanctuary [01:03:00] ops, all kind of in a spot in the middle, kind of became a, a hub of the, of the event. And then having the, the camps around.

Um. Again, we ended up placing, kind of splitting a little bit from the old way of doing it. And I ended up placing some non-camp who were not theme camps, but they were kind of got in and it's like, Hey, you're doing something, let's bring you on here. And then they kind of bought their thing and, and it worked really well.

It was a mess. It was difficult and stressful, but paid off. And it, I think it was really, really good. And the feedback we got from a lot of people, it was, was fantastic.

Stevan: Yeah. Well, for 2025, uh, Underland will have a theme for the first time that'll help in a way to also structure the layout and maybe play around.

Terry: No, no, no. So, so the, um, we, we have a, the map layout needs to be in by, we need to finalize the, any significant redesigns of the map needs to be in by March. Um, so we're talking, you know, nine months [01:04:00] before the event. So we've got two months of a little bit of back and forth if we're gonna move. Road layout, road layouts needs to be done now, and there will be some minor road layouts, change a bit of the site change.

The, the theme of it isn't going to impact on the, the broad layout. Um, 'cause again, the, the, the layouts more of a, every year it's gonna kind of, it's not gonna change massively from year to year. Uh, it might, it might here and there, but it won't be influenced by the, by the theme.

Stevan: Let's talk about the theme.

The theme is pop for 2025. How did it become about. What was the idea behind this? I, I do like it how It's just one word pop and it is poppy.

Terry: Yep.

Jamie: Yeah. Um, yeah, so the, so the pop theme, um, you know, themes have been, have been talked about since, well, really three, four years ago. Um, but just for the, 'cause we want to, we always wanna do a proper community engagement about it.

Um, but with time constraint, we sort of just kind of jumped the gun a bit this year. And it was actually Marty who suggested, [01:05:00] um, the theme for this coming year Pop. Now, one of the thing about, uh, a theme is getting it out, you know, essentially as soon as possible so that, uh, theme camps and artists can incorporate it if they so choose into what they're gonna be doing for the coming year, the coming burns because of that, and, you know, doing a community engagement process would, would take us sort of, you know, around about two, three months.

Um, it wasn't gonna happen until perhaps this time of the year, so we thought just for this one year, the first year we'll do a theme. We decided just to choose it at the board level. Had to do it. We just, it was necessary for, for time, for it will be a community engagement process, you know, moving forward.

Um, you know, even the idea of like center camp this coming year, 2025, um, there could be like a little workshop to, to get the theme for 2026 going. So yeah, Marty suggested pop as a, an all round, um, you know, easily applicable across many mediums and interpretations as a theme, you know, does it mean pop in terms [01:06:00] of color or.

Stevan: I think it's going off again.

Jamie: Fuck sake. Sorry. Um, it's fucking phone keep. Going stand by. Uh, yeah, so Marty went for the, the pop theme. Um, we had the board agreed, yep, let's do it this year. Um, and yeah, moving forward will absolutely be, uh, community engage process for sure. Um, but yeah, you know, it's, it's a nice, good broad, widely interpreted theme.

Um, yeah. And that, that was, that's how we kind of got to it this year. Yeah.

Stevan: Well, well, I love it.

Terry: One of the, one of the problems with, with themes is you've got, um, members of the community that, that, that think that a theme isn't needed. Um, some people are quite averse to having a theme at the event. They don't, and they actually don't think there should be.

Um, and then some people love themes. We, we had many discussions on the board about do we theme it? 'cause some people on the board would passionate, like, no, we, we should not have a theme. Um, and then [01:07:00] some people were like, Hey, but people are asking us what's the theme. So the, as the discussions went on, it's like, well, some people love themes and, and again, it's that.

Bri put in some restrictions about what things is, and, and the creativity really does thrive. And so the themes aren't there for the large scale artists because anyone who's doing large art, you know, they're probably thinking about that 12, 24 months out. Like, you know, they're building a concept in their mind about the what they wanna build.

Um, and they're not gonna be able to theme it. 'cause if you're doing something that's gonna take 18 months to build, you're not gonna know the theme until 12 to nine, nine to 12 months before the next event. So the, the theme really is for, we thought we, we heard stories that, uh, um, anecdotes that some people love, themes, uh, look forward to themes, really gets excited.

And you've got people out there who, who. Big art. They don't, for some capacity, reason, time, money, work, family [01:08:00] life. They can't get involved in that level. But they do want to, to create, and we're about creating. And, and that idea that, that keep, keep inventing, keep creating, keep, keep that momentum going. So by having a change in the theme, coming up with a theme, we want to give the idea that people can, like the people that do thrive within those, and they just go, Hey, this is a new theme.

How can I interpret this? How can I adjust my costume? How can I make some little things from my campsite? How can I contribute to the event? How can I be part of the event? By it, it gives them this bit of direction. And so we, we had this discussion a lot and obviously we, we don't want to be mandating it from a board down.

Um, we do have a plan to have a, uh, a pro. We will develop a process for the next event where we will get ideas. And I can't remember if we decided at the event at Ana camp during the, the event or what, but, but to do, to do that because it's gonna take at least a 12 month process. We missed the opportunity to [01:09:00] do it at the recent event.

Uh, so we just had to come up with a theme and Marty proposed pop, uh, everyone kind of liked it and it was like, look, it's. It's broad enough that it works really well. Yeah. So it did. It did. It did. There was a lot of discuss that lof for, for the, for this thing as small as a theme. There was a lot of discussion at the board level about it.

Stevan: Yeah. There's, there's, there's people that, that love it and there's people that don't really care much about it.

Terry: Yeah,

Jamie: exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And like the people that don't care about it, it's not like, it's not all, it's not really, it's not about them. Exactly.

Stevan: It's not important. Yeah,

Jamie: exactly. So it's not really any off their back or off the nose or whatever if we do have a, a theme.

Mm-hmm. Um, and of course there's a big thing for quite a lot of people in the community. Um, and so yeah, it's a, it is a great way to, to let people's imagination home and run wild and Yeah. And again, big Bitcoin we've touched upon, it gives artistic direction for, for some artists as well, which is, you [01:10:00] example, some artists.

Um. Our tested process, uh, it really helps with them to have an idea of direction because of the same.

Stevan: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, let's talk about, so I've, I had a, I had the chance to meet, uh, Mick and Fiona last year for the first time, and I got to know 'em better in 2024. The site that Underland is being hosted in, that's their property.

So it's a, it's a private property. Um, what can you tell us about how you build this relationship with the people, uh, at Paradise or Naverre and also with landowners?

Jamie: Uh, yeah, I'll, I'll take this one. That was really the, I was the, the forefront of, of that whole aspect and, and process, if you will, from really from not day dot, but leading on from, uh, James Hawkins and being there and how that sort of, unfortunately didn't carry on.

And then the concerted effort at the board level to really do the site search process. Um, and then leading on from that, when we actually had the leads, um, I did a lot of legwork and [01:11:00] traveling to go to, uh, three sites in total across Victoria. Uh, one of them was, uh, unsuitable out in Gippsland. Uh, the other one that we looked at that was a definite possibility was down in Darin Allen, um, which is, uh, Southwest near the coast.

Um, and then of course Paradise, um, which is where we're at, um, at making fees and yeah, so that's say a mixed little working farm, 150 acres. Um, yeah, I guess when you go and when you go and meet people, there's really, I. If you wanna suss out what they're looking for. Mm-hmm. Um, and the main thing is, is financial.

Mm-hmm. More often than not for, but for some people it's, it, it can be more financial than others. Um, so for example, Mick, uh, you know, he is looking for passive income. Uh, he had a pretty gnarly accident, but he got his foot caught in a hopper. Uh, his foot got torn off and then had to get stitched back on.

And because of that, you know, he is, um, sort of partially physically disabled with his foot. Um, he can't, he's nowhere near his mobile and [01:12:00] therefore being on the working farm, that's not as much of an option for him anymore. So he was looking to diversify his income and gain passive income by the use of, uh, the land on the, the property that he's, he's holding.

Uh, but then conversely, the folks down in Darren Allen, they've got a much bigger, um, farm. They come from a bigger farming family, thousands of acres, multiple properties, and they're just a straight up capitalist. And we're very open about

Stevan: he's on standby again, I think,

Jamie: sorry, I'm getting

Stevan: That's okay.

Jamie: Um, so yeah, um, down in Darren and Allen, they're, you know, right into the money.

That's all they're interested in. And because of that, they said they didn't care what we did. They were not worried at all about our, you know, wonderfully flamboyant, um, diverse, uh, burns, you know, festival event that we put on. Um, whereas with Nick, uh, Mick, sorry, and Fee, it was a bit more, it was much closer, it was much more personal, um, in that regard.

And it took a lot of time. Like, I think I, I've no [01:13:00] idea how many times I went out to, uh, chat to Mick initially, but then the community engagements with various people from the local town in the var. Uh, you know, at one point there was about 20, 25 locals at Mixed Property, and myself and a few others were doing a presentation and talking, you know, selling what we do.

Because it's really, that's what it is, uh, initially, is that you're trying to convince people to let you on their property to have a festival. Um, fundamentally that's how they see it. Now, festivals by and large, when you go to rural Australia, is a pretty dirty thing. Um, it tends to, uh, have a quite a bit of taste in people's mouth.

They have ideas of like pitch festival of, you know, these big festivals. A lot of the things that came up, you know, like fuck Fest, drug Fest, all that kinda stuff. They. Typical, um, views of commercial festivals, which is not at all what we do. So really it was convincing and well explaining and convincing the, the locals that that's not what we do.

Uh, giving examples, you know, a big selling point was like having the Rangers team, uh, having their own, [01:14:00] you know, in-house sort of first responder, paying participant care crew, um, and sanctuary for, you know, mental healthcare and wellbeing. Um, and also, you know, explaining that we are a professional outfit.

We will, it will be permitted, we will have security, we will have contracted first aiders. Um, you know, we have emergency evacuation plans for our management plans and slowly after, you know, multiple meetings and talking about it, um, as well as, you know, the big sort of soft skills and just actually getting onto the level with the people and that real interpersonal connection and being on a level with them and not being too overbearing.

Um, and, you know, speaking with them in ways that they can relate to, um, is really important. Um, and it's something I'm kind of natural at anyway, so I find it pretty easy. But yeah, that's really at the core of it. If, if, you know, say if anybody's perhaps listening to this and they're thinking we're going out and doing a burn, like have, yeah.

Have a, have [01:15:00] someone who has those skills to, to be able to connect with a very wide range of diverse people, but also, uh, be ready to face the, you know, the conservative. Country folk that are reserved and, you know, putting on like a, as a, you know, for example, like as a guy putting on a a sparkly top could be, whoa, that, you know, that's, that's a bit wild and far out there.

Um, with what we do as a community, you know, that's sort of just kinda scratching the surface really. Um, and, but again, easing them into it, you gotta really just sort of take your time and subtly talk to 'em and drop bits about, you know, partial nudity and, but then big things about obviously consent and the, the principles and all this kinda stuff.

Um, another big selling point's. Leave no trace. I mean, that was actually, to be fair with it being a sort of working farm, uh, leave no trace is huge. Um, and that's always the first real post-event, um, [01:16:00] thing that the people, you know, the, the rural folks really notice and think, wow, you actually did do what you're gonna say.

It's like, yeah, you know, we, we probably cleaned up and took away more than was actually there at the start. You just, you know, um, so yeah, it's, it's, it can be difficult. Um, you've gotta be ready to face like really hard, tough questions. Um, I got grilled by Mike's sister, uh, Leanne, uh, that's true. Uh, her partner, um, about drugs and they hammered me for about 10 minutes and, um.

I mean, you know, there were same parts of drug policy. Now we, we have a loose drug policy. We didn't actually have an official sort of, I guess, document, um, operational manual, uh, or probably a document for handling that quite yet. But, you know, from, I've worked in a lot of festivals, so I was kind of managed to to wing it.

Um, and it was really interesting 'cause to use an example though, like, you know, what would you do if you seen someone on a dance floor and they popped a pill? Like, what would you do? Would you like, you know, would you, would you object them? Would you evict them? Blah, blah. And [01:17:00] I was like, no, you can't do that.

Like, first of all, you know, we dunno what is they've taken. You can't just assume that. Um, number one, uh, number two, you know, you just gotta play it safe. You maybe speak to the Rangers. Um, you go and check with the person, see if they're all right, if they're looking a bit worse for where, and there's ways to like soft handle it rather than the hard line.

But they, you know, they were pretty keen on the hard line. And what was interesting as well is that the local caller, Han was at this meeting as well and after about 10 minutes of this grill and she piped up and said that she supported everything that, um, myself and a couple others had said. Uh, and also made it clear and said that it was not safe, nor would it be at toll.

Um, the line to go is to kick people out if they had, you know, were intoxicated or had been, uh, seen to be, you know, partaking in drugs and the cops got involved. Um, that was something she said that you do not kick them off site because then they become a danger to others as well. So it was really interesting facing those kind of lines of questioning.

Um, but yeah, that's, that's the nature of it. You've gotta be sort of really, really gotta understand [01:18:00] what you're doing, what you're, what it is that you're doing, um, and, you know, have confidence and belief in what you're doing so that when they do ask the hard questions, you can, you can answer them with truth and honesty.

Stevan: Okay. Yeah. So that's the way, uh, that was my interaction with, with Mick and Fiona as well. They're lovely people. Um, very open-minded, very open-hearted as well. And the, the thing that did, you know, sell, sell to us, uh, sell to them was the, the community that we bought, uh, for him to experience and not, not just about leaving that trace, but also a positive trace, uh, with, with the site, with the ecology of the land impact.

Do we have any. Any, uh, examples or anything, any studies about that of, of our impact?

It's probably early days.

Jamie: Yeah. Nothing, nothing concrete or, or procedural wise or official yet, but we definitely checked in Jira or the Paradise again, myself and a couple others, uh, pair who's our leave no trace leads, we went [01:19:00] and checked the burn scars and looked at the vegetation that was regrowing as well on the burn scars and checking that out.

We also ended up helping out and getting rid of, uh, bath, some bathhouse bramble, which is an invasive, nasty species that have been kicking about on the site as well. Um, so loosely we've done some, I guess, reconnaissance in that regards. Um, we don't have anything official capacity wise yet. I mean, but again, with these kind of things, it's, you know, it's sort of a, at the board level, it's basically waiting to see if anybody steps up and actually takes the rent and takes the lead to, to move forward and create the structure, um, for something like that to happen.

Um, 'cause it would be great, but again, also because it has a working farm, the ground itself doesn't see a lot of usage, if you will. There's, uh, often sheep or cattle, um, grazing, um, there's really crops anymore. But yeah, I think it would be great to have a much keen eye go over the land to, to really document, uh, of Florida there.

Um, and techno and [01:20:00] there could be, you know, some really rare or potentially endangered flora in amongst the trees and stuff like that that, you know, the, the common island myself has no idea about. So yeah, it would be great to, it really would be great to know more about that. Um, and like regeneration wise, there's been again, some, most conversations with Mick about potential tree planting.

He's a little bit stubborn about it. Um, I think it's really sort of, you know, holds on dearly to the, to the, the land that he's holding. Um, and he has planted a lot of trees up on the housed, I think he said he's planted about maybe 40,000, uh, trees over the past, uh, decade or so up there. So. But even going beyond just, you know, mixed property, there's also the, the local, broader local community of Navarre.

And again, it's something I would really like to see. Um, again, a more engagement to, to engage with the local community and we could do more with them, perhaps in line with, uh, helping out with the land and stuff like that. Um, and the local town.

Terry: Yeah, I was having a chat with Per, um, [01:21:00] uh, about that this last year.

And we're, we're working on a leave no trace model and that, that works for some lands, but a lot of the lands that we use, they're farmland, they're paddocks. It's not, they're not like, you know, not like the player in the States. It's completely different. And I mean, I'm sure there are, like if you look at, um, mutoids space out in South Australia, um, out the back, back there, um, you know, I dunno if they're still running that every four year event, that's a, it's a desert.

It really is a desert. It's a different sort of land. Um, where we're on, we're on farming paddocks. Per was saying that, um. If we work on a leave no trace, um, we're actually selling ourselves short. We actually have the capacity to leave a positive trace. I mean, there's invasive, uh, plant species. There's ser tussic, there's all these things that are on the, on the paddocks that we can actually look at.

Like, we are there for a time. We have a whole bunch of manpower. We can change this, we can do that. We can, [01:22:00] you know, deal with try like in small, small doses. A lot of the firewood we got this year was, um, fallen trees and, and branches. So, you know, clearing that for the, um, potential fires. Uh, so going through that process is, so the leave no trace is a, it's a difficult one because there is that ethos and, and it's a fantastic ethos to, to work within that minimum.

We should be leaving no trace if possible, and we can work out a way to do it. Maybe the, the future goal is to try to work out some way of actually improving the land that we, we get gifted with each each year. But, um, yeah, loving it's a food for thought thing. I'm not quite sure how it would happen, but yeah,

Stevan: I think what I did notice were the cows were pretty happy, I think.

And, and you know what the reason was that the, the why, why they were happy. I think that the sound curfew made a big difference. Like all the noise was shut off at what, three o'clock at least. Maybe even earlier.

Terry: It changed throughout the day.

Stevan: Yeah. So what's the thinking behind that? 'cause we all love our doof-doof music

Terry: [01:23:00] permits.

Yeah. Largely it was permits, largely it was, uh, a community, local community that doesn't know us. Um, and we didn't know how far away we were from places. So, uh, I mean, the other thing is we're like, you know, organizers, we're we're, we're not in our twenties anymore. You know, having a, having a bit of a wedge in the middle of like, not having that base rattling my caravan all night.

It's kind of a nice thing. Um, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah,

Stevan: I like it. But, but there are people out there that also want that kind of 24 hour party atmosphere, which is not

Yeah. You know,

Terry: it, it, it, honestly, it was a permit thing. It, um, and it will, will be again this year. Um, I think there's some element of, uh, you know, do we restrict it?

We do, we not, um, it is a, an ongoing conversation. I think there's something about like, we shouldn't be putting restriction on it. And some of those magic moments are nine in the morning. The following day that, you know, you, you, some people wake up and breakfast radio. Breakfast radio. Well, I mean, not even breakfast, radio, more of a, you know, you [01:24:00] rock up at somewhere that people have been going all night and you come out fresh.

Sure. The opposite way around. There's some really magic moments at various times throughout the day. Um, but yes, I mean, the cur, the, the sound is purely about our permits. Um, we're very strict on that because we know if we are going to get hit and we're going to get, uh, council coming down on this, we're a complaining neighbor.

It's because they can hear the base at four in the morning and they haven't been able to sleep. So that's largely been it.

Jamie: Again, we, on that note. It be something that seems look to be more innovative in terms of creating the space that, uh, soaks up and absorbs the sound a bit more in terms of the, the spaces that they're playing sound.

Um, perhaps not being open air, uh, or, you know, putting some sort of sound barriers in a creative way around, uh, their dance floor, for example. You know, there's, there's, we can sort of work on that where we do start testing as well.

Terry: But it's also that we, we are new to this. We are new to the location. We don't know what our sound levels [01:25:00] are.

So now we have two years of data. We have, um, a contracting, um, uh, sound engineer that comes out and we'll measure those levels and implement systems that will ping us when noise levels get bet, get peaked. And uh, I don't think it was last year, I think it was the year before, so 23, um, we had sound levels were, were tripped at one of the, um, audio monitoring stations.

And in the report right up the um, engineers go, oh look, okay, this spiked above this level. So he went in and listened to it. Uh, 'cause there's sort of recording that he's got and like, oh, okay, what, what tripped this? What triggered it? And he listened to the audio recording and it was the birds. It was like seven in the morning and the, and the K barrels, the cockatoos or something that were screaming and y and yelling.

And they were the ones that tripped the, uh, acoustic levels. Um, not us, but I think as we, as we, as we develop and understand more about how noise travels. Um, how, you know, councils are used to [01:26:00] festivals where there is a main stage there where, where they have a $50,000 sound system hired for three days and you know, these sound levels carry, we are not that our biggest sound system someone brings in the back of his car.

So it's, as we understand more about how noise travels, where the issues are, we can tailor the map to point gate. Okay. Sound camps have to point this way, um, because that's, you know, for reasons and, and da, da da, and hopefully we can get to a point that, you know, we don't get complaints so we can open it up and we, you know, there's less restrictions and people can kind of figure out their own, their own way of, of, of being.

Stevan: Now there has been questions about, uh, Underland being a, a regional status burn. Uh, is there any, any, any activities in, in trying to get it as a regional or how, how are you guys fairing traveling with this event?

Jamie: Um, yeah, look, it's discussed on and off over the past few years. Um, we don't [01:27:00] feel a great desire or need to do it.

People who have been involved in other burns and, you know, particularly shaye who's been involved in big burn, um, really other than. I guess the, the, the, were a burn, like support from the big burns little to not come in at all. And this is coming from experience for people who have set up regional burns.

So that is not a thing, um, that's of interest. So really it just seems to be about the actual, I guess the official stand. It's just my personal opinion at the moment as well. Like that's all I've really sort of seen and heard as to why we would go for it. Um, but also, I mean, that would just be the barn as an organization.

We're not a barn org, we're a, we're a community arts organization. Mm-hmm. We're not getting locked into that at all. And we're, we, we're, we're pretty clear on that. Um, so as an organization, like we are not singularly just a burn organization. We are a community that's organized. That's, that's the direction that we're going at the org level.

Um, so yeah, but in terms of the burn regional status, we've yet [01:28:00] to hear some real solid justification or rationale other than cool thumbs up. You get the official staff that you're a burn

Terry: plus there's, um, the, there's quite a bit of, um, administration overheads that comes with the regional status. The afterburn reports, you've, you know, you've gotta do it a certain way with a certain thing.

You've gotta submit those. So, particularly at a, at a small young event that we are the, someone has to write those, someone, I mean, we try, we're, we're, we're trying to be as transparent as we can with the community, but someone has to write those, those reports. And at the moment, everyone that's involved is wearing multiple hats.

So to, to ask someone to go and write a, you know, a hundred page document, I don't know how, how long they're, or whatever. But to actually go through and, and work with all the, all, all the departments to do that. It's big overhead, big ask. So it's, it's, we haven't locked ourselves out from not being a regional, not being an official regional, but at the moment it was like the, the benefits [01:29:00] of being one don't outweigh the, um, the, the requirements of the, the time and the effort to, to actually do it.

And if someone, again, if there's some really passionate people that's like, no, we have to do it, we'd love to have a chat with them to figure out if it's worth it. Um, and who's gonna do it.

Stevan: I was just, uh, I just wanted to ask you, Terry, just quickly, um, have you still got that logies? Use Red, red carpet?

Terry: Um, we had, um, we'll make the feature again.

Oh, when was that? That was 20, that was 23. Uh, so that was in, we didn't have the shipping container. Ah, right. We didn't have the shipping containers. So that ended up back at one of the, um, spam crews, um, country property. And we didn't, we didn't end up storing it properly, so we rolled it out and it's not synthetic.

Right. So it's all natural things. We, we unrolled it and it's like, oh, we can't use this. So it did, we, we, we tried, we tried to pull it out and, and have Logies red card. Well, perfect for the pop thing. [01:30:00] Yeah. But no, it, it has, it has retired.

Stevan: Well, thanks, thanks very much, guys, uh, for coming together and, and having a chat about Common Arts Victoria Underland.

So the, the dates we, the important dates for UNDERLAND this year is 25th of September to 2020 eighth, is it? Or 29th. That's the UNDERLAND event for this year.

Jamie: Yeah. A FL Grand final weekend. That's the, the placement holder for the time being. It may, if it doesn't extenuating circumstances, but yeah, we're, we're going for the a FL Grand Final weekend again at the end of September.

Terry: The, the main issue being that I don't think the AFLs released their, um, schedule. So when they do, because it may, it. It's 90% gonna be on that weekend, right?

Stevan: Traditionally, yes. Yes. I

Terry: it for some other reasons, traditionally, but it can change for various reasons. When they release their, um, their event, their, their game schedule, we'll know and it'll be on the same weekend as grand final.

Stevan: Yeah. Cool.

Terry: But likely gonna be that same weekend.

Stevan: Cool. And the website is

Jamie: commonarts org au [01:31:00]

Terry: Yeah. There's not a heap on there at the moment. We, we had to set that up as a, as a placeholder for, um, for organizational reasons. And we needed the website. So we've got the Common Arts Victoria website. Uh, we are in talks to, hopefully we can start building an underland.

Um, we, we own the domain names for Underland. Um, we are hoping if we can get the volunteers to, um, uh, together that we can, um, have a UNDERLAND website. Yeah. But at the moment it's Common Arts Victoria. We have Facebook, um, Bek, do you wanna, do you wanna take over your, you are involved in our communist team now, your community engagement team.

You probably know more about this than we do.

Stevan: Promote yourself.

Bekah: Well, if I got the mic, I might pipe up. So, um, yeah, Marty's looking after the Instagram and social media. That's not, that's a comms function, not a community engagement function, but, uh, I believe it is in the works. He put it up on the Slack channel for us to all have a look at, and I think he's just waiting for some feedback.

I don't think it's live yet. Yeah. Cool,

Stevan: cool. And you also have this platform as well if [01:32:00] you wanna promote, uh, anything in an audio format. I know you guys have, uh, uh, info session another part two or something with, for the effigy build and Temple build.

Terry: Um, yeah, that being confirmed yet, we're still in the process of Christmas, right?

Terrible time of year to try to organize things, organize the, uh, application submissions for effigy Temple, hoping to, to have a, um, another info session. Um, but don't have a date for that, unfortunately.

Stevan: Well, I was at the last one. I took a few notes, so I'll be looking forward to chatting to Jimbo and Aruna about it as well.

And who else wants to join you? Uh, thanks very much guys for coming onto this podcast. Any, any other thing you wanna plug or Terry, you're going to Kiwi Burn. Have fun.

Terry: Yeah. Yeah. So Kiwi Burn has, uh, has Kiwi Burns running an initiative. I don't know if it's this year, first time they've reached out to multiple burns around the local area and are, uh, inviting people to [01:33:00] specific like departments and that to, to come along.

Um, the deal is, I, I believe that, um, ninja, uh, one of our Ranger leads, um, is, is also going and a few other departments, I believe there's some of the Tasmanian guys have been invited, you know, they've started their first burn this, uh, last year, blazing Swan and, uh, whatever. Uh, the idea is that they. We do a slack of skills share.

Um, we can go there, we can share knowledge, share, share.

Stevan: I, I love this initiative, uh,

Terry: yeah. Yeah. So it's really good. We'll be able to, 'cause we had, we had a number of the Kiwi band guys that, uh, underland year, um,

Stevan: Lumos

Terry: and, and you know, they've been running through, what, 15 years or 20 years or something, and learning, learning how they do things, um, getting inspiration from how other people run events, um, burns and, and bringing the, those things back.

So I'm really keen on, on seeing how they do a lot of the art, how they, you know, organize. Um, my partner Dene, she's one, she was the one that was invited primarily, um, as [01:34:00] she's overseeing artery. Um, so just sharing that knowledge about how they run artery and how they work with the artists. Uh, I'm keen on seeing they've, I believe they've done a new, they're rejigging how they do center camp over there.

They've renamed it as a center hub, I believe, something like that. Uh, I'm keen to see how they operate, meet some people and, and get some ideas. We, we've already got a whole bunch of info from them about, um, running some backend data with Airtable. Um, so yeah, looking forward to that. It'll be, uh, an interesting experience.

Stevan: Yes. Love to hear your feedback and your report from it. And, and that's the, the next, uh, people that we're trying to get is the Kiwi burners probably, I think they're quite busy at the moment, so probably afterwards when they

Terry: Yeah. Their events in two weeks, right. So

Stevan: 22nd of January. Yes.

Terry: Um, I just, I guess, uh, the things that I will, will add on that is like, um.

Probably the two, the two things I would love to talk about, like the, um, art, obviously, um, we will be releasing artery uh, [01:35:00] applications. Uh, we're gonna do the larger art grants. The information will probably be out in around March. We are trying to allow, we're trying to do it early enough that big large art grants have at least six months, um, build time for their processes.

Um, we've also got the ignition grants, uh, which is, uh, the initiative there. We're moving away from funding, specifically funding theme camps and, uh, allowing anyone that attends, uh, at least the, the second event to, to apply, to do things that aren't art, that are community building, that are, uh, creative, that are, don't fall under the traditional umbrella of art installation.

Um, so we don't have a date for that opening yet, but, um, again, it'll probably be roughly six months in advance. We're a bit less with the ignition grants. Um, so we'll be putting information about, about exactly when they'll open in the next couple of months and how, how to get involved and, and funding requirements for those.

So keep, uh, keep tuned. [01:36:00]

Stevan: Okay. Well thanks guys those, um,

Jamie: so I was just gonna say thanks very much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Terry: Thanks so much for the opportunity, Stevan and PY thanks for, for running it.

Stevan: Well, welcome to the debriefing segment of this episode. Since you did really well in the bogan quiz, we thought my, we thought we, we might get you back on as punishment or as a reward.

Bekah: Fabulous.

Stevan: For, for more mic time. That's what you wanted. What else should we talk about?

Bekah: Hmm.

Stevan: Well there were, there were a few things that I forgot to mention or forgot to ask.

Some things like, uh, how many virgin burners there were? Like how many first timers breakdown in numbers? Uh, how many people travel from Sydney? I think there was a bunch of us.

Bekah: Yeah. I got, I got no idea. We don't, we don't really poll people. Um, maybe we should when we do the ticket registration thing, you know, like where you're coming from.

You know, it's pretty basic the, the ticket purchasing situation. But there, there could be some merit in capturing that data. But again, it's what are we gonna do with it? Um, so yeah,

Stevan: for example, how many like country [01:37:00] Victorians there were from Ballarat or was it Bendigo? Things like that. Well, maybe even how many Teslas on the paddock?

I spotted about three Teslas.

Bekah: Did you?

Stevan: Yeah.

Bekah: They're everywhere. And the BYD

Stevan: it's new option of getting, getting to the burn. Yeah.

Bekah: Yeah. No. Well, I, um. Can't answer that question. We don't track that information as far as I'm aware. But this is the first time I've been on the board, so I probably have a bit more visibility of that stuff this year round.

But yeah, there was, I mean, last year, well the year before last, there was certainly a lot of locals that were there. I know, because they came to my camp and, um, set themselves up and made themselves very comfortable, um, which was nice. They also brought like a, a charcuterie board and some booze. That was nice.

But I, this year I was, where were they from? Uh, they were in the, they were locals. They were friends with Mick and Fee.

Um, and there was a large group, there was like 12 of them older, but yeah, had never been to anything like that before and it was really nice to just talk them through it. Like it's not just a doof, it's not just a sex fest.

It's not just, you know, people getting loose in the, in, [01:38:00] in a paddock. It's not like a BNS ball. It's like so much more than that. It was really cool to talk them through the ethos and, and, and why we do what we do, why we put ourselves through this, you know, extended camping situation with radical self-reliance and no creature comforts really.

Um, yeah, that was, it was good. Some of them, um, I think took the Kool-Aid and got on board, so I didn't see them this year. I didn't see them in 24 though. Uh, I was more really focused on center camp and I just hung out at center camp the whole time really. So I didn't really get to, um, explore who else was there.

Yeah.

Stevan: And did you meet, so this year did you meet, uh, many first time burners?

Bekah: Not really. The ones that came through center camp are pretty oay with the whole thing. Um, I'm not sure that there are that many first time burners that come, given that it is still pretty underground and niche. You have to kind of know people who know people to A, find out about it and b feel comfortable to come along.

It can be quite intimidating to rock up to something if you don't know anyone you know, and it can be pretty [01:39:00] cliquey. Um, so unless you've signed up for a shift or two, it can be hard. Um, in saying that though, one of the guys that did center camp, it was his first time burn, but he's been gonna festivals for a long time and already had a network of people that were there.

And, um, yeah, he did the lighting for center camp, which was great. So shout out to Dan if you're listening. Thank you. Yeah.

Stevan: What else you wanna mention?

Bekah: This, this year was great to get center camp off, off the ground. We had a great stretch tent and we had, uh, rugs and heaps of cushions. We had so many cushions.

It was crazy. Like my Jeep was absolutely jammed packed when I picked them up from the person who gave them to us. And then like, I couldn't even get me in the car. It was pretty funny. Um, and what else? We had a great team of volunteers, again, first time that we've done it at Underland, and looking forward to expanding that in future.

So we're really hoping to get a little bit of a jam tent happening in there. People bringing their own instruments and turning it into more of like a, [01:40:00] uh, brackets and jam kind of place where people might wanna do standup comedy or, or present some spoken word poetry or, you know, do some weird improvised dance or theater thing or whatever.

Um, bust out some rock classics, rock and roll classics. But yeah, just providing a, an alternative space to the other more, um, you know, dance floor heavy spaces on the paddock. That's a really big focus for, um, centre camp, that it's not the same as the other places because there's plenty of places to, you know, dance the night away.

Not so many places to kick back and, you know, um, listen to someone talking shit on the microphone

like this.

Yeah, I think, um, breakfast radio went quite well. That was an interesting, um, first time experience, certainly for me and for, I'm not sure if Danae and Terry had done that before, but I think it worked quite well.

What do you think You were there?

Stevan: Yeah. It was fun. It was fun to, uh, meet everyone in, in the early hours in the morning, you know, when people were just, uh, just waking up from yesterday's [01:41:00] festivities. We had some actually, uh, some people saying, well, that was a bit noisy because the, the sound levels traveled to their camp.

Like Yeah. How it is with the paddock. It was a bit undulating up and down the hills, so that was interesting. Um, they actually hurt us, but they, they, they enjoyed the banter, they enjoyed the, the bullshit ness of, of breakfast radio. Yeah. Yeah. And the information that we provided as well. So we, we weren't just talking shit.

We're also talking about, well, you know, what's the weather like today? And if we're gonna have a burn actually or not, and yeah. What's happening and yeah.

Bekah: Make sure you don't miss out on your sausage sizzle.

Stevan: Yeah. It's community service radio.

Bekah: Absolutely. Yeah. And funny, I, I liked, um, dragging people in who were walking past.

I thought that was really cute to just grab people as they were, you know, doing the Walk of Shame or the walk of pride, whichever one you wanna call it. Um, what are you doing? Where have you been? How's your morning? That kind of thing. Yeah. It's a, i, it's a pity we didn't record it. 'cause I think we could have got a lot of benefit out of listening to that again, um, to see what worked and what really didn't work.

But anyway, there's, yeah, there's something

to [01:42:00] think about for. For next year. Yeah. And

by the time we get there, we'll be, that was fun. We'll be total pros having done this a couple of times, you know?

Stevan: Well, that's right. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things I'd actually wanna do is foster kind of a, a community of, of talkers, of conversationalists.

You know, like, um, usually it's just small talk, but there's room out there to, to really connect.

Bekah: Hmm, for sure. If there's nothing that, um, burners like more, more than us talk about burning and burning culture, we absolutely love it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Just try to get us to shut up about it,

Stevan: especially around the burn barrels.

Right. Just throw more logs in.

Bekah: That's it.

Stevan: No one's going to bed. Yeah,

Bekah: I was just gonna say, just takes forever to put out a burn barrel I'd, I'd love someone to come up with a, um, like an equation or a metric to determine how much water it takes to extinguish a burn barrel to the, um, you know, acceptable level of extinguishment or whatever the word is.

Because it's would, I would've helped if I must have, must have put 40 liters on, on the one [01:43:00] at center camp on that last night. So this is such a waste of water. But, um, anyway, it went out.

Stevan: Well, would it help people bring like a scale? Would it help people bring like a scale to measure the log, the weightness, the density of the log?

And that'll give us a rough estimate of timing.

Bekah: There must be a, some sort of science behind it.

Stevan: Yeah.

Bekah: Like if there's, if there's that, that much coal, you're gonna need that much water. Yeah. Or something.

Stevan: Yeah. Yeah. So we did have some remote recording issues. Uh, I just wanna apologize again for, for that.

And we're still testing out the tech in, in real time too, so, um, are there any other apologies you wanna make? Bekah?

Bekah: Apologies.

Stevan: Yeah, anything. I mean, I've got one. I mean, you know, I guess let's, I'm, I'm gonna preempt this apology right now. You know, we've gotta apologize for all the terrible gen Gen X jokes and references that we might drop, you know, bring back the Dunlop volleys and stuff like that.

I mean, we we're probably obscuring our younger listeners by dropping all these Gen X references and jokes. So, yeah. Apologies [01:44:00] for that.

Bekah: I have, I have no shame. I have no shame for

Stevan: Gen Z. Sorry. The, the Gen Z

Bekah: for the age that I'm,

Stevan: yeah, no shame. No shame at all. But, yeah.

Bekah: Uh, why have you had some feedback that we, we were making far too many, um, older people jokes?

Stevan: No, no. But just in case we might tune, tune these people out. There's tunes there out there. Oh, they're not sure what, what's what dunlop vollies.

Bekah: Gen, gen Z loves the nineties. Absolutely loves the nineties. So any reference to the nineties, I think that'll just lap that up. It's like when we were in the nineties, we loved the seventies and anything to do with the seventies

Stevan: and the sixties.

Yeah, anything the sixties was just magical, we thought. Yeah,

Bekah: exactly right. Like, so there's that, that, that sense of nostalgia, um, for us. But the sense of, you know, coolness for the, the younger folk potentially. Like, I went to the town this year, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that event. Do you know the Town?

Yeah. So that's,

Stevan: yes. I, yeah,

Bekah: it's a little bit like a burn in that, you know, you participate, things aren't just, you just don't go [01:45:00] along and watch a band. There are lots of interactive activities and the theme this year was, well, in December of 2024 was the nineties, and so everybody dressed in nineties fashion and all the bands were doing cover songs from nineties bands.

So Rage Against the Machine and lots of True hop and Massive Attack and, you know, the Prodigy, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of nineties hip hop was so good.

Stevan: All the music that we grew up with,

Bekah: oh, abs, it was so good. And so, like those of us who were, you know, of a certain vintage we're all kicking back in our, uh, original threads.

And then there were kids there that weren't even born yet and who were experiencing the nineties for the first time. So it was really, um, and interesting, um, clash, which worked. It was really, it was really cool. Yeah. Anyway, we're not, we're not here to talk about the town, but I, I would plug that no, as an event to go to if people are interested because it was really cool.

It's a beautiful spot as well.

Stevan: Well, I, I think this, that this episode it's gonna go to, to the pool room anyway, it was good episode. Uh, what, what did you think? [01:46:00] Yeah, what was discussed? Yeah.

Bekah: Uh, you know, probably some of the answers were a little bit long-winded, and it did seem to be a bit of repetition on some of the things we spoke about.

Um, and That's all right. Just people get excited,

um, but it might not be that interesting for the listener. Um, and you don't have to include this in the recording either, just you asking me, um, uh, it would've been great to hear a bit more from Narelle about her experiences.

Stevan: Yeah. She had some disconnection problems.

Yeah, we'll definitely like to get her back on and talk about the other passions.

Bekah: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And Jamie's always got a good story to tell, as is Terry.

Stevan: Yeah, I, I enjoyed his, his talk about building relationships with the towns folks and, you know, having that kind of, um, that kind of approval, I guess, from the people that, that hosting us sort of thing, like allowing us to, to experiment, allowing us to, to continue this kind of community space.

So that was interesting and, and it, and it also makes you feel a bit more confident in terms of investing your time and [01:47:00] money into a community or an organization. So's what I've got out of it.

Bekah: It's very important. That the, that the local community, um, embrace Underland in much the same way that some of those other regional Victorian towns embrace the duffs that come to them.

So, you know, you've got Lexton and, and Rainbow. That was a really big part of their economic growth for the, for the area. And the same with, um, Donald. They have esoteric, like, you know, 10,000 people come through that town to go to that festival. That's a lot of people and that's a lot of money and a lot of impact on local infrastructure too.

So that's something. And the same thing with the big burn. You know, 80,000 people go through those tiny little towns on the edge of the BlackRock desert there and it's, it it can really And collecting

Stevan: also Reno.

Bekah: Exactly. And, um, I mean, I dunno if, if you follow some of the, the groups online, but the dis like the, the chatter that comes up before the event of, you know, all the trash that gets left along the highway and, and the mess that gets left in those little towns and people just doing the wrong thing when they leave.

I think it's really [01:48:00] important that we think about the impact of our partying on the, um, the local folk and the local environment. I think it's really important and maybe something that we don't do as well. Um, but Underland is, is quite small, so we have definitely got room to grow and, um, lots of opportunities to, you know, educate and inform our, um, our members about doing the right thing.

Stevan: Yeah, I think that the, the Good Burner community does that, you know, it's necessity, it's crucial. It's crucial to have that rapport with the, with the local people.

Bekah: Mm, a hundred percent.

Stevan: Would you like to tell us more about scorch nuts? I want to hear like a little review. Yeah. Cool. We didn't get a chance.

You just skimmed over it. So,

Bekah: yeah, it's always tricky to know how much detail to go into, um, in an intro piece. Look, scorch Nuts was my first burn, and it was a crazy idea that I had to just go and throw myself in the deep end in a, you know, a tri-state regional burn. A small one at that. So 600 people. Um, and I knew nobody, so, yeah, but that.

You know, there's a challenge that I presented to myself [01:49:00] and it really enjoyed it. I, I reached out to theme camps beforehand and said, Hey look, I'm coming from Australia. I dunno anybody, can I join a camp? And, you know, they welcomed me with open arms and, um, I signed up and didn't, some shifts as a greater,

Stevan: how big was the gathering?

How big was the burn?

Bekah: 600 people, so not very big. Um, and it was, it was on a mountaintop, um, which has been raised by, um, like in the pa it had been used for mining in the past. So all the trees along the top there had been all chopped down. And, um, it's used for, um, events like this all the time. It's quite tricky to get to.

It's kind of hard to find on the map. It's definitely not a, um, you know, it's not heavily signposted or anything like that, but it is a legitimate land piece of land that can be used for these types of, um, events. Um, it was really hot. Like, you know, it's in, I think it was in May. And so in the Midwest that's pretty stink and hot and humid.

And at nighttime it was still pretty warm. Loads of mosquitoes. The art was really cool. [01:50:00] Um, as I think I mentioned earlier that they had the, um, the effigy was in the shape of a, of a squirrel sitting on some acorns. And once that had burnt down, then these huge explosions of fireworks went off. Much like the big burn.

We don't do that here. We don't have the firecrackers that go off after the, um, the burn collapses. Like the build collapses.

Stevan: Do I still do it at Blazing Swan though?

Bekah: The fireworks?

Stevan: With the fireworks?

Bekah: I actually can't comment. 'cause the last time I was not in a. State two. I couldn't, I couldn't remember. I couldn't comment on, I don't remember.

Um, but yeah, yeah, the, the Blazing Swan, um, s are amazing as well. Um, but yeah, look, I would recommend anyone who's interested to explore, uh, burn culture around the world, go to a regional and burners are a amazing community worldwide that you can tap into and say, Hey, I am coming and you know, real burners Will, will welcome you.

They'll wanna hear about your experiences. Um, one of the things that,

Stevan: so you signed up for volunteering?

Bekah: Yeah, I signed up [01:51:00] as a greeter and ended up meeting a few people that way. I also ended up camping with the Leave No Trace Crew, which was great. And met Rangers, uh, and struck up a really strong friendship with a couple of those.

And that was really helpful just to get the whole idea of what Rangering is all about. I was gonna say, yeah. One of the things that a veteran Burner said to me at that event was, it's really nice to have a someone new coming to experience this event because it helps us see it through your eyes. And this is a burner who'd been going, you know them for many, many years.

And so they kind of get a little bit used to it. And the magic of the, of the burn kind of wears off after a little bit of time and you get a little bit jade, a bit tired and you know, the politics come up and blah, blah, blah and, you know, all that stuff that happens. But, um, this person was really, um.

Really touched by, uh, my enthusiasm and my excitement and, you know, my sheer astonishment at how amazing the event was. And they shared that with me, which was a really nice, um, was a really nice experience to have. [01:52:00] He's like, wow, I, I actually had forgotten a lot of the things that you're talking about, and they are truly magical and a really special part of this experience and, and the event.

So, um, he was very grateful to, you know, listen to me going, oh my God. Yeah. I like is this is crazy. This is amazing. What do you mean, la la la la la. You know, all the things. So

Stevan: yeah, I like how you mentioned that because I do love meeting you burners and, and it's a way for me. Yeah. Like you said, everything becomes too familiar, um, and tiring, I guess with the sore eyes, I guess.

Um, site for sore eyes. Yeah. But you know, once you get to, to talk to them and you hear about some of the things that they're experiencing with fresh eyes, you know, it's, it's something that hopefully, you know, you want it to rub off, off on you. So yeah, meeting these new burners actually sort of invigorates or gives you a different perspective of the burn and also volunteering.

So you, you gate or greeters, you did range ring and that will give you a different perspective. Of the burn as well.

Bekah: Oh yeah, yeah, for [01:53:00] sure. And then you figure out which ones you're really good at and which ones you know you're not so good at, and how much effort you want to, and energy you actually have.

Because I think sometimes we underestimate or overestimate how much capacity we have and um, particularly if you are camping and the conditions are a bit, you know, uncomfortable or you're tired and you know, your drive was a little bit longer or more difficult, you know, and by the time you get there, you could be so exhausted that all those shifts you signed up for, you know, just aren't realistic.

So that's something I would share with would be burners. Just, you know, don't underestimate how tired you might be if you, uh, sleep deprived and you know, maybe haven't drunk enough water or you've been in the sun all day long, or just even dealing with the wind. It can be really exhausting. Um, and then you have to go and be in a people facing role.

You know, it. There's, there's just some things to consider about your self care and making sure that, um, you're in the best head space and physical space possible to do those roles, because some of them [01:54:00] are incredibly intense, as you'd know, you know, and, and, and it's not exactly a, a walk in the park. Some of those shifts are really hard and yeah.

Um, experience helps, but sometimes you just have to yeah, accept that it, it might not be your best day on the, on the paddock, you know, and just be gentle with yourself around that. But it's like anything in life, you know?

Stevan: Yeah. Some of those, yeah. Some of those volunteering roles, particularly the hard ones or the difficult ones, or the ones that's challenging to yourself.

I think you'll learn more from it. I think there's a lot of transferrable skills that you can pick up. Absolutely. Probably the, the, the one on the top of my list is, uh, interpersonal skills. How do you, uh, build these, uh, communication skills with your peers and, and other people and, and other banners. So that's what I enjoy.

I just wanna take out of it. Yeah. So, shall we talk about, so I'm, I'm pretty sure that listeners would also like to tune into to this show for the, the latest news and, and burning information. So, shall we talk about, uh, the burner calendar for this year?

Bekah: [01:55:00] Well, um, sure.

Stevan: Some of the important dates, uh, so the listeners can, can sort of like track from what's, what's happening for this year, 2025.

We have several burns in New Zealand and in Australia, and the main ones. We've got Kiwi Burn, which is happening, it started on Wednesday, 22nd of January two, and it finishes on Monday the 27th. We've got Blazing Swan, which is happening usually traditionally around Easter time, Easter long weekend.

Bekah: Yep.

Stevan: So that's gonna be in April this year.

Do you know what the, the theme of this year is? Maybe of you? You checked it out

Bekah: of Swan. I think it's cosmic coincidence, which is cool. Yeah. That, that would be a good one.

Stevan: Yeah. The, and the dates for that would be Wednesday the 16th to Tuesday the 22nd of April.

Bekah: Yeah. So that's definitely over the Easter long weekend and school holidays.

Yes. Well worth going to that one, those WA That's my home birth.

Definitely. Definitely know how to do it properly. Shout out to Church of Belligerence if you're listening. And intelligent deviance. [01:56:00] Yep. Uh, yeah. Then we've got burning seed. Yeah. In June long weekend. The fourth to the 10th of June.

Stevan: Which long weekend is that now?

Is that the King's birthday? Yes. Used to be the Queen's birthday. Is that right? For the Eastern States people?

Bekah: Yes, that's right. Yep. And um, I think I saw the theme on social media pop up, but I'll just check that. Yeah, I thought I saw,

Stevan: and then we've got third degree.

Bekah: Oh yeah, that's in New South Wales. Mm.

You guys are so lucky in New South Wales.

Stevan: And that's gonna be, uh, Thursday, the 4th of September to Monday the 8th of September. So that's kinda like very close to the big burn.

Bekah: Mm, exactly.

Stevan: So could, there could be some traveling conflicts there if people trying to get to both and people have, people have,

Bekah: yeah. Yeah. You could spend, you could do a whole year of just traveling around the world, going to burn related events, that's for sure.

Stevan: Yeah.

Bekah: I mean, and, and this list is not even, um, yeah, it doesn't include all the, the side events that happen as well. The, the fundraisers [01:57:00] and the, you know Yeah. The community events that pop up.

Stevan: I think once we get the hang of, of, of podcasting the show, we'll have more details in terms of the small events, the fundraisers and to, and the made up burner pubs and stuff like that. So, and then Underland, you guys got a date? Yeah, Thursday, 25th of September to Monday, the 29th of September. And the theme is pop as we talked about.

Bekah: Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna be fun.

Stevan: And there's also a new burn calendar to add to that list is the Tassie burn. So we'll be talking more about that.

Bekah: I'm so excited about that one. Does it have a name?

Stevan: Not quite sure, but yeah. Name. And is there a name yet?

Bekah: Is there any burn event that happens in, um, south Australia?

I always wondered about that.

Stevan: That's a good question. Nothing yet.

Bekah: Nothing yet. 'cause of, yeah, I've met several burnie folks from that neck of the woods. It would be good to talk about, um, an online session that we have coming up on Tuesday, February the 18th, an online session from eight till 9:00 PM This one [01:58:00] is an like an information session put on by Common Arts Victoria, and it's all about, uh, wood lovers paralysis, uh, which is a syndrome that affects some people after they've taken psilocybin mushrooms.

And it can be quite scary for the people impacted by that as well as their friends. So this information session, uh, will talk people through, you know, what to look for and, and what to do if someone in your group or yourself experiences would lovers paralysis. Um, from what I gather about it, it's not something you can easily identify by looking at, um, the mushroom, so I'll definitely be coming to that one.

I'm really interested. It's a, a fairly new risk or, um, concern. I did hear about it earlier last year,

Stevan: especially when you're out there in the Yeah, especially when you're out there in the, the countryside or the outback of Australia

Bekah: for sure. And apparently it's only, um, it only happens in Australia, so I dunno how accurate that information is, but I'm gonna go along and bust some myths around it.

Um, let's have a [01:59:00] look at that one. Yeah, it's, it's public. Anyone can attend. Uh, it's delivered via Common Arts Vic, um, via Zoom. And um, there'll be a panel of people who have experienced, would lovers paralysis firsthand as well as people who treated them. So first responders, medics for example. And there is also gonna be experts in harm minimization and toxicology.

So a really nice, well-rounded panel of people who've had firsthand experience and those that know what to do. Um, so it sounds like a worthwhile event to get along to. And for one hour it, it'll probably be recorded as well. Yeah. Cool. I would say,

Stevan: yeah. Cool. So we're gonna provide all those, uh, information in the show notes.

So I just wanna plug the show notes as well as the website and social media links for the listeners that are not familiar with how podcast works or podcasting. Um, there is a show notes section of the podcast and or detail all the links and all the other information that was talked about in this episode.[02:00:00]

We also have a mailbag. So gonna launch that. And this is for feedback as well as, and stick, stick, whatever you wanna stickers.

Bekah: Send swag.

Stevan: Yeah, we will get that. Uh, but yeah, whatever you guys want to comment or talk about or send us a voice message as well. Uh, the, the email address is mailbag@bonzopodcast.net.

Yeah, check that out. Our website as well. And we have transcripts for this podcast, this episode, and future episodes as well. So for the people that prefer to actually speed read rather than listening, we have that available as well.

Bekah: Awesome. Are we thinking of getting international guests or people from other parts of the world on the show?

Stevan: Yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely. But the concentration will be just bonza at the moment. Mm-hmm. So the idea is to get sort of like catalog of all the burner communities and the, and the burner voices. So yeah, definitely, um, would talk more to [02:01:00] international burners and international regionals. Yeah.

Looking forward to that as well.

Bekah: Yeah, it's exciting we're, it's really picking up in this part of the world.

Stevan: Yeah. There's a lot of, a lot of good things to look forward to.

Bekah: Are you going to any, just before you, um, move on, are you going to anything this year, Stevan? What's your calendar looking like?

Stevan: So this year will be i'll, I'll be concentrating on, uh, getting Burning seed happening.

Again, I'm not part of any, any committee or, or any orgs doing that, but I'm looking forward to getting the community, you know, embracing community again. Underland is also on the calendar and I want to check out, probably Tassie Burn, see what they're up to as well. Mm. But we'll go visit the Pact crew that the People's Art Collective of Tasmania and have a chat with them.

And also wanna find out more about our Asian regionals, such as Dragon Burn and Japan Burns. So that'll be interesting.

Bekah: Are there any burns in Thailand or Malaysia, Bali that you know of?

Stevan: Yeah, these, these are, these are definitely potentials for emerging [02:02:00] kind of communities there. Mm. But I don't think there are, I don't think there are, or, or any expats that's actually living there that's, that's starting anything perhaps maybe just a local meetup.

But yeah, there's potential there.

Bekah: Yeah. It just starts with a, starts with a conversation.

Stevan: Yeah. That's right. It just starts with an idea. Alright, so let's close this episode and, uh, thanks for dropping by and sticking around for the debriefing.

Bekah: My pleasure.

Stevan: The next episode, we'll just give a little preview about the next episode.

Uh, we'll be talking to some kiwi burners and they were on site when we actually had a chat with 'em, so it was just, it was really good. Made me a bit homesick listening to the background noises and, uh, listen to talking about, uh, what's happening at Kiwi Burn this year. So, yeah, stay tuned. Um,

Bekah: awesome.

Excellent.

Stevan: Alright Bekah. Thanks for, um, please join us again for the next episode. So I would love to, love to have you back on

and, uh, yeah,

Bekah: no worries.

Stevan: We'll be hearing more from you.

Bekah: You bet. Thanks guys.

Transcripts transcribed by Descript AI