Stevan: [00:00:00] Hey, beautiful Bonzaar. Welcome to all this episode. We'll take a look at the making and organization of the 2025 Embers, not a Burn. We'll reflect back at how these events unfolded and co-created and co-lab efforts from the community. We're gonna chat about some of the highlights and interesting moments, discuss all the shenanigans and silliness, and all the learning and community thoughts, and also the burning and all the burning points from the Embers experience.

So with me today, we've got Cris, Nathan, and Roland joining us. Welcome guys.

Nathan: Hey. Hey.

Roland: Thanks Steven.

Stevan: So Cris, um, unfortunately the last time we, we had another EPIs, uh, Embers episode. You had some technical, uh, issues and we didn't get the full, your full experience and story. So I'd love to hear more of your thoughts.

Cris: Gosh, I, no, I mean, Embers was amazing and like I was just saying to Roly before we went on air, what a, what an incredible feat, um, to get come together in such a short period of time. After, [00:01:00] um, seed was canned. Just an amazing community effort, I thought, and incredible to see, and just a, a shining example of what it means to be a burner and what it means to be in this amazing community.

Um, so I, that was just thrilling for me and, uh, and really great part, um, to be a part of that, um, whole thing. I was, this is my first experience being Greeter lead, and I can't remember who it was. Someone at, someone at some stage said to me, oh, you know, Greeters is not really that important. Like if it doesn't, if you don't find someone for that.

It doesn't really matter. And oh man, I beg to disagree. So yeah, I really, um, dug, sort of dug my teeth into that, um, into that sort of experience of getting people, um, uh, on board with the principles and the vibe and consent and yeah, I think I found my jam, actually. So, yeah, I I had a great time.

Stevan: Yeah. Calling me impressed with all the, um, organization that was behind it. And also, I was also impressed by [00:02:00] your efforts, Cris, of bringing the, uh, the joint vulva.

Cris: Thanks.

Stevan: Let's talk about that.

Cris: Totally. I dunno, like, you know, um, like I, I'm a creative person. I'm a, a musician, an artist, a designer. I've been doing creative things for like 30 years at least.

And, uh, you know, it's like that moment when you have an idea and you're like, yes. And I, like, I just, I put this post on Facebook, which was, Hey, like, does, do anyone, anyone I know have a, a walkthrough vagina that I could borrow? And like. Oh, my burner friends were like, oh, well, you know, sure. Like, I know this person, this person, and or like, not surprised at all.

And other people were like, what the hell is going on? But yeah, I just thought like, what's the ultimate in portal? It's a, it's a vulva. Like it's, it's going into the womb. So a bit of a reverse kind of experience of, of being born. But yeah, I just, I just got it in my head that it would be [00:03:00] awesome to have a walk through vulva, uh, slash vagina.

Um, and, um, yeah, just put the word out there. And lo and behold, some friends of, of of friends, uh, who have never been to a burn, but they're, um, a part of the roller derby scene in Sydney. And lo and behold, they have a three meter high rollable, uh, vulva that they created for, for Mardi Gras. And it's, it's been rolled down Oxford Street many a time, apparently.

So, and it lives hilariously, it lives, um, in their apartment, uh, in, in the inner city. Uh, it lives in their car park underneath it, the block of flats. And, and like, they told me hilarious stories about their, um, you know, neighbors just being like, you know, can you get rid of that? And they're like, no. So they just have this giant, um, vulva sitting in their car park under, under the, the flat.

Yeah. [00:04:00] Yeah.

Stevan: And was it a mission? Was it a mission to get it out into the site?

Cris: Oh, it certainly was. Yeah. Um, I had to borrow a trailer, which, you know, again, my friend, a friend from Canberra saw my post on Facebook and he was like, I've got a spare trailer, can you just please take photos? Like, that's all I asked for.

And, um, yeah, so, uh, yeah, it was a mission. Um, uh, me and my girlfriend Mel, uh, headed to Sydney. And, uh, she wasn't coming to Embers, but she ended up coming to Embers because when we got there, I saw that it was three meters tall and it weighed a ton. And I was like, man, I don't even know if I've got any helpers.

Like, everyone's gonna be doing their own thing when we get there. Can you come with me and like, help me set it up? Because I'm a bit worried. Like it's, I'm a bit overwhelmed right now. But, um, yeah, so Mel came with me and, uh, we set it up and we had some help. Of course, of course. And I should, I shouldn't have worried.

But yeah, it was quite the mission. Um, we had to strap it down and, and tap it up 'cause it was gonna rain. It did rain and, [00:05:00] um, unfortunately we couldn't like, have it sort of standing up and like flying along like, like pri queen of the desert or something. But, um, yeah, it was, it was pretty funny. It looked like a spaceship on the trailer.

Stevan: Well, welcome, welcome. Um, Nathan and Rollie. Um, you guys were pretty much one, one of the key members, well, the organization team of the whole Embers experience. I'd like to know how you guys pulled it off and what are some of the logistics and, and let's talk about the time, the, the timeline first. Uh, we all had different, different timelines, but it all converged somehow in, in, in a beautiful mess, in a beautiful collaborative effort.

And, uh, it was, it was top experience. Highly recommended.

Nathan: Yeah. Uh, I guess if I talk through the very start of it, uh, I know for me, 'cause I'd been the burning seed crew wrangler, so, um, the day I got canceled, the day after, I was still responding to so many emails from people who were like, oh, I've got leave approved.

I can come and join the build crew. And me replying back like, look, uh, guys, I'm so sorry, [00:06:00] we've just canceled. Haven't heard about it. It was feeling absolutely down. And then Rollie was like, look, I'm gonna put some money down. I'm gonna make this thing happen. Even if it's just like me in a field kind of thing.

Uh, you wanna help? And, um, yeah, uh, we got the, the core crew kind of together out of that Roley being kind of the, the medical lead for third degree medical two IC for, for burning seed. Uh, didn't know some parts of the community, which, you know, me, Felipe Ali and that, uh, role help, but, uh, yeah, very much the, the man who put it all together.

The man who was like, I'm not taking no. A burn sort of thing, really.

Stevan: So how did you feel? Roll.

Roland: Uh, look, if I can go back to the vulva thing, that was awesome. Comment section. Great photos.

Cris: Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.

Roland: Um, look, in terms of how this happened, uh, like everyone though, I was a bit pissed off, uh, what was it, late on Thursday, Friday or something, and I was drinking a bit of wine and I just put a Facebook post saying, Hey, fuck it.

Let's do our [00:07:00] own burn. When burning seeds said, you know, they were quitting. And then a bunch of random people said, Hey, can we help out, uh, within the next few hours? And we made a page and went from there.

Stevan: So around what timeframe would this be?

Roland: That's a pretty compressed timeline. Sorry, what?

Stevan: Around what timeframe was this?

Roland: Oh, so this was in, within like five minutes of the post coming up. Yes. I figured they were probably gonna cancel given all the, you know, please buy ticket posts that were coming out beforehand. Um, so I thought, you know, probably best be first off the mark, otherwise we'd all be fighting into, you know, do some things instead of centralizing into one big burn.

Nathan: Yeah. So I think the decision was made, uh, like 8:00 PM ish Thursday. So Wednesday, uh, the 7th of May. Uh, so Roly was getting things organized then, and I came on board the following day on the eighth and we're like, yeah, like three weeks, it'll be fine.

Cris: Yeah. I I was so impressed. Like I, it made me think, like, I've heard stories about the, a year, I think it was maybe 2016 or so when Yeah, when, uh, s Yeah, yeah, when the, there [00:08:00] was a lot of rain again, was that burning seed and mm-hmm.

It couldn't go ahead. And there, there were a couple of burns, little kind of unofficial things that happened in,

Stevan: there's a few renegades. Yes.

Cris: Renegades. Yeah. And yeah, it did, it made me kind of think of that. And yeah, I just love that kind of can-do spirit.

Nathan: Yeah, almost found it a shame. I think biophilia were originally gonna be working with us, uh, and they ended up doing their own little thing, but I haven't heard a thing about it since.

I don't even know if I wanna, I think we, we very much captured the real spirit of seed, uh, which, you know, was always the point.

Stevan: Should we move on to the, my, uh, favorite part of the segment is to get people's origin stories so roly, would you like to start telling us, uh, about your journey into the burner culture and the, the Aussie burner scene here?

Roland: Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, so I'm an icy dock in Newcastle and like a lot of people have got quite disenfranchised after COVID. So I went off and went [00:09:00] to my first, uh, do for festival in, uh, 2020 or something. Uh, and that was after Blues Fest. And I thought, oh, yeah, camping festivals are kind of fun. Um, so I thought I'd go to a whole bunch.

I had like this entire calendar worked out, so I was, you know, having leave requested where I'd have like a week or two off this sort of thing. And so ended up going to a whole bunch of Dukes, um, heard, met a few burners along the way, and they always seemed like pretty cool. Older crowds usually have their shit together.

Had nice camping gear for the most part. I thought, oh yeah, well, I'd be like those people. Um, so when I heard about third degree, uh, I think it was about probably June, July last year, I thought, oh yeah, cool. Sounds good. So, uh, I just cold called the page saying, Hey, I'm not a cop. Uh, I'm a doctor. Can I come help do stuff?

And for some reason they told me to do the medical lead job. Um, and then I got roped into build stuff. And after that I thought, oh yeah, this sounds cool. I thought, go do a few more burns, uh, this year.

Stevan: Once you say you're not a [00:10:00] cop, it's, that's pretty much it. What job do you want?

Cris: I love it.

Stevan: Yeah. And, and for you, Nathan, let's, let's hear your, your, your back, uh, your, your journey into, well before embers burning seed or, uh, even Yeah.

What's your background?

Nathan: Oh, it goes back always. Uh, so I grew up in Sydney. I actually had a few friends who were coming to see in like 20 11, 20 12, very disappointingly that they were in alchemy of sin. And they just kept like, oh, it's like listening to side chance in a forest. I'm like, that's not for me.

But, uh, I moved to London, was really involved with the couch surfing scene there. Uh, I got recommended go to this festival, uh, summer house weekend, PPI yoga Festively thing. Uh, just sitting in a hot tub chatting with some people, and they'd just been to nowhere, the big Spanish burn, Europe's biggest burn, uh, the week before that.

And I was like, oh, like, that sounds really cool. They're talking about going out into the middle of a desert, you know? Okay. This all sounds very familiar from everything else, of course. But yeah, going and creating the city in the middle of nowhere, being good to each other, so much beautiful art. I'm like, I've, I've gotta go see this thing.

So, uh, I started going to London, burning [00:11:00] Pub, uh, hilariously. The Spanish boat is very much run out of London Burning Pub because it, it originated as the first burn in Europe out of a London decompression 20 plus years ago. But, uh, yeah, it got to meet so many key people. Had three different theme camps, Barrios as they call them, like desperately trying to get a hold of me.

Uh, so I went along to my first burning 20. Um, after four years, I was the water lead for nowhere. So just coordinating 30 plus theme camps, getting water deliveries from contractors, and that, um, came back after C 2019 had happened back to Australia, uh, finally moved back, uh, just before COVID and um, yeah, uh, I had to wait another two years before, uh, Canberra Solstice burn 2022 before I could actually, uh, go along and do anything burn wise in Australia.

But I've been throwing myself at them since. If I can get to like three, four burns in a year, it's wonderful year.

Stevan: Yeah. That's where we met. That's where I I see you at at the gate. Yeah. [00:12:00] So you walk a gate, a gate shift there.

Nathan: Yeah, no, me and mama bear, uh, you know, first I meet her or, yeah, I've chatted with her so, so many times since then, especially on boating seed stuff

Stevan: and if, if I can remember correctly as well.

Um, that's where we met too, Cris, at the same burn, I think. Was that

Cris: Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

Stevan: tell us your backstory.

Cris: Yeah, I mean, I had friends who went to the big burn in Nevada in 2014 and just came back raving about it. And, um, I'd heard about it before, like the A, B, C did a, a, a segment on Sunday arts in the nineties, like on the early days.

Um, and I remember watching that. But yeah, so I, it wasn't until 2019 when my parental duties were finished, my daughter was, was moved outta home that I could, uh, actually get to a burn. And I, I think I, my first burn experience was winter solstice 2019. It followed closely by burning seed, 2019 6,000 people, which was somewhat overwhelming.

Um, I went to [00:13:00] that by myself, uh, and landed in the orphanage with Lumi and, um, Hannah and Jared and, uh, what a great place to land and just haven't looked back. I, I, I've lost count of how many burns I've been to. It's something like 12 or 13, including two Nevada trips, um, which have just blown my mind.

Yeah, I'm a little addicted.

Stevan: And how did you, with the embers burn, how did you get involved, Cris?

Cris: Uh, well, I saw, I just saw people started talking about it. I saw this person, Rollie. I didn't know who Rollie was, and, um, but I saw a few familiar faces like Nathan, and

Stevan: I don't think that many people knew who Rollie was, a mysterious man, so Really?

Cris: Totally. I was like,

Roland: I don't think I know who I'm either.

Cris: Well, hopefully in the burner. world, you'll find yourself. But, um, yeah, I, I just saw all these people posting about, um, organizing this sort of renegade burn, and I was, and I saw the list and it, and it had greeters lead vacant, [00:14:00] and I think that's when someone said, you know, the greeter's role is not, you know, is not really important.

And I just went, oh, hang on a minute. Like, uh, I've, I've worked in universities and I, and I've, you know. The whole kind of consent thing has been big on my mind as it is on, on other people's in this sort of scene and, and area. And yeah, I think, I think Greers is really important. So I thought, well, this seems like a good opportunity to, you know, step up and, and contribute and, and give it a go.

I was pretty, pretty, um, scared, bit overwhelmed by, by the whole thing, but, um, lucky for me, aka, who's, uh, one of our Canberra leads for winter solstice, um, is a greeters guru and she had a, a handbook that I, she gave to me and I adapted for embers, which was amazing. So yeah, that's, that's how I came to sort of step into that role, which is was really amazing.

Was so great.

Stevan: Yeah. And usually for a small burn, um, [00:15:00] they usually put together the gate and greeters together.

Cris: Yeah. Um, yeah. Well we thought it ended up doing that anyway. So it worked well in the end. Yeah. And how about you, Steven? What's your, what's your origin story?

Stevan: Well, with, so with embers, um, so when seed canceled, I wasn't really looking for like a, a replacement burn or, or something to do.

I just, like, I, 'cause when, when we went to the bonza Summit, I thought I might stay in Melbourne for a bit longer. But, you know, after seeing, you know, all these, uh, I guess dominoes fall into places, all these stars aligning, I thought, yeah, there, there, there could be something here that would, you know, it could, could be the start of something.

It could be the beginning of something, who knows? But, uh, I was fascinated by. How the community pulled together after, after the news of, of seed not happening. And so I thought I'd like to meet, uh, like who's, who's putting all, all these, um, procedures and structures and just like putting up an auburn, like how does it happen and who and, and what are the, what are the requirements?

And so I was fascinated [00:16:00] by that. And yeah, um, bought a ticket and just rocked up just like, uh, a lot of people,

Cris: uh. You bought a ticket, then you made stickers as you always did.

Nathan: Yeah. One thing we always have to emphasize there is like, it would be practically impossible for us to just do a, a burn from scratch with, uh, a month's notice sort of thing.

Uh, the massive benefit that we had was so many people had committed to doing a winter to burn with burning seed, uh, had the time off already. We're already planning on going, doing this thing, seeing their community. So when that canceled, we just transferred that magic across to somewhere that we could manage to, you know, get a place to do it.

Like would've been impossible for us otherwise with kind of just the, the size and scale that we're operating at. Uh, it was so good to run it agile as we did, and, you know, so many decisions to like, get made in a day, but, uh, only possible because we were so far down the track from just taking exactly what seeded planned.

Stevan: Yeah, it was great getting the updates and of the background activity of what you guys are doing. So it was reassuring [00:17:00] and also seeing that it's, it, it, it actually is gonna go on. So you, you have that to look forward to. So you, so in a way your kind of, uh, organization helped a lot of people to also bring what they, they needed to bring as well.

Nathan: Yeah, I felt like one thing that we did really well was by being so just like showing behind the scenes and letting people know where we're at. Uh, even silly little things with the SBA, uh, concerns over Burning Sea being mentioned anywhere. Uh, we just had everything out in the open. People just came on the journey with us the entire way, uh, which I think just built so much confidence in what we were doing that we could, you know, do all of the things.

People could see that we were doing things and especially that we could laugh about it.

Cris: Yeah, I've gotta agree. I think the transparency with, um, what was happening and what needed to happen and, and just brought everyone together and it was, again, a really fantastic thing to see.

Stevan: I think also the option of, well, the, the opting in or opting out, kind of, you know, people had the option of, uh, [00:18:00] participating or not.

Um, because if you're driving from Adelaide or Melbourne, it was this, uh, the, was the, the location was at Wiseman's Ferry. Um, it could have been, yeah, it could, could've pulled a lot of resources from people.

Nathan: Yeah. Honestly, I was impressed, like, uh, getting strawberry and her husband driving up from Melbourne in an actual bus all the way to, to come work on the kitchen, just be the awesome selves because they, uh, strawberry would've been the, the kitchen too I see.

At seed and I'm like, look, I know you're Victorian based, but like, we'd love to have you up here. Like, I had such a good time this year working with her on everything. And uh, it brings that same energy to as well. Little one, you should come along even though it's such a long drive. Yeah. So glad to see everyone.

Cris: Yeah. I, a really special thing I really loved was that, that people were asked to bring a piece of wood to add to the effigy. I thought that was really special. I dunno who came up with it, but that I thought that was brilliant. And

Roland: yeah, a a actually that was B price. Ah, was Steve. Yes. Um, [00:19:00] so it's all her idea.

Cris: Nice.

Roland: And uh, she got really busy with some other stuff, so Bear ano took over.

Cris: Yeah.

Roland: And it was such a cool idea. Just had to happen. Also, it was a lot cheaper than getting another crew to build a effigy. Also, we didn't have people to build effy.

Cris: Yeah.

Roland: So it it's a win-win situation.

Nathan: Yeah. It takes, yeah, it definitely takes a, it worked out really.

Yeah, it worked out really well. I really love, like Barry even put kind of their own spin on it. Things like it had much more of an intention setting kind of thing in applying each piece to the effigy than I think we ever would've had otherwise. So just, yeah, each little thing getting thrown into that idea just made it bigger and better.

Cris: And I think I heard as well, um, there was no nails or anything. Was that, was that sort of something that was requested by the, the property owner or was that just, just an idea?

Roland: Yeah, that's Steve, the property owner. So that patch of Grass in the settler field, he runs his lawnmower over it.

Cris: Oh yeah.

Roland: This big, um, ride on thing.

Cris: Yep, yep.

Roland: Apparently if there's any nails or screws, they just ping off and, you know, hit people and things. Yeah, [00:20:00] it was fine. It wasn't a big deal.

Cris: Anyway, I thought that was, um, that was really well done as well. It's a really lovely thing to bring people together again. Yeah. Total win.

Stevan: Okay, let's take our first break.

So, besides stickers, I also took a microphone at two embers and I thought I would grab some people's thoughts and their sentiments about whatever they had on their mind. So I went around not scripted, prompt. Well, there were some prompts of. What's your name and where you're from, but besides that, people just said whatever they wanted and here are some collections of those, burn of those embers.

Voice messages

Nancy: on. Hey, hey Bonzaar. This is Trancy Nancy coming to you from Embers non burn renegade party funk, master Fresh, and we are currently sitting at a beautiful sunny day over here by the river. The kids are running across the paddock chasing each [00:21:00] other in their beautiful fairy dresses, and we've got some piles of wood ready for people to create their own effigy today, which is gonna be amazing.

We're about to have the welcome to country. So the fire's getting kicked on. There's some smoke coming up, few people gathering. Everyone's generally heading in that direction. I got my best mate, karma in the in the buggy. Say, good day Karma.

Karma: Hi Karma.

Nancy: I've got Eva over here on the bench. You bring your own chair.

Iva: Hello.

Nancy: So we're hanging out, we're ready to roll. And we are really excited because today is Saturday, which means it's burn night and we're all gonna get hyped up today. We're gonna do some, um, wheel of consent and shaking in the hall a little bit later, run by. Us eternal flames who are, let's just face it, the best theme camp on the paddock.

Right? Yay. Of course, of course. So we're very excited to be here on the Bonzaar podcast because we know [00:22:00] what it's like to be just sitting at home twiddling your, your knobs and twiddling your dials and trying to get that right frequency tuned in so you can enjoy the party from your own couch luxury with your kitchen over there and your toilet three steps away.

So, lucky you. Or if you're in your car listening to this amazing podcast, then you are welcome and I'm really excited that I can broadcast from such an amazing place. If you can hear all the birds, they are saying hello, and they're all very excited too. And we are looking forward to more of these beautiful sunny days Once the sun kicks in over the mountain, because it is very wet underfoot here it is very wet.

The grass is dewy.

Karma: Yeah, dewy and damp and condensation is heavy and it's thick, but it does not bring our spirits to wetness. It lifts our spirits up to brightness because we are here to burn and we're gonna burn bright baby.

Nancy: Yeah, we [00:23:00] are. We are gonna have a lot of fun out here. We're doing it our way.

We're not worried about. Any other official statuses, we just all gather. The Willy Wag towers are welcoming us. We are gonna have an official welcome very shortly and we are really looking forward to having you all on the paddock one of these days. So don't be shy. Get your, um, get yourselves to a burn one of these days or about the big burn.

Nothing to see there. Come to a burn in Australia and we'd love to welcome you into the family. Welcome you home. Burn Bright. Burn Bright.

Vashek: Hey. Hi. My name is Vahe, playa name is G-spot. I go to mainly the ma, big Burns, but I really love to, to visit the small burns like blazing Swan and now embers and yeah, I wanna say fuck your burn.[00:24:00]

Cady: Hi, this is Caddy. I'm just trying to work out what's going on with the dugongs on the paddock. There's been some whispers about the dugongs, but I haven't seen any dugongs cruising around these grassy waters of yet. If so, please report your mission and get back to me.

Chris: Why? Hello, my name is Cris. I have a message and that message is.

You are never late, but always on time.

Urban Wanderer: Hey, it's John Urban Wanderer here. This is my second burn and I'm loving this location. Absolutely beautiful, wonderful people, and some interesting workshops, and I hope to be back [00:25:00] here for my next burn. Or maybe I'll be a ranger at another burn.

Mike: Hi, my name is Mike, and I have a message for you. It's like, well, um, when we are, uh, when we are young compared to when we are old, things become differently.

So we gotta enjoy our life. While we can still walk around climbing snowy mountains, go to the desert. Not like when we are become 80 years old, then we just be on the wheelchair. And then, um, yeah. So do things while you're young.

Pippa: I'm ppa. How's it going? I like going to burns and doing ridiculous things in a place where everyone else is doing ridiculous things and burning stuff down in the middle of nowhere.

Thank you.

Caleb: Uh, name's Caleb. Uh, I'm an, I'm an age. I get, get [00:26:00] what that means. Uh, I'm British in it. Uh, you get me firm, like that's where I'm from. Uh, you probably have no idea what I'm saying right now, but hey, you get what? You get what I mean? Yeah, Ji but, um, yeah. Sick place, isn't it? You get me.

John: Hello here.

It's John here from Sydney Burning Community saying hello to the world of burners out there. It's been a beautiful festival so far. Lots of lovely people. Lovely feeling of coming home.

Dale: So, yeah, I'm, uh, Dale from the, uh, Debon Air Mansion, known as Pillar on the Paddock. Um, been burning since, uh, 2011. Love these small little burns we create with our community.

And, uh, looking forward to the, uh, third degree in September. Thanks.

Jimmy: Oh, well, hello, this is Jimmy. I'm here at my second burn. Um, and it is absolutely just wonderful to spend time with this community and it's an [00:27:00] amazing thing and I don't understand how I've not been coming to these before. Anyway, back to you.

Stevan: Okay, let's talk more about the collab, the collaborative, uh, efforts. From the community, from the theme camps, from a, a lot of, um, other organizations such as third degree Burning Seed, sunburn Arts, um, and, and burners from interstate and, and kiwi burners too, usually. So back in the day, we, we, we usually have this thing called a Rolodex where we would have, uh, information of order contacts.

So I'd love to borrow your Rolodex role and, and you also, Nathan. Um, how did you guys manage to get all these people on board, and, and how did you find them and how did you know, like what their skill sets were and everything?

Nathan: Uh, just doing enough time. So I had the details for all of the theme camps that came, um, from various forms, like, you know, stuff that we've used for Seed for Burn of Sydney and surrounds, which I used to run, uh, third degree and the like.

So, you know, I've got the connections to people who, you know, lead the [00:28:00] teams that bring the magic to burns. Uh, so yeah, leverage that. Uh, artists that I, I knew might wanna bring something. Uh, a lot of leads from, you know, being Crew Wrangler for seed and third degree. Uh, so knowing the skill sets of people, especially, uh, and even those that haven't, like, worked at those with me, you know, if someone's recommended, someone's amazing that I'm like file it away.

Like, oh, cool. Like if X is never available, then uh, I'd get like y to come in and be the lead of a, a team at seed, for example.

Cris: Yeah, I think there's a lot of, um, we have a lot of crossover, don't we? Like most of us go to more than one burn, and a lot of us are involved in organizing or bringing art or playing music or DJing or like.

So, uh, yeah, there's a lot of, lot of connection.

Nathan: Yeah. Look, I, I think one of the first things I did was to see if the hots, uh, Canberra, burns fa uh, famous giant space heater, they ki like 40 people sleeping around at warm on the winter solstice in Canberra, you know, half cut down forest. [00:29:00] Uh, they were like the first people that I contacted to see if they wanted to come to embers that we could get them a, an art grant.

Roland: Yeah. I, I, I didn't really know anyone, to be honest, so I didn't know Ali or Felipe before I came to Embers. Um, it, it's, it's one of those like two and three start degrees of separation things. Philipp uh, Stevan, where someone knows someone who knows someone. It's only like three people between everyone here.

Nathan: Yeah. However good my Rolodex is.

Stevan: And usually those relationship takes time to build as well. But, uh, it was fascinating how you got all these people together and I guess with the, this point on seed, people really wanted something to happen. So yeah, it just, all the stars aligned. It was just beautiful.

Cris: I, I kind of wonder if things worked so beautifully Again, like coming back to the, the 10 principles, you know, and the fact that, um, it's a, it's a, it's a different way of relating to people.

I don't know if that's why Rollie has landed in Burner World and, um, it's, [00:30:00] for me that's the case is that it's such a different environment where you feel like you can talk to anyone and you do develop friendships and relationships with people that seem deeper than the normal. So perhaps that has something to do with the, the way that people and stepped up and, and the level of commitment and drive and, and devotion to the delivering such an amazing event, how that came about.

Stevan: Do you think it's also the idea of the renegade where you, you have experienced burners, you have people that know what they're doing and you know, the, the example of that is Burning Man Renegade, um, event that took place during the COVID years without the organization of the, the org itself. So if we're gonna call this a renegade, um, like the previous Renegade that we have, um, it seems like we've been here before.

Cris: Yeah, I, I did actually hear recently that, um, the first renegade in Nevada was not. Sort of an, an approved, you [00:31:00] know, by the Borg, whatever. Um, and the second one they were like, sure thing. You know, do do what you're gonna do. Just be safe. But yeah, totally. People like sort of, you know, living outside the law kind of thing, you know, the in inad commas and yeah, it's, it felt really good and a bit freeing maybe to, to be a part of delivering this in such a fast turnaround.

Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. It was a funny thing where we had like to use seed as the example, uh, SBA, Sun Burnt Arts, kind of the, the managing group. Uh, we had 80% of them attending in some capacity or another, be it theme camp leads or whatever else, uh, had, uh, three quarters of SBE sunburn events, um, two of which very much doing, you know, half of the decision making and everything else, same as they would've done a burning seed, but we just didn't take on some of the other headaches that would come with the entire organization where we just needed to get something out to bring the community together in a space of a few weeks.

So, uh, yeah. Yeah. Renegade certainly. But, uh, yeah, very [00:32:00] much taking the, the skills and expertise of so much of the community who would've been putting their energy into seed, for example. Yeah. Couldn't do it without them.

Roland: Yeah. Oh, before I forget, it might be a good time to give a special shout out to the call crew who helped organize this.

Probably should put this at the beginning, but it was really, um, I could, I did a bit, but it was really Nugby Ali, Felipe and Arian who really stepped up into these core roles and there was so many, like late Yeah. And so many, you know, admin stuff that they got roped into. So really appreciate what they did.

Nathan: Yeah. And

Stevan: is that, is that, how, is that what encouraged you to also move forward? Move ahead and also think, you know, how this could be, um, you had that vision, but to accomplish it you need the support.

Roland: Oh, yeah. Like it was great to have a few people who really experienced with putting on burner events and knew how things should happen and to be able to have the confidence to tell you no, that's not a good idea.

For example. And people with all the contacts of various type [00:33:00] types of roles. Yeah. Without them it would not have happened.

Stevan: But what, what's some of the ideas that you had?

Roland: Well, mostly involving fire Stevan. So I wanted a 10 meter tall temple and apparently that was not safe and various other things. And I think I was a bit over ambitious with how many people I wanted to invite initially.

And I was told after kind of successive beatings down that I was being a bit too much. So we eventually land on three 50 to four 50 people, is the max capacity. And a four meter temple has been semi-legal, lots of other things.

Stevan: So you had some interesting chats with Reagan?

Him? Yeah. Interesting. Because, because, um, yeah, when, when Reagan said that he, he submitted a, uh, a, a temple plan to you guys and it was approved and I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. I thought, yeah, this, this is on, this is on like Donkey Kong, like we're gonna do this. So bought the [00:34:00] ticket and that's when I start, started getting excited.

And then all these, um, all these updates and posts started happening and there was even like a backstory, like, what do you, like, there's a whole canon of history of, you know, let's, let's talk about that for a bit, because I'm confused.

Nathan: All you roly.

Roland: Oh, is this the SBA and dugangs thing?

Nathan: Definitely the dugongs.

Roland: Alright, well look, uh, again, it was like one of those like, uh, spur of the moment. I'm pissed off. Let's make fun of this type of post. And a day later I realized it was excellent marketing. So I thought we'd just keep going with it until people got sick of it. And it turns out they didn't get sick of it.

They got really into it. So, uh, I think it was based on the post I made in the Canberra Burners page saying, Hey, people come along to the Burning Seed Renegade event. And pre, within the week or so after that, I got barely firm messages from, uh, [00:35:00] members of the book saying that this is, uh, a breach of copyright and you're at risk of being, you know, uh, having legal action, uh, as a result unless you take down these posts or modify what you say, rah, rah, rah.

And then I kind of made a giant late night, very long ranty, fuck you everyone. Please address all legal correspondence to the dugongs Western Australia. Um, I dunno why I thought dugongs, I thought just dugong sounded funny like a dugong. It's kind of weird. It's kind of Australian. And then we end up at a whole bunch of dugong themed stuff and a dugong resistance sprung up and rah rah, Felipe and Ali got really, really into it.

Yeah. So Felipe eventually ended up as the Dugong King and Ali led the resistance from the sidelines.

Nathan: Yeah. I never expected when we started just cracking jokes about this. Definitely not related to SBA at all. Um, uh, and it would end up with Felipe getting smashed in the face with a, uh, a pie. Uh, [00:36:00] we were meant to have.

Um, yeah, boys crowning, uh. Or Neil had ducked off to the toilet just before his queue to start playing. You gotta fight for your right to party and have that whole thing turned to a dance party after. But, uh, never would've seen that coming from where it started.

Roland: Uh, outta curiosity for people who weren't like in the dugong kind of sphere, uh, maybe Cris, how, how confusing was it from the outside?

Cris: Uh, that for me, like I, I was seeing the posts and the messages, but I, I, I think I was heading to bonza the weekend before and I had all this other stuff on. I just had, I could not get into that. Like I was, I just was like, I don't know what's happening there. I I've missed something somewhere along the line and I'm not really sure, but, you know, it looks like fun.

Uh, and yeah, totally. It seemed to work and I, I love that there, there were stickers that came out of it and, and that whole thing, and a bit of rivalry perhaps. Uh, but yeah, [00:37:00] I, I really think that, you know, having contact from the Borg and, and running a renegade that is gold, like, that's awesome. They couldn't have like, given you, you know, more help if they tried, you know,

Stevan: and for the listeners, uh, the, the actual board actually did aro, um, come to embers as well and enjoy themselves.

So.

Okay, let's talk more about the logistics and all, all the admin, I guess the paperwork, all the, all the stuff that, you know, it comes, comes with holding a festival or event or, you know, a gathering. Um, talk to us about some of the things you experienced, some of the challenges.

Roland: Well, I, I mean, probably it, it's kind of hard to split up.

I mean, you can divide it with the stage of the carve event. So initially it was about recruiting people into team leads and luckily Ally and Felipe and Nugby and Shiny knew a lot of people and we were able to get most of those [00:38:00] filled within the first week or two. Um, I, Farley was a real struggle though. I dunno the backstory of, I've seen a lot of the burning seeds, uh, fart leads got pissed off about the entire being seed situation and went to hide for a bit.

Um, but I was really lucky I had this, uh, old mate. Of um, old uni mate called Miles, he rocked up so he is a fireman, so we got him into it anyway, and apart from that was, uh, sight. So I spent probably a decent week, um, just driving up and down new Sales Wales looking for sight. And Aven remembered this old Scout camp I went to when I was in year nine or something, and I thought, oh yeah, it's a cool isolated spot, and reached out and the guy was actually pretty happy with us.

That's Steve at Weissman's Ferry. Uh, I mean after that, like in terms of the admin stuff, uh, probably Nugby could talk more about it, but we ended up with a giant mess of Excel sheets, so many Google docs.

Nathan: I was so glad when Jeremy put the, the sheet of the links to all of the other sheets, uh, into one of them because yeah, we built those out to a [00:39:00] fair extent.

But yeah, like we had a lot of spreadsheets. Uh, it really helped. We had like a, a core one. Uh, so that'd be like our high level schedule. What are the expenses that we've accrued so far? So it was very much rolling, just filling this out. So like we knew what was going on around a lot of things. Uh, one for the theme camps where they like put in their details, uh, have the schedule events for them, uh, throughout, including like who gets to play in the hallway, when the most contentious of things, and, uh, one with the leads and all the information that we're gonna need.

So we at least spread those out in three separate things. Uh, but then so many things like here's all the pictures from the site visit, uh, here is, you know, pitches from a previous event, run location. Uh, here is so many different versions of the map that, uh, Jeremy and Rowan were putting together. But, um, yeah, uh, technology wise and as tech lead, I ever embarrassed, uh, so many Messenger chats, so many just Google sheets.

Uh, but very quick and easy to spin up given the three or so [00:40:00] weeks we're working in. And yeah, all traceable and all technology that everyone involved knew how to use, even if we're all like, be nice to have something shiny.

Roland: Yeah, the Facebook Messenger chat's an absolute cluster fuck. Um, so I think we end up with about six versions of the same chat by the end, just like with slightly different people in it.

And then I think a few of of us almost went mad by the amount of Facebook messages we were getting just constant pings. Yeah. So if we do this again, uh, that's how we, those are the two main tech things we have to fix.

Nathan: Yeah. Like we'd have things like, you know, have the FFS, like the five of us board level kind of thing.

Then we'd have little ones with like, you know, that same chat but with say socials and, um, admin effectively added to it. And just like larger and larger concentric circles, depending like what conversations needed, like so that you didn't have too many people added to a chat to make a decision quickly.

But, uh, yeah, it meant that we were just in [00:41:00] so many chats. Like Ali Reckoned, she was in 60 of them.

Stevan: With the site. Um, did you, uh, what were you guys looking for? Did you get any ad advice, suggestions on, on where to find things or what to look out for or mm-hmm. Who to contact?

Roland: Yeah, it's a funny story.

Nathan: We got a spreadsheet for that.

So yeah, we

Roland: had the spreadsheet and I went to a few of them and had a look them, and I think it was someone from, uh, what was it, sunset Town or something. Someone knew someone who knew of this Wiseman's place as well, and they reached out to Steve, the Wiseman's guy said, Hey, we are legit. We're not a do, we're not gonna wreck the place.

Um, so that was really nice. So it was between this, uh, place of Wiseman's eventually, uh, the Loop place along the Puffy road.

Nathan: Yeah. So we'd looked at Jesus, uh, I'll just add them together to count them up. But, uh, yeah, 24 different venues that were considered, I don't wanna know how many you went and visited row, but, uh, yeah.

Roland: Ah, yeah.

Nathan: Um, yeah, A perfect spot. [00:42:00] Trash Mansion had held it, uh, what was it called in moonshine? They edge at this place. Peachy. One of the theme camps had a lot of events there. Uh, things like Sydney Contest Fest, many yoga festivals, women's roots festival, other things that had been at the site. Uh, so we were able to chat with say, cat cowling from, um, the Alchemy of Sin who, uh, has run Love fest stuff there.

For example, uh, Rowan being a core member of Peachy, Jessica Mackin, who came to her first burn but had run an event there herself. Uh, we had so many people who knew the site well, knew what to do with little things, like even like getting power around site kind of thing. Like, oh yeah, you unplugged the dishwasher and plug a sound system into it.

Sort of like level of detail that we had a lot of confidence in the site even before getting there.

Stevan: Uh, I would think that with that limited amount of time that you guys had, uh, looking for a site that is al already half built, I guess, uh, this facilities amenities already there. I, I, I thought the site was great.

One, one of the things that I loved was, [00:43:00] besides the who, the kitchen and like the communal space was probably the bungalows as well. And that's probably a good benefit for interstate travelers or overseas travelers that can come to some of some of these events. Yeah. Without stressing about camping gear.

Nathan: Yeah. Probably a nice to have in the end, we would've been just as happy with a place that didn't have them. But, uh, yeah. Uh, I think like the next nearest option with, uh, hu Valley, uh, would've had, uh, kinda a road going through it with a bunch of like motorbikes and stuff. So in leaving as late as we had, and I have the same recommendation for anyone running a burn on short notice, like your location options are so limited that, uh, if you get things like, you know, uh, having these bungalows and stuff on site, you go, okay, how do we use this?

Uh, things like renting them out, uh, and ensuring that like there's a little bit of profit added on so that, uh, people can use them, but that money goes back into funding the theme camps at the end of it, which was our approach.

Roland: Yeah. It, it like really shocks and surprises me how hard it is to find the site in Australia.

Like, we have a country [00:44:00] that's so big and so sparsely populated and trying to find a couple of fields is somehow almost impossible. It's bizarre.

Cris: Well, I think that's really probably an issue with insurance really, and risk. Um, and like Roly, were you the person who kind of held that risk, uh, on your shoulders?

Did I hear right?

Roland: Yeah, not, not like knowingly. Initially I thought, oh yeah, this will be fun. And then I realized, oh yeah, who's, who gets sued? Oh yeah, that's me.

Cris: Yeah.

Roland: Um, yeah, I think a lot of the issues are more to do with councils really like you to have an event you that's kind, articulated, you need to da from a council and get one of those, um, is really tough.

Cris: Totally. Um, yeah, I mean, we've all heard, you know, the, the struggles with festivals these days. Um, yeah, it's definitely a challenge. Um, yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. It's like Wisemans can go up to 500 people. They've got existing das in space for that because they've been [00:45:00] through all of the hard work. But it means like, I, I've got a friend out past on the Blue Mountains who'd love to have something at his place but doesn't want to go through that da thing to, to make his site even an option.

Uh, which is an absolute shame because we have such a beautiful country and yeah, we just need enough grass to all gather together and make something beautiful.

Stevan: Uh, okay. Shall we go for another break? Okay. Let's go for another break and we'll listen to some more embers, voice messages. We'll be right back.

Oboat: This is oboat. I'm from Enmore in Gadigal country, and I love being part of something that's larger than myself. Part of a emergent, beautiful thing that happens when all these cool people get together and want to have a great time. It's nothing quite like it, and I've gotten addicted to it, and I fucking love it.

Ben: Hi, my name's Ben. I run the Red Earth Brewery theme camp. [00:46:00]

Anita: Hello, my name's Anita and I'm really not good with public speaking. I'm just doing this because Steve asked me nicely.

Leon: Hello, this is Leon. Run your name, lasagna of Duty. 1, 2, 1, 2. Um,

well, we did it this year. Um, it wasn't easy. I can tell, uh, from what I've heard, what I've seen or how exhausted some people were and yet everyone pulled through. Um, I'm standing right in front, the Linger Breakfast. People are eating pancakes. Some of them are naked, some of them are wearing tutu's. Some of them are wearing some incredible stuff.

Uh, Steven with me, uh, my Ranger fellow. I wish you all, uh, a happy life and, uh, be the best. Fuck the rest. [00:47:00] Amen. Thank you.

Julian: Hey, uh, hey guys. Uh, Julian. Julian Matthews a, uh, ex Sunset Island. Sunset town, swing dog. Gu time. Let's not talk about that. But, uh, that was great too. Uh, yeah. Also did, uh, I did Dragon last 2019 was Dragon.

Uh, but, uh, yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm, I'm poly, probably poly polyus, but not polyamorous. Uh, if you know me, you know me. If you don't, you don't. Uh, yeah.

Nina: Hi, I'm Nina. I am 10 years old and I came here from Belmont, which is about two hours away. And I, what I say, what do I say? Um, I've gone to, I'd say, how many new friends have you made? 10 Burns. And I've, and so far I've made four [00:48:00] new friends in the first day, and I'm really excited to be here and for the burn tonight.

And I hope everyone has a good day.

Carmen: Hi, I am Carmen. I am 10 years old and I am coming from the bus. I live in a bus and I'm traveling around Australia. If you're 10 years old, that makes me older, makes me older than you. I live in a bus with my brother, my mom, and my lovely sweetheart. Dad, if you're hearing this, I love you very much to my mom and my dad.

My mom and my dad are the best. Um, okay. Uh, um, so we're actually, we actually came from Melbourne. We just left Melbourne. I'm very sad because I left all my friends and my community behind. But, um, I'm really glad that I get to explore Australia and I'm really [00:49:00] grateful that I will get to see all the wonders and new people over here with all the wonderful cultures and beautiful new faces, all of you.

And yeah. Um, what do I say next? That's it. That's it? Okay. Well, thank you. That's, uh, this is Carmen, Carmen Aguilar Edwards Nelson, but um, yeah.

Nat: Hello, my name is Nat. I'm from the Magic Temple here at beautiful, beautiful burning seed, mini amber, 2025. Let's just store, take a breath. Just take a moment, just closing your eyes. Let's all breathe in together, breathing into the heart.

Ah, just let it [00:50:00] out. Let's it out. Remind yourself to take it easy. Go with the flow. Let nature be your guide, and let the wind flow. Most importantly, be gentle. Be kind to your heart.

You are surrounded by the love, and I love you.

Kali: Hello everyone. I'm Kelly and I am at Embers. It's a beautiful little renegade diff that everyone has rallied, gifted and put on having a screaming time. And yeah, thank you community.

Elliot: I'm Elliot and four.

Raygun: I'm raygun. I just built a temple again. [00:51:00] That was all right,

Rooster: you next. So this is the sound of Sunday night Vern at Embers in a beautiful Hawkesbury River.

Trolleydog: And who are you?

Rooster: I'm Rooster.

Trolleydog: I'm Trolley Dog.

Rooster: Trolley Dog. It's a great name. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. So,

Stevan: alrighty, welcome back. I wanna talk more about the funding of the event. How, how, um, how, how it was funded, uh, because you, you guys were well equipped with, you guys had manuals, wristbands, maps, event guides, all the signage as well.

So those would've cost a lot of money. Um, how did you guys manage to get all the funding for this?

Roland: Um, like surprisingly enough, all those things that people remember, like nice wristbands, cool loop [00:52:00] booklets, a burning infantry, a burning temple. That's like pocket change for the cost of putting on this event.

So it's like a 50 something K budget at the end of the day. Uh, niche. I thought it was probably gonna be more like 20, which was a bit awkward. Uh, but like the main cost is the venue, this sort of thing. It kind of goes back into that thing I mentioned before. It's so difficult to find the site, um, because the council das, once you find the site, they really jack up the fees.

So about, you know, like two thirds of the total ticket price money all went to site for this one. Uh, so it's just really amazing. Hmm. Um, oh, in terms of money, so the initial, uh, seed money was from me, and then we just relied on the car ticket sales coming in. So it was like kind of scary looking about ticket sales in that, um, undiscovered ticket sale website just sitting there.

Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. No, it was incredible, like undiscovered, uh, uh, burner run, uh, ticketing platform. And, um, yeah, you could make two withdrawals before the event happened from that up to 80% of the, the ticket sales as [00:53:00] such. So, uh, at the time it came to, you know, put the money down with, uh, Steve and Wiseman's, uh, just pulled 22 grand straight out of, uh, undiscovered and uh, went from there.

Stevan: Yeah. And the ticketing was, the ticket price was $180, so the breakdown of that was spread to the theme camps too. The art grants as well. What?

Roland: Yeah, so money-wise, I guess like after we paid for the fixed costs, which were venue and various kind of, you know, wristbands and swag and all that sort of stuff and stuff for the Temple effigy and various kind of teams, initially allocated about three grand for art budget, initially think it would be a 20 K 30 K event.

And we were really lucky 'cause SBA came out kind of within the last week or so, um, saying that they had, they were quite keen to help out or really from the beginning they were quite keen to help out, but they were only really in earnest in the, you know, a week or so before. Saying, Hey, we're having this board meeting.

We've agreed two and a half grand for you guys for to contribute to our grants, which is really nice. Um, 'cause at the time I [00:54:00] was thinking that this event was probably gonna be a fair bit deficit. And then in terms of theme count grants, so the main reason why we're able to give theme count grants this year was we weren't able to get insurance.

Uh, so now the insurers that I carved made various applications for last minute were keen to insure the event, mostly for weird variety of reasons. So I think one of the main ones didn't want to insure us because it was a BY alcohol event, which is like kind of weird. Like every camping event is BYO and then a whole bunch of people worried about fire and then a whole bunch for various kind of bullshit safety reasons and wanting us to highest professional security, this, that, the other.

So yeah, so we ended up with the 10 grand grand, uh, positive from that. Uh, so, you know, eight grand or so for theme count grants was pretty good. And it kind of got broken up by like how big the theme grant, uh, theme cat was, how many people, what did they do? I generally kind of worked out as, I kind of forget the numbers, but it was like 200 bucks for a micro camp.

Uh, so like, you know, four or five people and the three by three marquee, uh, [00:55:00] 500 bucks for a medium sized one. So things like space camp or spice, uh, those sorts of things. The grander bit for the bigger theme camps. So like Devon Lounge, Devon Ed, those sorts of things. Yeah,

Nathan: yeah. So effectively, you know, we weren't looking to save any money at the end of it.

Uh, it literally just went straight into the theme camps. So, uh, it was, yep. Cool. We've got X leftover. How do we give this up, uh, from the start, said, yeah, this is gonna go to the theme camps. We don't have an upfront, uh, uh, we don't have an up upfront in Cam Grant, but you know, if we don't make a terrible loss, like, wanna thank you guys and like put the money back in York Coffers for future bones.

Hopefully you can take it to see it next year or whatever else.

Stevan: And we had 16 theme camps, uh, registered on the map. How did you manage to bring all these theme camps together?

Nathan: Just contacted them. Uh, the week that we started organizing the event, uh, I just went up to every one of them. Just scrolling across if there's any who, uh, reset.

Uh, so I've gotta give credit to, um, uh, Tash. Uh, she hadn't been to a burning seed since [00:56:00] 2018, but just heard about it. Uh, was going on was maybe just in bringing in an art, uh, thing and then turned into a whole theme camp and dragged a whole bunch of, uh, first time burns along with her nunchuck slayers, uh, was Nicole who'd normally be with mine sub uh, bringing a little theme camp kind of thing.

Uh, I wanted to teach people how to use nunchucks until even we were like, okay, maybe demonstrations only. But yeah, so many kinda existing great, uh, theme camps who got the details of, so I was able to be like, Hey, you can't go to seed this year. Would you like to come across to this?

Roland: Yeah. Like, I think we were lucky in the low ways.

So Philippe was pretty senior in Devon Lounge, so the biggest sound camp. And as soon as people hear that Devon Lounge were coming, a lot of people were quite keen to come.

Nathan: Yeah.

Roland: And then I knew Dale pretty well from third degree, and Dale was really supportive from the start of this event. Um, and he brought Debonair.

And from there, you know, once you have a few big camps coming and people have an idea that, you know, the [00:57:00] event's gonna happen, it's gotta be fun. There's gonna be sound and music. A lot of the other camps came along too. Yeah. And we had, you know, people like Jeremy Funk, our psych guy who runs, uh, what's it called, the coffee place?

Bourg. Yeah. Yeah. So just kind of grew from there.

Cris: Um, just before you mentioned, um, you're talking about the, gosh, what was it? Uh, the handbooks that, that we had and, and like there was, there was like the programs, uh, I think there were some printed ones were there.

Nathan: Yeah. Goldie made like 30 printed ones.

Cris: Yeah. I just wanted to send a, a shout out to Goldie because, you know, thank, thank God for people who have real life skills like that, that they're willing to volunteer in that, in that way. I know she did a lot of work, um, to make things look really good and, um, yeah, it was, that was a, a big part in, in how it all sort of came together in that way.

So big, big up to, uh, to Goldie.

Nathan: Yeah, very much so. What were, when guides, survival guides, uh, pulling information [00:58:00] out of artists and theme camp leads is never the easiest thing, especially on that kind of short notice. Yeah. And so much other stuff with social media and graphic design, honestly, like everything looked so much better for her input.

Cris: Yeah. She did a great job and she had a, a theme camp as well.

Nathan: Yeah.

Roland: Yeah. It's a really good costume remix too. It's like decent sized, good quality stuff.

Nathan: It's a shame. I go over there and everyone's instantly like, oh, Nugby, get up. We wanna see you, uh, try on some of the clothes. And I'm like, ah, as someone famed for not wearing costumes at these things, uh, like, should have known never to get near this.

Cris: Actually, I found it really strange because I donated a bunch of clothes and then I saw them on people, and I was like, oh, wow, that's really familiar. Oh my God, it's mine. Woo. Yay. Yeah, she did great.

Stevan: That was a bit funny. Yeah. What, what else were your highlights of, of theme camps? Cris? Did you, did you get to all of them?

Cris: I did not. I did not. Mm. I was, I was in greeter's land for maybe half the, the time, I'm not [00:59:00] sure. Um, and then I, yeah, so I was, yeah, it was, it was big. But, um, Devon Lounge, I, I just loved, I met some beautiful people at Devon Lounge, some first time burners who, um, completely rocked my world. They took me down there, uh, in the early hours of the morning to, um, make a little memorabilia spoon.

And, uh, yeah, it was, it was lovely. So, yeah. Yeah, I, that was my main kind of memory was, uh. Yeah. Was Devon Lounge? Yeah.

Stevan: That Spoon Making workshop was so popular and I, I, I remember it being at, at Maverick as well. So Devon Lounge, um, they first appeared at Maverick and that was their first burn as a group, as a, at a camp.

And that spoon making workshop was the best. And I, I loved how they, they brought that over here as well.

Cris: What a great setup. Really fun. Anyone else? Aon Anyone would just love hitting stuff.

Stevan: Did you make sppon Rollie?

Roland: I got several spins made for me. It's really [01:00:00] nice. It's like, it's, I mean, those crafty workshops I think are probably why the highlights 'cause people get really involved and that they can make something personal and they, they can take it away from the burn.

It's kind of like a nice memento reminder, you know?

Cris: And not only that, they get to meet people as they're sitting around making stuff, which is the really important thing. Yeah.

Stevan: And Cris, did you get a ride on the Uber Dreamboat boot?

Cris: I, I did not. I did not. Was that the kind of mattressy

Nathan: Yeah.

Cris: Thing. Yeah.

No, that was at third degree as well.

Stevan: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Oliver's um,

Cris: yeah. Didn't get to have a, a go. Did anyone else.

Nathan: Funnily enough, despite even putting in the Facebook group like this, this is finally gonna be the time after like signing off on this thing coming to like three burns now that I'm going to find time to get on it and not be stuck with a radio somewhere and failed.

Roland: Oh, Jesus Crist guys. That dream boat was the main reason [01:01:00] we didn't get insurance for this event. None of the insure wanted this event. Uh, and one of the main complaints was that this dreamboat thing didn't have an engineer certificate.

Cris: Oh no.

Nathan: Even if I never go on the amount of smiling faces I saw on it from like across the paddock at all times, I, I'm so glad it's there.

I love that thing. Like Oliver does an amazing job bringing it amazing.

Stevan: The kids loved it, I'll tell you that. They loved it. Yeah.

Cris: I, I actually did bring my bike this time. I've got a foldable bike and uh, that was a lot of fun. And, uh, I encourage people if it happens again to bring bikes because, um, yeah, it's what's more than, um, being at, to burn, uh, than having a bunch of people on bikes hooning around.

Stevan: Yeah, its, and also some of the art cars. So we had the dream boat. There's also, can't remember, what was it called? It was David's, uh, creation,

Nathan: uh, the hungry Caterpillar I think.

Stevan: Yeah. Had had a oven there, had people in making scones and pretty cool. So yeah, people did bring their shit. It was [01:02:00] amazing.

Nathan: It was a very good burn for eating, I must say, uh, between David, uh, cooking up a feast and, uh, space camp.

Us just keeping mery the Yeah, yeah. Just keeping me fed up throughout the burn.

Stevan: Yeah, that's what I loved about the community kitchen. You know, people can gather and I think it's important because a lot of people forget to eat, you know, um, you know, when they're on shift when they're working or just having a good time.

Cris: Yeah. There's nothing like a plate of bacon, um, coming your way when you haven't had to cook it.

Stevan: The, let's talk about the house of Rising saun. Did you guys go in for a sauna?

Nathan: Of course. No. Uh, I did. Even did the,

Stevan: they were high. They were my highlight and you know, I, I judged. So they, they also appeared at Underland last year?

Nathan: Yeah. I hadn't been certain if it was the same one. I remember the Saun, but, uh, yeah, I did the, the wonderful combination of going into the river, uh, and then the sauna and vice versa. But, uh, even more than the sauna [01:03:00] itself. Honestly, the music they were playing on Friday evening, they were the best anywhere on the burn.

I was like, oh, wow. I hadn't expected to get along to here, but I'm like, I'm gonna have to pull myself at some way at some point to get over to prohibition hour at Deon Air. But I'm like, I hope they stop playing this wonderful music first 'cause I can't leave.

Cris: Yeah. It was a great setup. A great setup. Very cool.

Roland: I had a sick fire barrel too.

Cris: They did.

Roland: It wasn't just, you know, you're playing old 200 liter oil drum. It was like really nicely carved angle grinder work

Stevan: and that vintage caravan. How amazing was that. Now Roly, you also had a theme camp as well. So tell us about, you know, your experience.

Roland: Well, yeah. Okay. So this is my first time running a theme camp and I thought it was being original by running a postal camp that apparently, actually a postal camp is one of the most common theme camps around.

And I know, so I liked Terry Pratchett and I thought I'd run a Terry Pratchett theme [01:04:00] postal camp to deliver mail round. And it came with like, kind of cool stationary, some stuff. I got custom made, various stamps and rubber stamps, uh, designed loop postage stamps as well. And we did like sign seals, all that sort of stuff.

And I think one of my favorite bits was just Ruth gushing over stationary. I'd never thought Ruth was into stationary and she gave me a half hour talk about how much he loves stationary. Yes, it was fun. And I had fun like creating this uh, loop postage box, which was basically from a stolen labor election call flutes, uh, spray painted red.

And I carved up into one of those old, um, antique style English postal boxes. Yeah. So it was pretty fun. And then Dane at the same time decided to launch his own rival postage postal cap opposite me. And I think towards the end of the Sunday or something, we had too much post to deliver, so we had like an extra 30 letters or something we couldn't be bothered.

So he just stuffed into Dane's postage box and left it di to sort out. And then at the very end, Dane told me that actually the burning seed postal service has been going on since [01:05:00] 2014, and he is now handed me the reins to the FA face Facebook page. So I can now certainly say the BSPS is the oldest thing, cap on the paddock.

Cris: Amazing.

Nathan: Actually taking us back to Ruth. Gotta give a shout out to Worst While Manner, uh, not only did they have like the best late night music kind of thing going on, you for me, goths, stompy kind of music. I remember every time we'd walking past it'd be like, oh, Nugby, get in here having a little picnic.

I'd just start feeding me up on like hors d'oeuvres and stuff. But, uh, but I think my highlight of the entire burn was probably the Sunday evening of the Gremlin Show.

Roland: Oh yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. So Sarah Bar and all that crowd, but especially Felipe getting in there and putting on the show, which I won't get in the details of 'cause they'll bring it to future burns and I don't want to have any spoilers.

Uh, but watching a a sexy Felipe get her groove back through the power of self-love has to be seen.

Cris: Nice. I was very happy to, uh, to [01:06:00] lend the three meter high, uh, giant vulva to the show. Um, they, they were happy they didn't have to bring their own, which I thought was good.

Nathan: Ah, it was used so well.

Cris: Nice.

Stevan: Yeah, it was, it was so well integrated into the storyline.

Cris: Awesome. I missed it, bummer.

Cool.

Stevan: Yeah, the community kitchen, the community cooking, that, that was great. Um, uh, and that's where we had a lot of shenanigans around as well, with, um, Jesus Crist.

Cris: Yes. Jesus Crist.

Stevan: So you, you were camping next to Drew. Um, Cris, uh, did you know this was happening? Did he like, was.

Cris: Yeah.

Stevan: Can you give you a preview of what was going on?

Cris: He did. He did. Um, he did let us know what was, what was gonna happen on Sunday. Yeah. What, what a great idea what a great guy. Like it was. It was amazing. Just hilarious. And I don't know if you saw his goose, uh, he was dressed up as a goose, like a seven foot goose. Uh, [01:07:00]

Stevan: well, it was the same outfit as Jesus Crist, but inverted.

Cris: Well, it was a little different, but Yeah. It, the, the hats and everything and the honking. Yeah. Fantastic. Uh, yeah. What a, what a guy, what a burner, what an experience. Fantastic.

Nathan: Yeah. I, I think having had the, the post embers survey, drew got called out as just the best thing about the burn more than any other person or thing across Jesus Crist, the geese, other things he was doing, just to be absolutely wonderful for anyone coming in.

Roland: It's really funny. Great. One liners. Mm.

Cris: Yeah. Hilarious.

Stevan: Also the acknowledged, the acknowledgement of country. Um, Rollie, um, you organized that as well, did you?

Roland: Uh, not really insofar as like finding people to know people to do things. So apparently this couple lived just across the river and so people knew about them.

Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. So Jess Macken, who I mentioned earlier, coming to her first burn, had run an event there previously. Um, [01:08:00] so she knew Uncle Cliffy Lyons, Colin Lyons, I apologize. And oh, was it Tabitha? I should definitely know this auntie. I know that she, uh, works on the ferries there, uh, during the week. But, uh, yeah, uh, local, able to talk through this stuff.

Uh, there was contingent over like their ability to give welcome or acknowledgement to country, which is, I've discovering organizing events a very common thing. Third degree goes through some similar stuff, but, uh, yeah, absolutely wonderful people. I've met Uncle Colin before, uh, with Good Space when we're having an event space over at, uh, Broadway.

Uh, him coming through, it was just like absolute highlight of my month kind of thing. Chatting with him and helping him get a carry around and do a bit of a smoking ceremony.

Stevan: Yeah, that was beautiful. Um, it was also, um, quite a chuckle. It was hilarious. I thought the whole presentation. Yeah. It brought, it brought a good vibe to the whole, you know, the whole weekend.

Nathan: Yeah. Just that couple into play, especially those two are [01:09:00] born show people love them.

Roland: Catchy old people actually. Yeah. Quite nice. Like, I remember seeing, um, you, you guys all know Rowan Co. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I'd never really met before and he always seemed like such a stern, serious guy. And Rowan actually broke down in tears during that thing.

He was like crying in the front row and it's like, yeah. Never seen that before. Mm.

Stevan: Did, uh, did Rowan also, um, had an art piece up in the hill. Oh, who bought, who bought the, the 10 principles, um, signage.

Roland: Yeah. March. So 10 principal signage was from Eska, so that was off the right of it. And the big kind of pseudo stained glass panels, uh, I think they're acrylic was all rowing.

So the lighting and the sound with it, and it was really top notch. Absolutely. Quality work.

Nathan: Yeah, it's really good. Like, because Rowan's done things there with Peachy before. He's always wanted to put something up there. Uh, for whatever reason they've never been able to. And we were like, yeah, fuck it. Go ahead mate.[01:10:00]

Stevan: Did anyone make that climb up the hill?

Roland: Yeah.

Stevan: Yeah. And saw the sun sunset and,

Roland: yeah, me a few mates at Sunset. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, it was really nice. 'cause like you could see the entire camp below and we were kind of joking about getting one of those giant lasers from Alibaba or something and just shining it down and, you know, fucking with people.

Just imagine Nugby giant laser.

Stevan: Yeah. This is God, God has spoken. Well it wasn't, wasn't that one of the, um, the ideas was, was putting that, those 10 principles up on the hill, so it it kind of like, um, the same message as the 10 principles. Um, sorry, the, the 10 Commandments.

Roland: Oh, hadn't thought about that. Me neither.

I think that was, well pretend that was our idea, Steven. We'll pretend that's our idea from that one.

Stevan: I thought it was a good, good joke. Um, yeah, the fuckery is is on point.

Nathan: Yeah. Chester and Rowan may well have had that exact idea and just, it's gone over me and rollie's heads. [01:11:00] I hope not everyone else is.

Stevan: And the other art piece that I thought was great and I've seen it before was, uh, star Child's, um. How do you pronounce it? Is it the Anter pyramid? It became sort of like a, sort of like a, a focal point of, of the whole night, of the whole site because it's, it's was so bright. It was great.

Nathan: Yeah. I was just glad, like he was over at Africa Burn, uh, when all of this was originating.

But I, I went okay, like who do I know with hell? Little time we have who has an artwork maybe existing that I think they'd be able to bring. So we've got some art and yeah, star Child was like the first artist locked in. Uh, as soon as he's on and like I have complete confidence in him to be in another country, but still managed to make that work and deliver on site.

'cause I've worked with him so many times. Uh, yeah, I was very glad and I love that thing. Like, you can make it so many different sizes or whatever else, but it's just such an easy thing to see off the distance. You always, you know, kept that as your guiding star coming around from the north side of camp towards the sound camps.[01:12:00]

It's like, yep, just follow that thing and just keep it slightly to the left, uh, that you can see it from anywhere. And it's such a beautiful wind break if you just wanna find somewhere to meet people, like in the center, uh, just like sit there protected from the elements and just like chat in a little group, uh, even aside from just how beautiful it is.

Roland: Yeah. Fun fact. I think I'd like, uh, what was the, probably the third draft of the map. We had this anter in pyramid right next to the temple in that same spot. And as soon as soon as I was told how big this anterium pyramid was, it was like five meters. I was like, fuck, this has gotta be way too big. Let's go overshadow the temple.

Nathan: Yeah.

Roland: Which is only meant to be soft limit four meters. Uh, so that's why the temple got moved to where it was, um, on that kind of corner of the paddock, near the five pitch area.

Stevan: So what's the background on, on the temple design, um, with Reagan's design and what kind of, uh, things did, did you that wanted any, any um, moderations or any fly, uh, on the fly [01:13:00] kind of designs?

Roland: Oh yeah, yeah. This is kind of a funny story. So the initial idea was, um, so Reagan came forward saying, Hey, I am keen to be temple lead. And Leanna Pugliese had this really cool idea of a, um, what's it called? It's kind of a. Geometric geodesic kind of design that'd seen online. And initially we were just gonna copy paste it.

It was this American thing, it was all in feet and inches. And Reagan being a crazy guy as he is thought, fuck no, I'm not gonna copy that design, I'm going to reconstruct it all on my own from first principles using trigonometry. So he spent like several days, I have no idea how the sky works, he's probably working 24 7 or something.

Cris: Love it.

Roland: Um, cackling each angle of one of those triangles from first principles and how long they are. And when he finished all that, we then told him we wanted another meter and a half taller and hewart me. It's like, fuck sec. Um, yeah. So we ended [01:14:00] up with that big frame. Uh, so that was the central kind of IC design.

And then the day after that I said, Hey, re would it be cool if we had like Lou Triangles on the outside? He is like, oh fuck no, this has got double the work Roly. So we ended up having big triangles on the outside and it came up like this weird kind of, I know it's weird, kind of, I don't know, some sort of plant shapey thing with the things on the sides.

And then towards the end of it we thought, oh, it's not gonna burn too well. 'cause it'll be just a whole bunch of sticks with air in between. So I was looking round for bits of cloth and like Reagan said, it's gonna be about 200 meters worth of cloth. I thought, uh, it's gonna be a bit much to buy like Lin Craft cro cloth of 10 me.

10 a meter. Um, so ended up making a Facebook poach on the page being like, Hey, does anyone know what's the cheapest cloth that's available? And I think it must have been beer or Ruth who said, uh, cheesecloth. So a dollar meter. So we go a couple hundred meters of cheesecloth, which is like really thin cotton stuff.

And you can so thin you can just poke your pinky finger through it without any effort. [01:15:00] And, uh, me, Ray and a bunch of the others spent, uh, a couple of days stapling it all together at my Nan's site, Nan's place in Roseville before we moved across. And there's an absolute pain to get forced it all together because as we are building it, the L triangles and parallel little grams didn't work come together.

So we ended up having to use more and more kind of clamps towards the top just to force the flaming theme together. Yeah, it was fun.

Stevan: And, and what was the effect you were going for? Something like a smurf, like a blue light kind of effect or something?

Roland: Oh no, I thought we just saw it look cool, so we thought we'd go for it.

Initially we were meant to have a whole bunch of lighting on it too at nighttime. Uh, towards the end, Rowan just came out with some white lighting. Um, I did have this idea of having all these weird, uh, cool effects, but I never got round to it. So next time

Stevan: it's, it's, it's your first renegade, your first burn.

So yeah, it's understandable.

Roland: Other things, um, oh yeah. So the blue flame. So there was an idea to have a balloon flame with it. So to pull this copper salt on the thing to make it go blue. [01:16:00] So on the last day, um, we sprinkled all this copper sulfate, like 200 bucks worth of copper sulfate from a local, a, uh, agricultural shop all over the thing.

And it did not make a spec difference.

Stevan: Yeah, you probably need more, more, more assistance.

Roland: Yeah. A thousand bucks worth of copper sulfate next time.

Stevan: Yeah. But it would've, it, it, it would've, would look fantastic, I thought. You know, like the whole blue effect. The whole blue flame. Yeah.

Roland: Hmm. I do have an idea for next time. We'll see.

Stevan: All right. So let's, let's take another break.

Um, let's hear some more embers, voice messages.

Kanal: My name is Kanal. I am from Melbourne. I'm traveling up the coast and unfortunately couldn't go to the big burn, but very stoked that this happened. It was lovely to meet all the beautiful people here. It's great to meet community and catch up with new [01:17:00] folks coming from a different town, bit of a party.

Glad these kind of events can still go ahead. Oh yeah. Looking forward to more of them. Love everyone. Big love all the burners out here, all the beautiful energy that they bought. Hope to see you all soon.

Dane: Good day. This is dangerous here. It was freezing cold last night. Everything was frosty white this morning. I think I'd like to do a burn in warmer weather. So looking forward to next September. See you there.

Laura: Yeah. Let's see. I don't have much to say in this moment. It's been a very good burn. My first burn here with a little baby, she's five and a half months old, you'll probably hear in the background, [01:18:00] which is why my mind's a little distracted, thinking she's waking up. Really nice new experience, felt very held by the community in that this is a first festival for me where I haven't been partying, been sober and caretaking, and was so nourished by sauna and massage and conversation and yoga.

And there's a whole other side of the festival experience that is not the party side of the festival. So that was wonderful. Look forward to many more and really happy and grateful for this experience yet again. Do you wanna? Yeah. Yes. My name is Laura and I'm mostly from Melbourne.

Tarsha: We are recording now. Um, this is Tasha. I am returning back to the burn after many, many years, I suppose away. Um, and it's really beautiful to [01:19:00] come back and see many familiar faces and new faces and yeah, just sharing art and creativity and community and the collective weirdness is wonderful. So thank you.

Thank you everyone.

Ricky: Hello, I am Ricky. I'm from Mexico and this is my first regional burn and my, uh, and I have been three times to the big burn and I definitely do see the difference, but it is absolutely beautiful to be here. Uh, thank you very much to Ro who organized this whole thing. He took a lot of work.

He's a good man and I look forward to seeing you all, uh, the next time.

Orbit: Hello there. This is Orbit coming to you from the depths of the embers, we are the end of the ashes blowing into the wind. It is time, time to [01:20:00] relight, to kindle the flame to hold it close until the next burn. We are packing down now and it's been a lovely time and I hope that you all have a great time too.

Lucas: Hey, this is, uh, Lucas coming in from, uh, embers. Bit of a success taking down the Devon Lodge. Uh, I think we're gonna be out a few before it rains. Thanks for having me. Bye.

Steve: Uh, Steve from Sydney and just had a awesome burn. Every time I go, I learn something new about myself and just love this place. Love this community.

Goldie: Uh, no one is youer than you and that is your superpower and you can embody that to the fullest at a burn. I'm Goldie and I'm from Canberra and I run costume remix my first [01:21:00] time. Oh yes. This is my first time bringing my own theme camp to a burn and it has been spectacular. I am, uh, filled with wonder and gratitude and so much deep, deep satisfaction, uh, and appreciation and can't wait to see where this goes over the next couple of years.

Um, watch this space.

Sven: Hi, this is Sven from Costume Remix and I've had a wonderful time here at a burn and um, I really love the, uh, strong sense of community that is here present at the Burns and, um, very [01:22:00] warm and very welcoming. And um, I'm not from the area, but I love coming here 'cause I always feel welcome and I always feel like there's friends ready to meet.

AJ: It is AJ here from Helens burg and it's a dreamy Monday morning after four very pleasant days, connecting and sharing and caring, and I'm feeling right, full up with love and contentment to take into my week. So I hope there's some bliss in all of your days and see you soon.

Nick: My name's uh, piglet and I'd like to share the love and spread some respect to the people of the burn.

Always deliver, always over deliver back, once again with a renegade master. D four Damager power to the people.

Alistair: Hello. Hello, hello, this is Alistair last day of the Burn. [01:23:00] Doing cleanup, duty of all the art

burn was great. Lovely people, a lovely community.

Stevan: Okay, we're back. I want to talk about the 10 principles in action at Embers. So a great example I saw was, um, the communal effort of, of people lifting. Carrying the temple to, its, to its place where we can burn it. So it took a lot of, uh, human power.

Nathan: I just love that Warren, the guy who did most of the, the leading the instructions of that was that his first burn.

But, uh, uh, Raygun was just sitting around chilling, just watching the rest of us carrying it. And he was just like, alright, here's how we can spin it. And just like understood all the, uh, logistics of it, but it worked. Yeah. Uh, communal effort for me is the greatest of all principles. It's without people doing the, the hard work, [01:24:00] uh, either on the ground or in spreadsheets or whatever else, building the framework of a burn, like the magic can't shine through.

Like it's all of the leads, all of the theme camp leads, artists, everyone else kind, bringing their role. That kind of makes the wonder.

Cris: Yeah. And this, this was such a great example of, of communal effort, just Amber's being delivered in such a short term turnaround.

Nathan: Oh. And of course immediacy safe such a short turnaround.

Roland: Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah. I, I, I don't know, like personally, I feel the entire 10 principles things is a bit kind of overblown in some ways. So like, I mean, I feel like sometimes people focus on it too much to the exclusion of just like having a fun time and not taking things too seriously. Like, uh, yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. I actually really,

Stevan: that's why it's not a burn.

It's, it was a renegade,

Nathan: no, it was a burn. I will fight to the death on this one. Uh, I had not seen the not of burn sign, uh, until after the burn. [01:25:00] Uh, but I've been yelled at it for Burning Man for too many other words, not to, uh, call this one a burn.

Stevan: That was a great, great signage. Yeah, great signage.

Cris: Was that, um, was that the, at the sign at greeters?

Nathan: Yeah, I believe so.

Cris: The, not the Notter Burn. Yeah. Thanks. That was my idea. Thank you very much.

Stevan: Oh, well done.

Cris: I'm definitely claiming that. Um, yeah, look, I, I think, uh, I, I do have to disagree there ten burning my principles, uh, mean a lot to me personally and, and I think set the whole environment up to be so special, you know?

But, you know, keeping in mind that, that Larry Harvey and the gang kind of created those when Kiwi Burn was first kicking off and, um, the organizer there was like, how do we, how do we, how do we get. Transfer the same experience from Nevada to New Zealand and that's, that's why they sort of, um, set about to kind of

Roland: Oh to that's so kicked off.

Cris: Yeah. To discover like, or to analyze like what makes Burning [01:26:00] Man in Nevada so amazing and that's why they come up with the 10 principles to kind of help that transfer to regions.

Nathan: Yeah. Like I really love it that people come in knowing, yeah, focus on like being your authentic self, being self-reliant, like not needing these other things, knowing that you're not gonna go there and buy those things.

Uh, you might find people who will gift you things, but you know, you're not relying on it. And any beautiful gifts that you receive, you know, be it bacon hand delivered to you or whatever else, it's just the sprinkling on top of, you know, you looking out for yourself and then being able to have the, ah, that's the word I'm looking for, but again, forget it.

But, uh, yeah, them being able to help everyone else around you and make sure everyone's having an amazing time.

Cris: Yeah, I think it's, for me it's like no other festival, um, Bush party experience. I've been to a few dorf in my life and, uh, definitely organized a few [01:27:00] parties myself. And, um, I just love the fact as a once upon a time shy person that you can pretty much talk to anyone at a burn and they will talk to you back.

And I just think that's gold. And that's why I keep going back to burns. Maybe not so many doofs these days.

Nathan: Yeah. One thing I, I definitely think we should acknowledge is, um, yeah, for radical inclusion, we had done it where to avoid this getting too large because we wanted to especially focus on all the people who were coming to Burning Seed first before like random punters came along.

You know, love to enculturate people into it, but, uh, it meant that, yeah, people who we knew were going to burning seed were the first people we told about it, and I think it pretty well sold out before, uh, becoming like too well known by other people. Not the most, you know, radical inclusion thing, but we still managed to get, uh, probably a good 41st time birders along, um, through other people, which was great.

But, uh, yeah, something which [01:28:00] managed to transfer the magic without, uh, losing too much of it. But it was a bit, uh, as far as the principles were concerned, but I was still glad we did it.

Stevan: Yeah, it, it is the principles that differentiates, uh, the burn community to, I guess the music festival community or doof, what, what other gatherings that that's out there.

But, um, I do like your point, uh, roly, um, it, the, the principles, you know, thus far has, you know, after 30 or, you know, 40 odd years, it has stood a test of time. But, uh, with the changing climate of, of, of the world environment, um. There, there, there are some challenges and some issues, uh, uh, people look at different ways and whether it's relevant and whether it's important.

Yeah, I I'd like to have that discussion as well to actually look deeper inside of what we are doing and, and, and how these relate and, and, uh, yeah. Um, yeah, so I, I thought there was, there was, uh, most, I, I guess all of all those principles were showcased at embers, so, uh, it was, it was a burn, but then again, it wasn't a burn.

[01:29:00] So, yeah. So the, I mean, what I was trying to get to that is that, uh, it's, we, we, we had some, some new faces, some, some new burners coming onto the scene, so the demographics was also changing. So you, you did a survey roll up at the end of Ember, the, the experience. Um, what were some of the insights that you gathered from, from that?

Different people different? Uh, we talking about how the, the intersection cross pollination of different groups as well. So we are expanding as a community.

Roland: Mm. Yeah, that's big question to answer really. Like, initially my kind of goals for the survey were just like, just some general feedback about the events, what went well, what could be improved, and like some ideas about, you know, if you wanted to burn for next year, uh, when and where those sorts of questions.

So, and also like some general kind idea about, you know, who's coming to the burn, what are the demographics, that sort of thing. Just for mostly curiosity. So I guess going back to your question about, you know, who we are and where people are coming from and join the community, like it, I [01:30:00] don't like a lot of people, um, are veteran burners, so like 80% or so people, um, have been to 5 3 4 5 plus burns.

10 plus burns,

Stevan: for example. What's, what's your background and, and, and the people that you've, like your theme camp, what's their background as well?

Roland: Oh, the people, I roped them to it. Yeah. Uh, look, all my mates who came along on the postal service had never been to a burn before, had never heard about Burn, may vaguely heard about Burning Man, and they just came, two of them because they were actual postal workers and they loved the idea for postal themes, uh, postal theme camp.

Um, so there was a guy who actually is his nickname is Posty and his girlfriend ppa. And then I roped in a bunch of, uh, doer people I knew. Um, so they were kind of like the doof dog crew. And again, like they've been tr they've been, uh, not in, in terms of the doof, uh, carve people, like a lot of them have been burn, uh, like the doof they go to and run are very carve in keeping with that ethos of Burning Man.[01:31:00]

Like not just a do for you there to consume stuff and get messy, but where you try and build a community. So things like, like small side trains, events up in the mid North coast. And a lot of them from like, say Tribe Ascension, for example. Uh, so it's kinda like this very conscious community. Uh, mind is small doof kind of thing.

They're up in the Blue Mountains, which if anyone hears about, can completely recommend over summer. It's a great community. Uh,

Stevan: your, your background is, yeah. Your background is also in activism.

Roland: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So a lot of my theme cap mates, well, from my, from my Climate Act group. Um, so I run the, or help run, yeah.

Help run Aloo group called Rising Tide, which does a annual coal port bloke protest in Newcastle. And we've kind of metastasized all around the country by now. Yeah. So a lot of those people were like very civically minded, very kind of altruistic. Uh, a lot of them are quite drawn to the kind of idea of Burning Man, like the kind of philosophy behind it, [01:32:00] plus the entire idea of playing stuff on fire and having fun in Bush.

Yeah.

Nathan: Actually one thing I noticed from the, the survey results and from what a few people told us on the ground, uh, how many people came to Embers who said that they weren't gonna go to seed this year, uh, really surprised me.

Cris: And was that, do you think, or did they mention, uh, due to the temperature outside of Wagga,

Nathan: uh, temperature, distance,

Stevan: that was a separate question, wasn't it?

Roll a separate poll.

Roland: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is is one of those questions, which was really kind of hard to interpret the answer. It's like, uh. I, I think it, it was fairly spread that a lot of people don't like cold. Ultimately, uh, like as soon as it gets below 10 degrees, it puts up a lot of people.

Stevan: It could also be the case where in Australia we don't have that kind of FOMO festival culture for winter, probably.

So there's not much out there for people to miss. You know, there's a fear of missing out. We, we might have to correct that and, and make more winter burns. [01:33:00] Probably that's the answer.

Nathan: Is that what the community's saying? Like,

Stevan: well, no, this is, this is just by hypothetical. Um,

Roland: oh no. Yeah. Like I could totally see it.

Like you see a lot of winter festivals where people wear really cool, big, heavy wool coats. That's sort of thing. And I'm pretty sure if people just wear appropriate clothing and they have fun customizing their coats and it becomes a cultural thing. Yeah. Like it'll become quite popular. Cool.

Nathan: Yeah. It certainly sounds easy to do it, uh, Modifyer southeast Queensland this time of year than, uh, any values with Wales though.

Mm,

Cris: totally.

Stevan: What were some of the other data points that you found interesting? The pricing, the, the, the, the cost of tickets. That's gonna, because our current financial situation is. With inflation and with the cost of living, stuff like that. I think that's, that's on top of everyone's mind.

Nathan: Actually.

Roly. I think there, go ahead.

Roland: Yeah. Yeah. I, I find it really funny that for event that's meant to be decom modified is a lot of people don't like talking about money at the end of the day. Um, like [01:34:00] they don't wanna talk about the price of things and how much things cost. Uh, so I thought we'd throw in that question just to kind of reflected back to community, what's an appropriate ticket price.

And I was kind of kicking myself at the end, being like, God, that we should have charge ball for tickets. Um, more than 180 bucks. But yeah, going back to what you're saying, Steve, a few hundred bucks, it's kind of surprising for a lot of people, and I'm from a kind of pretty privileged background. A few hundred bucks for a lot of people is a big deal.

And it was quite surprising seeing like the number of people who say like 250 is a, you know, fair bit of chunk of change and, uh, the amount of time that they have to spend saving up for. It kind of like, makes you feel that kind of like, made me feel a lot more responsible for putting on the event, like making sure it goes ahead and that it's of good quality, especially for those people.

Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. Right. I've forgotten what the answer was to it, but, uh, I remember we asked the, how would you feel if like artists or, uh, volunteers got a discounted ticket? How do people respond to that one?

Roland: Yeah. Uh, like it was kind of the [01:35:00] same, uh, answer to both, to be honest. So that was. How do you feel if artists got discounted tickets and how would you feel if we had a tiered uh, pricing system?

Mm-hmm. So like first round tickets, second round tickets, final release. Uh, so about like 85% of people, uh, for both those questions, don't care. Um, don't find a big deal. And probably around 10% of people don't particularly like it and 5% from memory, uh, put down as like, I absolutely hate this idea. I don't wanna go to an event if it has its sort of structure.

It's like, I don't think so.

Nathan: Yeah, I think the 85% not caring. I was surprised at, I'd forgotten what it was that uh, it was.

Roland: Yeah. Yeah. So I, I guess it means that there's a very vocal minority basically for it. Mm-hmm. Like it's mostly just for curiosity sake. Will it be something that if we run the burn again, something we'll do?

I don't think so. 'cause there's a lot of admin and bit of hassle. Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. I was gonna be fascinated to see how it works for Seed this year, having their directed tickets for 2 95 compared to four 20 for full price. [01:36:00]

Roland: Oh yeah. That, that's a big difference.

Nathan: Yeah.

Roland: Yeah.

Nathan: But uh, yeah, I think we were just curious how people would respond to that.

Suggest the same next year.

Hmm.

Stevan: And, um, was there anything, any other stats that surprised you? Like, um, in terms of where people came from and concentration of, I think there was a lot of Newcastle people, a lot of, um, obviously Sydney people and, you know, a a, a fair few people made the trek from Melbourne got me Interstate and Canberra.

Sorry, Canberra. A lot of Canberra burners too. Yeah,

Roland: yeah. Sorry, KA, I forgot. Canberra insisted and it, uh, Canberra was not on the first, Canberra was not an option on the survey for where you came from. So at the end it was like, why we all people selecting other why, why are so many people not from any of the states in the Australia?

That turns out they're all from Canberra.

Cris: Yeah. Nice.

Stevan: It's not a state, it's a capital territory.

Cris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we were quite happy to be going, you know, north and [01:37:00] where it was comparatively warm. Yeah.

Nathan: Oh yeah. Was ember's too warm for you? Canberran's?

Cris: It was great. Oh my God. The only sort of costumey you can wear at Canberra Burn is like retro ski outfits. You just can't wear costumey.

Nathan: Yeah. That was actually something I found interesting with Seed this year. At the time that we canceled it, I think we'd sold more tickets to can barons than Victorians, like Canberra Burns will travel and awesome burners.

Some of my most favorite people. Like I'm doing my birthday this year and having to like, take it south 'cause I've got so many bloody can barons coming.

Cris: Great.

Stevan: Seems like a purge because they haven't had the, um, they're burn for two years now, so Yeah, they're, yeah, they're bubbling up to do something

Cris: totally desperate.

Roland: Yeah. I, I guess like why seed had issues this year? Uh, I mean, it's probably gonna be something debated at length at [01:38:00] the town hall on Sunday. That sounds like for a minority of people at least, like the idea of a winter burn was really offputting. Uh, I'm not sure if it's a culture thing, like people cut had burns during spring, autumn, uh, for like over a decade by now, and then suddenly a change to a midwinter burn was probably like a bit jarring for a lot of people.

Um,

Cris: it's, it's just really challenging. Camping in the cold, you know, like, like gonna the bathroom, having a shower if you can have a shower, you know, like it's, it's hard, it's really hard, like camping in a tent when it's cold is not pleasant.

Stevan: I would've thought in, in winter the, the risk would, would be more the rain.

Um. The coldness. So yeah. Anything damp, anything wet. It is just miserable. Yeah, yeah. But the cold, you can warm up a fireplace, so,

Cris: nah, I honestly, I really struggle actually with mm-hmm. Yeah.

Roland: Yeah. Like we were super lucky, like it was bright, sunny weather and we [01:39:00] had hot showers for the most part, and indoor toilets.

So I guess without those things and a bit of miserable, wet rainer, we weather, it would've been absolute shit by these leak.

Nathan: Yeah. I don't think I put on more than my burning seed hoodie, uh, at any point during embers or twice.

Cris: Yeah. It,

Stevan: but did you guys have any contingencies for like rain or like a hurricane or earthquake or something?

Nathan: Had a bit of how do we evacuate plans, but, uh,

it wasn't like we had another side we could take people to.

Roland: Yeah.

Nathan: It wasn't like we were gonna do well if we had to cancel it for an act of God level.

Roland: Yeah, it is slightly dodge having like one way in across a slightly dodgy suspension bridge made by the owner 50 years ago, uh, and camp beside the river in terms of floods in the hawkesbury of all places, which floods quite frequently.

The current contingency plant contingency plan was basically just move uphill and move into the hall if it gets really wet.

Nathan: Yeah, we were lucky we were off a minor estuary rather than the [01:40:00] Hawkesbury River itself. Like I had a friend on the SES kind of like, Hey, do you think this could be an area there'd be an issue with flooding?

And she'd confirmed that, no, we should be fine at that site. Uh, right On the other hand, we were like, please don't let it pour down the whole time, uh, while we were still few weeks out.

Roland: Yeah.

Nathan: Uh, happily organizing a burn so soon to when it's happening means you could look at the 28 day forecast though.

Cris: Nice. Hey, just mentioning that bridge. Uh, actually one of the, one of the gate people, the volunteers was a, um, civil engineer who designs bridges and, and he took some friends down for a bit of a tour to talk about the bridge. I was like, man, why is that not on the program anyway? So apparently the bridge is fine, but yeah, legit.

Stevan: Did you always walk down there or something, which is on foot?

Cris: Well, it wasn't me 'cause I was vol, I was still on shift. But, um, right. This, this guy who was an engineer took a bunch of his friends down and, and [01:41:00] just took them over the bridge and talked about how it works and stuff, which I thought was super cool.

Nathan: Yeah, I wish I'd been there for that.

Stevan: Yeah. I've never been to

Cris: Yeah, me too.

Stevan: I've never been to Weisman Ferry, but I thought catching that little four minute, five minute ferry was quite rather cute.

Cris: I had forgotten that Wiseman's Ferry has a ferry, so that was delightful. I got there and I was like, what?

Nathan: Oh, I had so much.

Go ahead.

Roland: Hey, Cris. Oh, okay. Cris, just imagine if we had greeters on the ferry entertaining people in the car as they went over.

Cris: Oh my God. I would love that. Yes. Ah, you've,

Stevan: the, the clock's counting down four minutes. Three minutes, and then you're on the other side. Read across the line.

Cris: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Nathan: Like I mentioned that strawberry was bringing you a whole bus, uh, from Victoria, but, uh, she was like, oh, how am I gonna go get it?

Getting the, the bus onto the site? And I'm like, oh, it's fine. They have loads of other things there. Oh, by the way, you will be crossing a ferry. She's like, wait, wait, wait. What? How, how am the bus? And I'm like, here's some photos of trucks on the ferry. It'll be fine. [01:42:00] But I realize once you realize you can do the ferry knows slightly weird turns or creepy bridges or anything else that's gonna bother you in the slightest.

Cris: Yeah. Yeah, I I, did you all encounter the, um, this quite, quite the lineup on Exit at the Ferry? I think I was there for like,

Nathan: uh, me and Roly were like last out, uh, yes, straight out, like no wait whatsoever for us when we left on Tuesday after Nice. Heard a few stories of kind been away. So yeah,

Roland: it probably, yeah, it probably didn't help that we were end of school holidays and there were a bunch of people leaving the holiday.

Cris: Yes, totally

Roland: camp down the road. Something else to fix that was also on the survey feedback.

Cris: I was not, not complaining at all,

Roland: or we need like reverse greeters so people just say goodbye to people and they entertain people in the carpark.

Cris: Totally, totally

Roland: in the queue.

Cris: Well, I mean, yeah, when [01:43:00] at, um, at greeters I had, uh, two whiteboards and people wrote their names and messages and then, uh, when we packed up greeters, I put those whiteboards on the road out so people could read them as they were leaving, which was kind of cool I thought.

But yeah, it was nice.

Stevan: Were there any funny stories from, from, from Gate and greeters, Cris?

Cris: Um, gosh, um, well, I mean, we hadn't realized, but of course like people coming across the ferry so people would come in. Like, there'd be three or four cars and five cars at a time and that was it then nothing. And so,

Stevan: but that kind of helped, that kind of helped your procedures.

Yeah,

Cris: it was, it was good. It was, it was good. So that was, that was interesting. Um, gosh, look, I, I can't think of any stories off the top of my head. Only, only that I found another two people, uh, in the process of doing greeters who have giant vulvas. Um, yes. So there's at least three of them out there, which is interesting.[01:44:00]

Stevan: Yeah. What were some of the reactions of, I guess, first time burners as well? Probably people who haven't, hasn't seen that kind of big, uh, installation before the reaction to it.

Cris: Oh yeah. Look, that was interesting. And something I hadn't really thought of was having to explain to first time burners why there was a portal Giant Vagina slash vulva portal that was, that was interesting.

Like they, like all of them came on the journey with me and, and we had some really great volunteer greeters, um, who took them into the space and we had all these kind of like, like a singing bowl and, and lots of kind of chimes and stuff and uh, a little story and you could sort of look in the mirror and write a message in your name and then sort of walk into the womb, like amazing environment.

So yeah, people really, they got on board there. There was, I remember three. Young men, like prob, I don't know, they might have been late twenties, hard for me to tell these days, but, um, they had never been to a burn before. They didn't know [01:45:00] anyone in there and, and so I, I had to go through the whole 10 principles thing and like consent, but also like explain to them about the portal and stuff.

But, um, it was really interesting. They, they really got on board though, and I saw them a number of times, which is a lovely, great thing about having the small numbers is you get to see people a number of times in there and they were all having a ball and had completely like taken the whole experience on board.

It was great

Nathan: actually, Cris, um, conscious that we got kind of surprised by this 50th on up the road with us being a a through fair on the, the Saturday. Was there any interesting story of any of that guy's mates getting greeted?

Cris: Ah, no. Look, I think, um, from what I saw, those people didn't actually stop. We, we had to like, like we had, we had greeters like coming out tomorrow and they were like, no, we're not stopping.

Let [01:46:00] us through. It was hilarious. It was hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was definitely something I don't think any of us had experienced before.

Stevan: Some people are just not into cult. That's fine. You know, like,

Cris: yeah. Yeah, totally. No, I don't cult. No, I cult. Yep. Yep, yep. Yeah, no, it was a fantastic experience.

Um, I, I had, you know, beautiful many beautiful moments where, you know, going through that, that kind of greeter experience where you're like, look, you know, this is a chance for you, perhaps leave yourself at the door and, and whatever worries and concerns in the real world and pick it up later. And people, I love, I love doing that for people and yeah, it was great.

Really good.

Stevan: So, Cris, I know you went there for most of the time at Greeters or Gate, but would you, has it a guess of how many people that you reckon there was, like you saw, or like that was at On Site?

Cris: Um, what, yeah, that's an interesting one. Uh, I felt like I [01:47:00] knew most of the people I saw, like had, and had, had greeted them or knew them already.

So, yeah. But I think that, that we did have a whole bunch of people on site beforehand to help with the setup, so, um, so I did, I felt like I missed, I missed them. I don't think they had the greeting experience and yeah, numbers. I don't know, like so hard to tell. But I did feel like I met a lot of people, which was amazing.

Five.

Stevan: So how many people did we get? Guys?

Nathan: Three, five, or at least that's how many tickets we'd sold.

Roland: Plus gate crashes.

Stevan: That's actually a solid number, but, uh, o obviously the, the site is bigger so it could cater for bigger. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a good, good number to, to sort of like, to map out what we can, you know.

Nathan: Yeah. Me and Rollie we're actually both happy to increase the numbers slightly, but conscious decision of five people and, uh, you know, very experienced heads from seed and everywhere else. Like, look, let's not go too large, where, you know, rangers start getting [01:48:00] too stretched or anything else. And we just went, nah, fair enough.

Like, we're doing this together. We make these decisions together.

Cris: Yeah. One thing I'd like to ask is, um, how did, how did we go with the various teams and volunteers? Like, I know I struggled to find any volunteers for the last shift of greeters. How did we do like for the other teams?

Nathan: Uh, we got pretty well everyone organized in advance.

We did have an issue where. Just the week of the event, uh, trouble was off in, uh, country New South Wales. Um, so I was very checking with leads. I'm like, cool. So you've got all those people. Here's a few extra people. It was like the last second ticket purchase or transfers. Do you think you'll be fine when we're on the ground?

Uh, and everyone's giving me, yep. Seems okay. There wasn't like a, uh, I need you to like find one or two last people. Like we did have, um, someone who was gonna do the late night Saturday sanctuary shift. Uh, couldn't make it, but Amanda was able to find someone else she knew who could come. He would [01:49:00] take that shift.

So just like, yep, cool. We're not gonna interfere with the ticket transfer. If you needed me to show you how to do it. Perfect. Otherwise. Yep. I will leave it to you guys to organize that. But, uh, no teams were calling out in advance, uh, any big issues. So it was either deemed like, oh, it's one or two shifts we'll fill when we get on the site, or, uh, whoever else.

I wasn't sure you wanted cut off at that point.

Cris: You're muted. Um, Steven cannot hear.

Stevan: I just muted. I just muted myself. Sorry. Um, yeah, so the, the volunteers we, we had, we had quite, well, most, most of the departments covered. I think we had sanitation, l and t medics, fire safety, DPI, ranges, uh, sanctuary. Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. That's the thing, like we've done enough other burns, we know what teams, who's needed sort of thing. Very easily able to like find people who knew what they were doing with those things. Uh, could size up the lengths of shifts and everything else [01:50:00] based on like house seed or third or others have done it 'cause we know them so well.

So, uh, yeah, it was just spreadsheet, roster, da da da. Um, yeah, it's pretty smooth.

Cris: Amazing.

Stevan: Was it something that, yeah. Was it something that you also discovered along the way? Roly? How, how we had to have all these organ organization, uh, organization efforts?

Roland: Uh, not, not, not really. Like I've been the third, from third last year, kind last through all these different departments and generally this is how many people they need.

What was kind of surprising for me was how many people wanted to do fire and all things and how ma how o oversubscribed sanitation got as well. Mm-hmm. Uh, uh,

Nathan: sanitation partly 'cause I thought that would be difficult. So we did to have a few directed tickets for people who would take at least two sanitation shifts.

Uh, but yes, fire safety. Oh my God, that was by far the most requested team.

Stevan: Well, the team did keep you nice and safe Roly. Um mm-hmm. You don't wanna [01:51:00] get into that if you don't want to.

Roland: That's fine. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I got set on fire on I think the second day or something, not my major the first day. Just, just, just partly before opening?

Yeah. Yeah. The first day actually, yeah, before I, before

Stevan: it was probably about 10 to 11. I, I can still remember it because I just finished my breakfast. Um, you just, uh, at, at the, at the camp kitchen. Um, and then you, you guys were testing out the fire barrels because that previous night was so fucking cold that it's like, we're gonna have this at nine, 8:00 AM because it's so fucking cold.

And then, yeah.

Roland: Yeah. So it was a fucking cold morning. It was like, I don't know, probably zero degrees or something silly and it's outside the kitchen and in Nili uh, breakfast was late, so we just all kind of huddled there in the cold. Uh, so it was actually my dear first to start the fire. So I pour some fuel over it, uh, some cardboard and sticks and things and lit on fire.

And the for went out. So this is Myer version of events and you, you hear different stories from different people. [01:52:00] Uh, but I ducked out to get some more fuel and I came back and one of my mates who will stay unnamed, uh, was pouring fuel from the jerry into the coals of the fire. And very quickly the flame slipped up.

The jerry can all over the jerry can, he chucked it to the side and a bunch of burning fuel kind of splashed across my leg. And I was pretty nonplus like it, it wasn't that hot, I just kind of pass it down. I was wearing some gloves and I had thick trousers on. And then some chick from Burgess suit comes up with a steaming hot, what was it?

Cup, some sort of large coffee.

Stevan: I've got coffee. Yeah. So coffee, she, I've got coffee. Would this, would this help?

Roland: Yeah. Yeah. And then she, that. Just perceived support, this flaming hot coffee or on my leg.

Stevan: And then I, and it was like, is it decaf? Is it like,

Nathan: no. But Jeremy is probably still crying about wasting that much good coffee.

Stevan: Well, I think, I think someone shouted out water first and it's like, no, don't do. And then I've got coffee.

Cris: Dang.

Roland: Yeah. So then [01:53:00] I ended up scolded. Singed. And then because my trousers are wet, I ended up getting really cold within like 10 minutes. Oh. And then, uh, a whole bunch of fire safety people rocked up and they're all being sack harmonious.

And there, this isn't how you lie fire. But,

Stevan: but the best part was, was, um, so Jimmy, the fire guy? Yeah. Mm. Straight away. It was like, okay guys town hall meeting. We gotta like, okay, what did we learn here? Okay. What not to do. And so I thought that was brilliant. It's like, I'm following this guy Jimmy.

Nathan: Yeah. I, I'd laugh 'cause I was just outside de air chatting with Jimmy and I just see his eyes just widen hitting him.

Swear and just start running. And I'm like, turn over and see roly. And I'm like, oh lord. But uh, yeah, Jimmy is a good person to have in that situation. There's a very good reason why he's third degrees fire, safety lead.

Roland: Stop. Drop and roll.

Nathan: Stop. Drop and Rollie.

Stevan: Well, that's not the end of the story because, [01:54:00] um, when you left site, a certain song came on the radio and

Roland: Well,

Stevan: yeah. Are are you, are you a big, uh, Bruce Springsteen fan?

Roland: Oh, like a, like a few of his tracks and people kept putting on the, all these, I'm on fire songs all the time, so eventually I end up singing along to it.

Yeah.

Cris: I, I wonder if you'll have a burner name come out of that experience. I'd love to see what that might be. It's just how

Stevan: either that or Ro or Rosie might have a new burner name too, because she was in involved in the whole situation too. She was calmer than you, right.

Roland: Rosie helped. Yeah.

Nathan: Nah, I gotta say if people had picked up stop dropping as Rollie's nickname, uh, during ems, I'd have been very happy.

But, uh, don't think it stuck.

Cris: I don't know. It's a good one.

Stevan: Stop. Drop is a good one though.

Cris: Yeah. Stop, drop. Love it. Uh, you don't get a choice in this either, you know, like they're just fine.

Roland: Well, I'm all for it.

Nathan: I mean, holy Dooly is absolutely [01:55:00] correct with that.

Stevan: Well, that's a good name too.

Cris: Yes.

Stevan: Okay, let's take a last break.

And when we come back in honor of Rollies, um, setting himself on fire, we're gonna have a, uh.

Sarah: What would you like me to say? Just say hello to community. Hello community. What do I do? I run an APO theory of sorts. They call it the cabinet of curiosities. We are a collection of mystics, mischief makers, creepers, and crawlers from around the ether that, uh, we are doctors of sorts. Yes, yes, some call us witches, but these are all just rumors on the wind really.

But if you look for glow through the embers and you hear the wind chimes, [01:56:00] may or may not see dispensary in the cabinet coming at you through the trees.

Go to sleep now.

Bear: It's on right now. Okay. Hi, my name is Bear and I am in Australia. We are in Dunin Jung country in a beautiful flatland next to a creek, just out of the city, but in a totally different world. And I just love that as a community, community people come together to create spaces where we don't have to follow the standard norms of culture.

And that's just beautiful. So if you've got a burn happening nearby, get involved. Jump in. Don't be afraid. Yeah, don't be afraid. Have fun.

Esther: Radical inclusion means including everyone, not [01:57:00] just when it's easy, but also when it's hard, including the people you don't necessarily feel like including or whatever you need to make them feel welcome

Angelo: and coffee sounds amazing. This is Angelo, the Party Goat. I am here at Embers 2025. Uh, had a super good weekend. I am the guy that created the goat curry. If you didn't get any, you missed out. If you did, you're welcome.

Rascal: Okay. My name is Stevie Rascal. I come from the mountains of E Lands on the midcoast of New South Wales. And I just wanna say to everybody, be your most RAs. Delicious, beautiful, wonderful self. I love you all.[01:58:00]

Cruiser: So my name's Cruiser from Geelong and I'm currently standing here warming myself in the sun, wearing lingerie, about to go to a champagne lingerie brunch on my first burn. And I love it, the freedom, the people, the vibe. Um, I can't wait to the next one. I can't wait to come back to the next one. So, um, I'll hopefully see you there.

Thank you. Thank you.

Rebecca: Oh, hello. Hello, hello. My name is Rebecca. Some people call me Fluffy, or you can also call me Magic Pussy, depending on what I'm doing. And I am part of Spice Spice Cadets, or I'm a Spice Cadet. And our Canva called Spice and. We create things that, [01:59:00] well, anything that entices the senses that, um, brings you, wakes you up into a new

sensory perception and reality. And it's a really lovely, um, creative muse that has all sorts of things from pole dancing to infusions, food, spicy music, spicy dance, um, beautiful sprays and massage and things like that. So yeah, it's, it's a really lovely little thing. Um, and I'm standing here in beautiful Webbs Creek at Embers Burn and I'm with my vintage caravan with the pink lightning bolts.

And I just got a visit, got visited by this lovely little, um, circus family. It was a mum and daughter, so the [02:00:00] mum was mama bear and the daughter Pompom, and they just wanted to come in and have a look around my vintage caravan and I was very happy to welcome them in and in the caravan. I've got, it's a very, very, very well, um, maintained, well, maybe not so maintained because I could do some more work on it, but it's very vintage.

Um, well preserved, beautiful wood paneling and, um, just the old style decor in there. So it's a real classic and a really nice thing to be part of the community. Um, today we are going down to Leopard Sundays. I have Felipe and Nick Bolton here who about to run a party. Hey guys, do you wanna say something about your party?

We have leopard Sundaes at the Devil [02:01:00] Lounge. Come and get your Devon going. The cats will play. The cats will play.

Jessica: Slayer of Gods is my burner name.

There's a fire starting in my reaching a fever. Pictures bringing me out the door. Finally, I can see you crystal clear. Go ahead and sell me out and all lay your shit. See how I'll take every piece of you. Don't underestimate the things that I'll do. There's a fire starting in my heart.[02:02:00]

Roland: I'm on fire.

Stevan: Okay, let's, let's, let's quiz time. Let's do the quiz. Okay, so this quiz, the way you play this is that just gimme a, uh, uh, the song title and, and the artist. So I'm gonna give you some clues. So yeah, this, this quiz is about the Fire and Embers theme song quiz. So I'm gonna give you some clues of this, uh, song.

You just tell me who the artist is and the title of the song. So question number one. So this is related to anything with fire or embers. So Question One, released in 1988 as the first single from the album Lap of Luxury. This song topped the recording charts in Australia, Canada, and USA. This being the band's only, only number one hit, although not written by any of the band members.

This endearing power ballad with melodic rock [02:03:00] tunes is about the dedication of one lover to another, even though the relationship is, is severed. The love will always burn Bright. Any,

Nathan: is it? I'm on, on Fire by Bruce Springsteen.

Stevan: No, in the history? No. 1988. It's, it's, uh, it's a rock ballad. It's like an eighties rock band.

The band followed up the number one hit with the cover of Elvis Presleys. Don't be cruel. Anyone know this band?

Cris: No.

Stevan: Have you guys heard of the Flame by Cheat Trick? Oh.

Nathan: Dunno, the song Love Cheap Trick name, like three other songs by them.

Stevan: The Flame? Yeah. Okay. Well it was number one. It was the only Nu One, number one hit, so, oh, fantastic song.

Okay, next, next question. Released in 1968, this song reached number one in the US Billboard Country hits and picked at number 10 in the street,

Nathan: Hunka Hunker, burning Love by Elvis Presley,

Stevan: no Code written. Code written by June Cartera and Merl Kilgore. And originally recorded by Anita Carter, June sister at the time, the song was synonymous with Falling in Love [02:04:00] in 1968.

And a love or heart that has been set a flame and continues to burn in an ever increasing fashion.

Roland: Oh, is a John Cash song?

Stevan: It is, yeah. What's the title?

Roland: Ring of Fire,

Stevan: correct? Yes. So did you guys realize that, uh, it was used in, in, in, uh, to promote hemorrhoids in, in an ad? This song?

Cris: That's hilarious.

Nathan: Oh, no.

Oh,

Stevan: this is about 20 years ago. They, they used that song. Yeah. So that made it Famous Ring of Fire.

Roland: Oh, Cris, next greeter idea. Instead of vulva portal, can we have Ring of Fire?

Cris: Yeah. Well, it's funny you should mention that because

Stevan: we can have both.

Cris: I was thinking of having something like that as well as the vulva.

You can choose.

Stevan: Yeah. Awesome.

Roland: All right. Okay. Let, let's do a third one and then call it quits.

Stevan: Yeah. Okay. This, this is, this is a, an Aussie flavored one. Okay.

Nathan: Flame Trees

Stevan: released. No, no. Released. Released in 1997 from the [02:05:00] album In Deep. It reached number two in Australia. It's a power ballad by one of Australia's top selling music artists.

The song explores the depth of emotion and the multifaceted nature of human relationships. The lyrics is a series of questions, uh, sorry. The lyrics poses a series of questions to their romantic interests, asking them about various parts and roles they would take in life.

Cris: Ah, that is not ringing any bells.

Roland: Well, it's fire related, so it's either, I know Flame Coals, Ember Burn Flame, Uhhuh fla,

Stevan: Tina Arena fans. No.

Cris: Oh, no, no.

Stevan: You guys are terrible. It's, it's Burn by Tina Arena.

Cris: Oh, I've never heard that.

Nathan: I never heard of it.

Stevan: Never heard of it. Great Aussie song.

Cris: This is the 1990s. I was not listening to Tina Arena.

Roland: Steve, there's no decade listening graphic survey, but went into age of [02:06:00] Participants.

Stevan: Yeah, I'm reaching the, I'm reaching the wrong target market.

Nathan: Look, I'll definitely go listen to the Flame afterwards though, because Cheap Chick Great.

Stevan: Oh yeah. Fantastic song. Yeah. Alright, so those just some ideas. Yeah.

Roland: Um, let's do future directions and then call us tonight. Mm-hmm.

Stevan: Yeah. Let's, let's, let's talk about some of the learnings and some of the future and the purposes.

Yeah.

Cris: Over to you.

Roland: Uh, learnings. All right. Don't get says on fire in front of other people. Um,

Stevan: it was a performance roly.

Roland: Yeah. Performance art mm, uh, look like. There's all things you can do bad worse. Uh, the main thing is just do something and have fun. That is my idea. Um, in, in terms of like next year, like it's really, uh, pending what happens with burning seed, to be honest.

So if burning seed goes ahead in that may April window or maybe even like September, um, then we'll probably just, you know, call quits and embers and focus on how making seed happen. Um, [02:07:00] it depends a lot on the town, on the kind of discussions within SBA, like their town hall meeting and, uh, what people in the community think.

And this, um, IBA survey which is coming out, but I suspect it's gonna be people want a longer, bigger burn. Sometime during a warmer calve time of year will be the answer. So it really depends on that. Like, if burning seed falls over again, then I'm, I'm all for having another renegade event, to be honest with whoever wants to join along.

Like, yeah, it's fun. Let's do it again.

Stevan: Yeah. With, with the eye bag, um, survey, uh, you're also a part of that, you've, you've got made some contributions.

Roland: Oh, not heaps of a contribution, but Yeah. Yeah. Uh, in the chat group at least, and giving bit of feedback. Um, we've got a bit over 400, almost 500 responses by now.

Um, so if you assume like a 30% response rate, that's pretty good. Yeah. Uh, I think those are the main kind of questions I had for the event, uh, from the survey. And obviously [02:08:00] they're asking a lot more about, you know, what burner's skills are, all those sorts of things. Uh, so it'd be really interesting to see where it comes out and I think it'll provoke a lot of conversation.

People will be chatting endlessly about it for a few months. Hmm.

Stevan: Yeah. Personally, what, what would you like to see, um, in terms of our community growing, obviously more burns? Um,

Roland: oh look, Steve, I'm very mono focused on just big kind of temple fires. I'm also like a huge big burn with a few thousand people, um, wherever with a bunch of people from around the bits of Australia, Melbourne, Darwin, Western Australia, wherever, coming together and doing some cool stuff somewhere maybe not too urban, like a fairway out town and kind of building community through that kind of way.

And obviously having a 10 meter temple burn is my.

Stevan: I think a lot of people have, have your thoughts as well that they wanna see a bigger spectacle. I mean, these four mini burns are great, but um, yeah, the, the, the, [02:09:00] the magic of burning seed is, is, is what people would like to recapture, I think.

Nathan: Yeah. I found that a shame because for me, I love having a couple of burns at least a year sort of thing.

And the thing that seed has benefited so much from, uh, throughout the years is it is the joining of Victoria New South Wales. And um, yeah, for whatever reason, if we don't get Victorians along, uh, it makes it so hard to have the Big Unite Australia because we've already got like 1500 people just from New South Wales and Victoria alone that, you know, WA and Queensland and South Australia and Canberra of course all wanna come along and, and be part of it and Yeah.

Uh, unless we see a confirmed Victorians coming. Yeah. It makes it so hard to, to plan for that or to keep things at Matong, uh, with the ongoing conversations that, you know, still going on internally in seed.

Stevan: Yeah. Do you guys, do you guys with embers happening, it's, yeah, obviously it's a good thing, but, um, like, um, yeah, we, [02:10:00] we need, we need something that, that brings people together, so I, I'm, I'm appreciative of what you guys did.

It's something for us to, to work from, I think.

Cris: Totally. Yeah. Big thanks to both of you, Roly. What an amazing thing to step up and, and put yourself into, into everything and. And Nathan for everything that you do for, for third degree and, and seed and, and embers now. Yeah. You're amazing. So I just wanna say thanks.

Nathan: Thanks Cris.

Cris: Yeah.

Roland: And not forget like the other people who put in a lot of work and rt.

Cris: Totally.

Roland: So it's Flip Ali, Ariane, all the team leads, the theme camp people, all the volleys. Yeah. Special shout out to Dale. He helped out a lot. He lent the golf buggy, which was nice. Nice. Oh, uh, and thirds are, yeah. And Leanna was like such, so supportive the entire time.

Plus the SBA people.

Cris: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah.

Nathan: Yeah. I know we shout her out before, but honestly the amount of hours [02:11:00] Goldie put in behind the scenes of this.

Cris: Yeah. Yeah. She did a lot. There was a lot of changes there. He did amazing job. It looked incredible. Yeah. Amazing group effort.

Stevan: Yeah. And all the people that came along as well.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. The, I think what actually highlighted for me was that after the event, there was a lot of, um, mind manifesting going, going along. Like it sparked a lot of, uh, conversations in the community sparked a lot of interest. It motivated people, it rejuvenated people, A lot of people ideas. So yeah. The whole mind manifesting without ember.

Yeah. None of this would've been, I guess the, the continuation. That's what we needed. Um, you know, with this, with this whole disruption. Yeah. We need to continue the momentum.

Roland: Sweet. Cool. Uh, thanks Steve. Appreciate the chance to be on this podcast. Mm-hmm.

Stevan: Yeah, thanks for coming on. Um, appreciate your time.

Nathan: Yeah, thanks for having us. Uh, I know for me, I've absolutely loved hearing kind of all the stories out of [02:12:00] Underland, uh, as someone who doesn't get the chance to, to be too involved in it, so very happy to kind give back a little bit and always a pleasure to see you all.

Cris: Yay.

Roland: Cool. Thanks Py. Thanks Cris.

Cris: Yeah, thanks, roly Nathan. Steven.

Stevan: Thanks everybody.

Transcripts transcribed by Descript AI