Stevan: [00:00:00] All right, AB Bonzaar, welcome to all I'm Silent Disco, and you are listening to the burners of New Zealand Australia, Asia Regional Podcast, a panel discussion audio pod about our most recent Underland experience. So in this episode, we'll be talking about the 2025 Underland Pop event, our thoughts and the review of the third edition in Paradise, the fourth underland.

Overall, we'll chat about some of the highlights, the shenanigans, the effigy, and temple burns, the controversies, provide some of the behind the scenes reporting and offer some improvements for the next event. So to talk about all these points, I'm joined by Hotwire Miles

 and Space Cake and PY.

PY: Hello.

Stevan: Welcome guys.

Miles: Good day. How's it going?

Hotwire: Bonjourno.

Space Cake: Hi.

Stevan: So how, how's everyone feeling after Underland? Exhausted. Inspired?

Hotwire: Yes. Inspired, yeah.

Miles: Motivated and energized,

Hotwire: frothing.[00:01:00]

Stevan: Let's introduce selves to the community. Um, let's start with you. Hotwire.

Hotwire: Hello. I'm Hotwire.

I'm outta my mind.

Miles: Please leave a message.

Hotwire: Um, yeah. Hi, I'm Hotwire. I've been involved in Burning Man since 2012 ish. Um, went to BlackRock City in a, I bought a tent that was a way too small. It's like a kid's tent.

First camping out into the lounge room or the backyard. Uh, and yes, took the red pills straight away, came back to Australia, then got involved with burning seed, did the usual gambit of, uh, theme camps, sound camps, all that kind of jazz. And then found home with Rangers, the Red Earth Rangers. That was pretty good.

Created Fart, the Fire Art Response team. They let us pick our own names. That's why I picked that one. And yeah, been involved sort of on and off since then. And this was my first underland and it was awesome. Had so much fun. Uh, yeah. And now currently still with Seed at the moment, [00:02:00] one of the directors and still running far.

And so,

Stevan: and what was your,

what did you do at Underland? What was your. Roles. What did you, how did you participate?

Hotwire: Um, mostly just like hung out, um, bludge beers and cigarettes off people. That's pretty much it. No, I helped out with Rangers, um, Sandman, poor bj. He, um, had an injury, so, um, had to do the Sandman, which was cool.

Um, yeah,

Stevan: that was a last minute thing.

Hotwire: Yeah, poor bloke. But that's cool. It was rad to see that. Um, all the manuals and stuff and the training that we've been doing for years all over the place. It was super easy. So I came in as a complete unknown to the Underland Sandman team, and basically it was all the same.

It was like, um, carbon copy, rinse, repeat. It was really good. Um, helped out miles, I think. I don't know if I was imagining these miles, but you were like, Hey, you're gonna be my two ic. And I was like,

Miles: I, I phrased it more diplomatically than that. It's more a request than anything else.

Hotwire: Yeah, no, it was, it was really great fun.

I had an absolute blast and like, it's just a rad to see everything basically is like, the [00:03:00] systems are pretty much the same, so you can just jump right in and hit the, hit the ground running. So, oh, and I did a gate shift as well. That was sweet. Um, yeah.

Stevan: And a DJ set. We can talk about that later. Yes.

Hotwire: Yeah, DJ set and, oh, I worked for Underland Fire crew as well.

UFCI was sick, but that's me. I like death, metal and sushi.

Stevan: Miles, do you wanna say hello?

Miles: Yeah. Uh, hi, I'm Miles. So I, uh, did my first burn in 2019, and I actually haven't done heaps. This was my third sort, quote, unquote, official burn. I love that we're gonna talk about Burner than now later because I've thoughts about that.

Uh, but I've done, I've in that, in that time, I've done a heap of burn adjacent events and before as well. And so, um, I feel like I, uh, it feels like home to me. And, uh, this was my first time ever doing ranger lead. It was a big step for me in, in that way as well. And so, uh, I was really excited at the offer in, in my, um, when I first started put in my volunteer application.

I, like I said, Hey, I'm interested in being a ranger two IC or, um, something on the leadership team, and then, uh, turn around a call from C

Hotwire: [00:04:00] That's adorable.

Miles: Yeah. Well, I, I got a call from BJ the next day and he's like, Hey, how do you like to be ranger lead? And I'm like, well, fate is knocking.

Stevan: And this is only with, uh, like.

Three weeks, four weeks for preparation

Miles: is, uh, uh, from memory is about five or six weeks. But yeah, it was, it was a very short time. So I had a pretty good idea of, uh, what would be needed. So I've done a lot of volunteer coordination in other roles in other organizations and other settings. And, uh, obviously I've, I've, I've arranged it before a couple of times as well, and had, again, similar roles in, in other sort of settings and events or organizations.

So when, you know, when BJ came in and said, Hey, you know, we need, uh, someone to come in and do this. I'm like, right, well, I'm gonna have to put in a lot of work very quickly getting up to speed with the existing work that's done in the existing community, because this was also my first underland. Uh, so I, I knew almost no one, uh, and as soon as that task would down, then I'd have to just sort of knuckle down and work out the priorities, which is getting boots on the ground for rangers in kit on shifts.

And, um, that's e everything [00:05:00] else kind of like comes second, second priority to that. So, um, I was, I, I wrote up a big afterburn report, which I posted on the Facebook and in the Slack and in the Rangers chat as well, on WhatsApp and 'cause I, I believe in, in something called Building in Public, this principle that when we, uh, when we set out to do something for the community.

Uh, that we should also include the community and take 'em on that journey as well for, for so many reasons. One of them is obviously transparency, uh, but another one is so that people can sort of see, see the internal operations and then provide feedback and even if they were directly involved, just, just have a little bit of that sort of observation and commentary.

And there's so many little ways that that helps. But the other thing as well is that building in public helps bring people on the journey with you and bring them into, uh, I feel, feel more, more included in like they belong in, in, in what we did. So my first priority was very much getting, getting people into, um, getting ranges onto on the ground and, and geared up and feeling confident to take shifts.

And so for me it's like, okay, they need to be pool factors, there need to make it as open and inclusive as possible. And as soon as sort of [00:06:00] even hell, even before Underland happened as well, my thoughts were like, what is the, um, what is the ranger community gonna be like as a subsection of the Underland community in, in the months after this?

And in the time between now and next Underland. And that has to be something that is part of my priorities as well. And so the, uh, I can, I could talk for ages, ages and ages on, on so many, so many things and the stuff that's been happening since the burn as well and on the burn. But I think I should probably, um, hand over to the next person doing a round of introductions.

Stevan: Yeah. Beck, how was your, how was your underland, what were your thoughts about, uh, this third edition at Paradise?

Space Cake: Yeah, I think we're getting better at using the space and we're getting better at dealing with the wind. Like that wind is never going away. And so you, just from a center camp perspective, we created a wind break using hay bales.

Um, I ordered twice as many as last year, so, you know, that worked really well. I, next year I'm gonna order twice as many more. I probably get half of that, all things going according the plan. But, um, yeah, look, it's a, an interesting site. I'm, I have [00:07:00] mixed feelings about it. Um, but it is a site and it's committed and we're making it work.

I thought it was quite a wholesome burn. Uh, I thought there was really nice vibes. It was really cute. It wasn't, I've been at some, you know, seedier events before and it, well didn't really have that, that vibe or maybe I was just less seedy this time. But yeah, I thought it was really wholesome. It was great to see some new camps rock up.

It was great to see Positeka come back and, you know, that whole nightclub alley down the back there was just kicking. And, um, you know, behind the camps themselves, the sound camps where everybody was camped on top of each other just looked like awesome. You know, it's just a lot of people in there, a lot of density.

But then when I looked at the, um, the drone aerial photo, it actually looked like we were quite spread out. So, you know, there was a difference between difference, that perception. I mean, also at nighttime it's kind of dark and stumbling, but the aerial photo just made it look like we're a bit more spread out.

So yeah, that's my thoughts in a nutshell.

Stevan: Yeah, there's [00:08:00] definitely more, more room to grow into that site. I think definitely we can fit more burners and hippies in there. What about the. Um, the effigy and the temple guys. What did you think? So every year it gets more and more impressive.

Hotwire: Yeah. Hang on.

Before we kick off, I just want to throw some props and like kiss some serious, but Miles, um, you guys did an absolutely awesome job that was really, really awesome. Really run, um, operation that you guys were doing. Everyone was like super supportive. Uh, it was really lovely. And to hear that that was your first time doing it was like, kudos to you, my man.

Like impressed as as fuck. And also like with the center camp, Lordy was that nice? That was such an excellent place to chill, hang out, do stuff. And it was just so beautiful to see the way it was all set out and decorated. Like, yeah, hats off. And then also Py hearing your brief at the, um, at the Rangers camp and about how you are changing the culture and being super supportive and [00:09:00] bringing, um, spam and rangers together.

I thought that was really super inspiring and a really lovely thing to hear. And I just wanna take my hats off to you guys, like it's a credit to, to you as people and like to an organization as well. So kudos to you all.

Space Cake: Oh, thank you. Thanks. See it a whole it wholesome.

Hotwire: For real, for real. But like you guys, you just look like professionals and like, you just made it look easy, you know, and chill and like nothing was ever a problem.

There was solutions everywhere, which I, I like because I'm a Capricorn,

but no, I'm, I've just, yeah, it's really, really wonderful. Everybody was awesome. And where are them drone photos? How do we get ahold of them?

Space Cake: Yeah, they're on the Slack channel and, uh, Toby posted a few of them, I think. Did he post them on Facebook this year? He, he usually posts them in on Slack in the general Pository.

Yeah. But yeah, do, sir, [00:10:00]

Stevan: I've only seen, I've only seen the drone footages footages earlier during the, uh, week, not, not when it gets filled up. So on Saturday or Sunday, I don't think many people, there were a few drones up there in the sky though. I didn't notice.

Space Cake: Yeah, that's something that we've talked about at committee level, just the number of drones and what we're gonna do about that.

Um, but yeah, the, the photo I've got in mind was taken on Saturday afternoon around midday. So, you know, pretty much everyone who's gonna be there will be there. And you can see how much space we've still got left and, and the areas of concentration. Uh, it's pretty, pretty neat to check it out.

Stevan: Yeah. Just going back to what TJ was saying, I I, I echo your sentiments as well.

I mean, I didn't get. Too much involved in all your departments, spam, center, camp Rangers and Sandman. But from what I saw and, and what I experienced, it, it, it was amazing team effort, everyone Jed together. And it, it's interesting to see people for the first time meeting each other and just sort of like, oh, when, when I'm looking at, from outside in, I'm, I'm thinking, well, you, you guys, you guys must have some kind of rapport or some kind of history [00:11:00] together, but no, you guys, first time, it's, it's amazing to see this kind of integration and, and collaboration between, you know, between different folks from different backgrounds, from different, you know, experiences.

It's amazing.

Hotwire: Yeah, and just to see how like ridiculously competent everybody is like, like every, yeah. It was really, really lovely to see. And I think maybe that's also speaks to the size of it too. Like 500, 600 participants is just perfect for that. Um, yeah.

Stevan: Do we have the exact figures for this year's attendance?

Space Cake: Yeah, about 550 adults and 55 ish kids. So 600 in total, but of them only five 50 over 18. So that's, that's considerably bigger than last year.

Stevan: And did it feel that way to you?

Space Cake: No, not really.

Stevan: I think because everyone's so sparse and spread out, I think.

Space Cake: Yeah, I think the only place it was really evident that there were [00:12:00] more people, or that there were more camps was down in that, where all the sound camps were.

It was interesting that Auntie, Maria's and the gaze were down the other end, so it was kind of nice that there were these two. Districts mm-hmm. Of parking at each end of the town, so to speak. And I really like the village outlay that they have with the everything in the middle and people camped around.

I think the placement team do a really great job.

Miles: I, um, I liked that layout as well. The, I did have, um, my, my ve vibe based feedback was that down the, um, gaze 90 Maria end, it felt like there was less foot traffic and less energy. I don't know whether that is actually a thing, but obviously up near nightclub alley, there was a lot more people just hanging out or outside the barrels.

There's a lot more people coming and going. I don't know if there's sort of an easy solution to that. And obviously site planning is such a incredibly complicated job, but, um, it did feel a little bit lonely and very, very eerie walking between yard installations outside Auntie Maria's. Um, especially when the, um, the gaze had shut down for the [00:13:00] night.

Hotwire: Yeah, it was cold and spooky and dark and weird.

Miles: It wasn't dark. There was a lot of lit up installations.

Hotwire: Yeah. Not dark,

but yeah.

Miles: Yeah. It was, it was spooky and weird in a, in a nice way. Like not, not, not in a bad way. It was, it was good. Weird but different.

Hotwire: Yeah, it was nice. 'cause I always had drones following me around at night when I was walking, so I really felt safe and secure like I was being watched and looked after.

Stevan: Had your own little surveillance team.

Hotwire: Yeah, exactly.

Miles: Were they in purple by any chance

for those? Listening at home? Purple is the, uh, color of underline rangers.

Stevan: PY. Uh, we haven't heard from you yet. Would you like to say what, what was your experience, um, with the spam crew?

PY: It was a good year for spam this year. Like, um, you know, we had, um, we did have troubles, but I think on reflections, you know, the kind of problems we had were, were good problems to be having at, at this sort of four years in like growing [00:14:00] pains, you know, so we had, you know, uh, little sort of struggles around resources and allocating resources, um, and making sure there was enough stuff to go around.

But I think it's just all part of becoming a bit more mature as an organization. So in a way it's actually good sign that we're having these problems now and, you know, I was just so happy to be part of such a, a killer team Spam, really knocked it out of the park this year and we look, everyone just did such a good job.

If I can just take a second to shout out all the people as well as the, you know, the seasons crew of spam veterans. We had a bunch of newcomers on the team this year. Uh, Kyle, Craig, Luke, Dave, and very importantly in the kitchen, Trish and Aaron. And they all just came in and, and. Smashed it and it was fantastic.

And then, you know, when Gate opened, we had even more people to come on and supplement the tea team and help us out a bit. So Pat, Mathias [00:15:00] and Brandy came on and did a couple of shifts to help. So between the veterans, the new people, the people who came in for, uh, gate Open times, yeah, it was a good year.

And um, we got to have one like little sneaky crew party after everyone left when it was just spam on site for that very last night before we shut the shipping container and close the gate and drive off. Yeah. And that was good. It's like, uh, having your, your own little burn after the burn when you've still got the whole site to yourselves.

What could go wrong? What could go wrong?

Hotwire: Well deserved too, for sure. Yeah, you guys ran a super tight ship. I picked up so many tips and tricks of like where to put things like your physical layouts, lots of lots of cool stuff there, like putting those water IBCs on the roof of a, of a shipping container.

PY: Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, that was

Hotwire: brilliant.

PY: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hats off to Topi for taking on the role of, uh, the team lead this year and, um. And I, and I think it shows also that JC did a really [00:16:00] good job of kind of setting us up to this point now, and Toby's been able to take on that role and, and just sort of keep the good work going.

So yeah, it, it's been, it, it went really, really well from a spam point of view.

Miles: I can give a little preview here of the, um, underland rangers feedback survey. I've, uh, been collecting, uh, average ratings of the interactions between Rangers and all the other departments. And spam is currently becoming second with, uh, just over 92% positive interaction.

PY: Nice.

Miles: So goal achieved positive relations between spam and rangers.

PY: Fantastic.

Hotwire: Yeah, you made that look easy, Py and, um, miles. It's awesome. And thanks for the showers too, man. They're lifesavers.

PY: Uh, yes. Everyone is. Yeah. Access to the crew shower is, uh. Is a, um, yeah, much sought after commodity makes a big difference.

Space Cake: I was gonna mention about, um, crew feedback. There's actually a, um, a crew feedback session happening in Melbourne on the 2nd of November. It's a Sunday and it's in [00:17:00] North Carlton at the Great Northern Hotel. Uh, nice pub. Come and have a beer and a chicken parer and catch up with all your crew mates and tell your, tell your stories and share your feedback and everyone is welcome.

Miles: Yeah. And while we're doing, um, event shout outs, I believe there's a burning pub this Thursday as well. So that's, uh, Thursday, October 23rd. So if you're in Melbourne, come onto to that. That's gonna be, uh, also at the Great Northern, I think it's, sorry, the retreat Retreat hotel. Yeah.

Stevan: Yeah. So you, you're now based in Melbourne Miles, uh, you originally from Queensland, Brisbane,

Miles: yeah.

Yeah, so I've been nomadic for a while. Uh, the Queensland burn modifiers my home burn. Uh, and so I'm semi base here now, uh, and playing to for a little while longer, um, but still kind of uncommitted and still semi nomadic. Maybe I'll settle down by the time for next Underland, but we'll see how we go.

Stevan: And how, how are you finding the, the Melbourne, uh, burner scene burn community?

Miles: Oh, it's great. It's, um, I think it was, Underland was very, [00:18:00] very lucky to have such a veteran crew of burners sort of splitting off from seed and what, whatever anyone thinks about. Uh, what happened there and, and, and that community? Um, I think that the Underland community was incredibly experienced, fresh and motivated, uh, when, when Underland was first launched, or it must have been, and, and really put the community here onto such a, um, such a strong footing to produce a really polished, really professional burn, even at small and medium scales.

And, um, it seems to be scaling pretty well also. Uh, o obviously it's still sort of in the small to medium stages. Um, but, and there's, there's gonna be a lot more growth that happens as well over the next few years. But, um, I see no reason why the community shouldn't sort of keep flourishing as well. I really can't think of any, any negative interactions I've had from.

Anyone in the community

Hotwire: here? Here, my bro. Here, here. I think yeah, seeing like the, the turnout you guys had at the range of trainings, that's like a really good key [00:19:00] indicator and how positive that was and like how you guys are gonna expand on that. I dunno if you got the email from Lumos about trying to consolidate the, the range of trainings Sure.

Did. Country. I think that's a wonderful initiative. But just seeing me personally, I look at briefs, so when you guys, when key leaders give briefs and just sort of gauge that and like seeing you guys do it in such a professional and friendly manner, like I would not be surprised if you had a really significant uptick in volunteers.

I personally like, just felt really safe and loved and um, you know, was given challenges that were achievable and challenging. So, um,

Miles: yeah. Yeah. I I have, I have many thoughts around, um, volunteering, volunteer rates and signups as well. It might be, it might possibly be too early to jump into that though, unless Steve, you're keen to go ahead.

Stevan: We can talk about that later. Um, yeah, down the line, um, definitely something because, uh, from what I, from what I'm seeing is, um, you know, people are putting their [00:20:00] hands up. They, they, they, they see the community first and then they see what they can pitch in, like how they can help. So that's, that's an encouraging thing for, for underland to grow and common arts.

Uh, yeah. To, to get, to get more volunteers in and understanding the roles too.

Space Cake: We had a bit of a tick uptick in Centene Camp Volleys as well. We had a lot of return friends joining us again, and we had new folks coming along too. So it was really good to have that continuity, people who know what it's all about and then they can train up the next generation.

That's really great. And also, uh, this podcast is probably quite useful because you guys were promoting opportunities for volunteers in the lead up to Underland as well. So kudos to you, Steven and Py for getting that happening for us. Thank you.

Stevan: Yeah. You must have heard the call out, uh, there Miles. So thanks for stepping up.

Yeah, we, we needed a, a range of lead to step up. So did you guys encounter any, any first time burn? Around.

Hotwire: Yeah. Heaps. That is awesome.

Miles: Yeah, lots. There was a, [00:21:00] a pretty high rate. Um, the, I, I very much encourage, like, volunteering is the spirit of burns, right? So I was encouraging to everyone if you're a first time burner, come and volunteer.

Yeah. We, we had, we said that at the gate shift. Um, greeters were saying that. Um, and, and we rangers were talking about it as well with first time burners too. And, um, I think it feels like there was a very high rate of first time burners, which suggests that was a, a significant jump in ticket sales this year, which is, um, uh, net good, but brings some challenges.

And one of those challenges was that we had increased volunteer requirements and um, and we had a lot of first time rangers and first time burners coming into, which was, was good and encouraging, but brought complications.

Space Cake: Yeah. I ran a burner 1 0 1, um, session at center camp on, I think it was Thursday, Friday, Friday afternoon.

And we had about 15 people show up, some of which were veterans. 'cause I wanted to have old faces there, you know, sharing stories. And then we had a handful of fresh meat roll [00:22:00] through. It was really interesting. Um, we asked them what was so surprising, what was some of the surprises that they, um, encountered?

And one guy was like, yeah, I rocked up. And they, they asked me out the gate if I had all the food and water I needed for a week. And he didn't. And they sent him off to drive back to Avoca.

Miles: I remember that.

Space Cake: And pick up, yeah. All his gear. Um,

Stevan: well shout out, shout out to Benji. Um, he, he was the one that I also saw at Gate, and he, he got turned away that, but he came back an hour and a half later or something like that.

Uh, and, and, and, and he rang the gong. He, um, he did all the, you know, all, all the virgin things that he's supposed to do.

Space Cake: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And some of them didn't know that on effigy night, like, you know, you get your kid off and run around nude. That was kind of fun to break that, you know, to them. So it didn't come as a huge surprise.

But the, uh, the Nudie run at the effigy took ages to get going this year. Like everyone was standing around with their dick in their hands going, am I gonna run? You gonna run? [00:23:00] Who's gonna run?

Stevan: It was quite civilized. Really.

Space Cake: I saw, I saw some clothes back on again. Well, because they were like, fuck this, it's too cold.

I'm not doing it. And then in the end, miles started off the run. So

Stevan: was it Miles or was it Hold on. Was it was,

Miles: no, it wasn't me,

Stevan: it was Dylan.

Space Cake: Oh, sorry. Not Miles. Um, yeah, it was Dylan.

Miles: We do look kind of similar though though, so

Space Cake: I think it's, yeah, no, it wasn't You.

Miles: I mean, if I hadn't been on Ranger, ranger lead, it would've been me.

I'm, I'm telling you right now. But yeah, I had a few other responsibilities to deal with that night.

Space Cake: Yeah. Sorry it wasn't you, but also wasn't that either. So I think that has something to do with it, like compared to previous effigies where it's just absolutely fucking and just wanna get your clothes off.

That one wasn't quite as hot.

Hotwire: No, and it was quick burn too.

Space Cake: Sure was, fuck. Did you see the glue dripping out its mouth? Like at one point it like there was venom dripping mouth. Cool.

Miles: That [00:24:00] was, um, that was Dylan's first build, wasn't it? Yeah, that was, that was was the first time he'd done a build.

Hotwire: Yeah. Was, yeah.

I heard a, I heard a story that like he didn't want to even, he just wanted to build it and then he didn't even want to be there and then eventually just like started to really drift. That's the, he got into it. Architect coming out like, woo. Spring break.

Stevan: Yeah. Yeah. That was interesting. Well, it was, it was fitting.

Hotwire: I gotta love you and leave you. Sorry man. Like I double book myself. I got a director's meeting that I need to go to, so I love heaps.

Stevan: Alright, tj,

Miles: good luck tj. Thanks tj.

Where's my torch? Busy torch.

Hotwire: I'm on a ship dude, I get off on the 29th, so I'll go through the boxes then and have a man, sorry. Thank you if I have it.

Miles: Thank you. Love you.

Hotwire: Okay, love you. Bye. How do I leave Let out?

Stevan: Well, if you're gonna leave, if you're gonna leave, we have to sort of like stop this, this thing as well. So, okay. Let's go on, on a break and during the break I've got these, uh, burner voice messages to play. Alright, let's go on a break. Thanks [00:25:00] TJ.

Ranger Kunt: Hello Community. This is Burner Cunt here on Ranger duties. So I'm, uh, ranger cunt. Flew in from Hobart last night. This is my first Underland.

Ash: Hi, I am Ash. This has been my first burn and it has been. Absolutely amazing. I have never met such a supportive group of amazing, fun, fantastic people, so thank you. I'll be back next year.

Badai: Hello everyone. My name is Bar Dega Matu Flynn. I'm 30 years old and this is my first burn and it's been amazing. Thank you so much.

Grant: I am Grant, and this is, say your name.

Say your name.[00:26:00]

What's your name?

Harriet. And we are from the east of Melbourne. And this is our first burn. And I think Harriet's the youngest ranger to have been in the ranger crew. Yeah. Wanna say something? Harriet?

Harriet: Yes.

Anna. Serious one.

Grant: Okay. What are you, what are you gonna say?

Uh

uh. What do you wanna tell everybody?

Harriet: And we're rangering

Grant: and we're having a lot of fun doing it. We love everybody here

and thank everybody for an awesome time. All the, all the [00:27:00] creativity has been mind boggling.

Harriet: And I had a face paint.

Grant: I had a face paint as

the

mic drop.

Rowy: Hello. Hello. My name is

Rowy and I'm

from Java Bay in the beautiful, wonderful south coast.

I am here

today in Underland First Burn, first Underland, and my life has been completely shifted. I am got a whole new perspective and outlook on life and I just, hmm, feeling very lucky to be in this community.

Thank you.

Sam: Uh, I'm Sam from Tiny Shiny and I, this is my first burn and it's been marketing is, it's been eyeopening experience and an awesome place to go. There's so much art, there's so many [00:28:00] different vibes. Anybody can find their space. It's been amazing.

Burner: Morning you guys. Some lemon. Morning lemon.

Tessa: Uh, I'm Terry. I am from Melbourne, um, and is my first burn and it has been freaking awesome so far. Everyone is so nice and it's so social and fun and creative and I love it.

Burner: Thank you so much. It's very kind. Nice day.

Randy: I love you. all. This was great. Uh, letterbox workshop. Fuck off street. Randy's turn.

Jess: You have to say who you are.

Randy: Oh, Randy Pants.

Popcorn: From where?

Randy: Mg. Mg.

Ash: Hey, this is Ash at Sanctuary First Burn for me. First under Burn. Happy to be here. Loving it. Loving all the costumes, loving the energy, loving the love. Um, yeah, burn on.[00:29:00]

Meetal: My name's meetal I'm from Melbourne. Um, I have, this is my first Underland. It has been an amazing experience. I just love the whole sense of community and there is nothing more important in this world. Peace and love.

Chris: Sure, sure. Um, this is all very new to me, so even this whole experience is very new to me.

So my name's Chris. I'm here in Telekinetic waiting for the wind to die down so we can have delicious pancakes. And I'm excited. This is fun. It's been a fun day, one day down and enjoying it so far. Thanks.

Les: Into a podcast. Okay. Well, um, here we are on, uh, Friday. Um, it's popping off real nice and good over here.

And, oh, I'm Les, I'm camping with villains, but it's my first underline, my message and what I wanna share with the, the beautiful community here today is, um, make sure you spend some time [00:30:00] with the flowers. We got greeted by gorgeous yellow and lilac flowers on this beautiful pasture, and I just feel so grateful for them.

Every time I walk around, I feel like they're saying hi, and I really encourage you to spend some time with them and maybe thank them and send some gratitude for this beautiful piece of land. So, yeah, that's news. That's an update for, for Les from my render shift to yours. Um, can't wait to meet y'all.

Stevan: Okay, we're back. Okay, let's talk about the effigy and the temple build this year. Um, the design was a serpent or a brown snake or a snake, uh, for the, for the fig. What did you guys think?

Miles: Yeah, so that was, um, so the architect, uh, Dylan, it was [00:31:00] his first time doing a build. And, uh, that, that's his, that's his name, his actual name by the way.

You have to make sure you pronounce it, Dylan. So it was his first time doing a build, and, uh, it was, it, uh, it, it looked really, really good. Really, really cool. Every burn is a little bit different, uh, like every, every sort of, and every temple's a little bit different, and he put a lot of his own swing into it at the briefing before the burn, at about four, from memory 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM on Saturday.

Um, he, he talked us through a little bit about the, the, the design process and his philosophy and his thinking and inspiration behind it. And, um, for, you know, for anyone who's sort of raw dog in this podcast, just going in blind about Underland, the shape of the effigy was a coil serpent rearing up with its, um, face sort of pointing up and outwards and, um, it, so it was, it was quite high, the, the top of it.

And, uh, when Dylan talked a serious inspiration, his vision, it was very much a, um, it was meant, it was, uh, intended to be phallic, a phallic symbol. And his, uh, [00:32:00] part of his inspiration was to try and present it as a positive. Hopeful image or, or symbol of masculinity, something to try and reclaim some, some pride and some positivity of that.

Um, but at the same time, also to, um, uh, metaphor or very literally flip the bird to, um, Elon Musk's satellites in the sky above us. He, um, another thing he pointed out as well was how it was reminiscent of the shape of the temple burn as well. And the temple burn was like a, um, from memory, I might be mistaken, I believe it was a hexagon or an octagon shape, and it kind of twirled in a vague sort of spiral.

And the spiral was slanted in a way, which flowed with the direction that the snake faced as well. So symbolically, they were both kind of aligned to each other in terms of the, um, the, the structural flow, if that makes sense, everyone.

Stevan: Yeah. PY you you interviewed Dylan

Miles: PY Looks confused.

PY: I

was just trying to think.

Interviewed that

shape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:33:00] I interviewed, yeah,

Stevan: you interviewed Dylan for the podcast. Mm-hmm. Uh, he was telling us about the, the, the, also this symbolic, you know, message of the rebirth of a snake exchanged skin. Mm.

PY: Yeah. I had a bit of a chat to Dylan throughout the week at various stages of the build.

Yeah. He, I remember one conversation where he was talking about how it was, he, he wanted it to be our snake and I, as opposed to a snake, if that makes sense. And I kind of got that vibe. Like I remember looking at it, thinking. This is a pretty friendly snake. This is not a menacing kind of evil, devilish, snake devilish representative of anything nefarious.

I thought this was just a very chill snake with its chin at a kind of a positive attitude looking down at us, kind of benevolently. That was the vibe I got from the snake. Was that the vibe you got from it?

Miles: Yeah, I think one of, I think one of the bell kids seemed like as a masculine, as protector and and [00:34:00] guide, you know,

PY: I thought it was just chilled.

It was just a chilled snake.

Miles: One um, one actually, that reminds me of one other, the thing as well that I noticed about the design, oh, someone said, pointed out about the design, which is that the scales were all made of cardboard, I believe. And so there was a suggestion, I don't know if it came from Dylan, but there was a suggestion that as the structure took light, then the scales would.

Um, break free or burn off and then float away in the wind. Almost like a very, very literal sort of shedding of the, of the skin.

PY: Oh, cool.

Stevan: And how was the burn beck from your point of view? I was on perimeter.

PY: Yeah, I was on perimeter as well. Yeah,

Stevan: it burned pretty quick.

Space Cake: It burned much quicker than previous burns.

Uh, and it wasn't as hot as I've mentioned previously. And look, it looked, it looked good. Certainly there was glue melting from its mouth. It was dripping down, which is pretty cool. I was a little bit worried about some of those embers flying around from the bits of cardboard. But yeah, for me personally, I would've preferred it to be a little bit bigger and a bit of a bigger [00:35:00] fire.

I didn't get that real visceral feeling that I get sometimes from a really big one where I'm like, well, this thing is, this thing is a portal to another dimension. I didn't get that from this particular one, but, you know, every burn is different. I didn't think of it as a particularly masculine symbol. I didn't see that when I was looking at it.

But again, you know, everybody's a bit different. I also like a, um, an effigy where you can interact with it. Like if you can go inside it and some other effigies have had like a little bar in there sometimes set up and little private parties can happen. Those kind of little secret things. This one didn't have that, and that's cool too.

But there, that's, sometimes that's the, well, not sometimes that's what I look for.

Miles: Weren't there, um, people who were encouraged to write messages on the scales? Did anyone see those or know about that?

Space Cake: I saw some messages, some swear words that some kids had written on the, maybe it wasn't kids, but it looked like kids.

Stevan: There was, there was a bunch of kids that did enjoy the, the snake. They, they did, they did think it was a bit too friendly. So they, [00:36:00] I think they, uh, enhanced it a little bit. With some swear words.

Miles: Yeah, there's definitely an art to, um, just on, on the burn time, there's such an art to building those things so that they burn for like a good duration and don't draw it out too long and then collapse into a nice sort of set of coals.

Space Cake: And it was, I mean, it was so windy that, that, again, we had that really windy site, so maybe it was advantageous that it was over real quick.

Um, so it wasn't a risk.

Stevan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You, you mentioned how when it burnt, um, everyone was pretty civilized with dicks in the hands done, didn't know what to do with the nudie Run. I thought it was, I, I thought it was quite, quite fitting how the community had to wait for the actual designer to actually take off his clothes and do this, do this circle of, uh, yeah.

Before everybody else. So that was good.

Space Cake: Yeah. Apparently that's the tradition, which I wasn't aware of that it should be now. The,

Stevan: uh, not, not the, not the Ranger lead,

Space Cake: the builder. The builder or the designer or I, I guess the [00:37:00] lead, the lead on, on the effigy does the honors of the first lap in the nude. I didn't know that that was a thing.

PY: Did not know that.

Space Cake: And maybe it's not, maybe it's sort of just bullshit. But anyway, he started it.

Miles: Maybe it's a tradition from one or two burns somewhere in the world and it just spread as a rumor to all the rest.

PY: Mm. I just hope Dilin didn't think, you know, like for fuck's sake, like, do I have to do everything here?

Not only do I have to design and build this thing, but like, I have to kick off. Okay, I've gotta get my kid off now. Like, what more do you guys want from me?

Miles: It's, it's, it's the curse from taking a leadership role in a volunteer organization. You end up doing 80% of the work. It's just unavoidable.

Stevan: No, but once it happened, once he did take off his kit, the, the people just surrounded, people just, you know, got into this, this, uh, this craze of, of running around naked.

That was cool. Mm-hmm.

Miles: Should we, um, mention the stealth burn on Friday night? Or is, or are we officially told to that one? Yeah. That, that was pretty cool. That one.

Stevan: No, no, that's, let's talk about that. How, how, how did that turn out? The art burn? [00:38:00]

Miles: It was an burns definitely forgotten it.

PY: How come I didn't hear about this?

Miles: Because it was stealth. It was steal

Space Cake: when, that's why. It definitely happened.

Miles: It's, it spread the old fashioned way by word of mouth. Rumors, something's gonna burn in the field tonight.

PY: Okay. What, what, what burn?

Miles: Uh, there was a, some kind of a wooden structure. Um, I can't even remember what it looks like. It was probably only like, it was an art piece.

Art tool? Yeah, it was an art piece.

Stevan: It was one of those art installations. I think it

Miles: had some, it had paint on it, didn't it, like paint or something?

Stevan: It, it was also lit up. Yeah. Paint. Yeah.

Miles: Yeah. 'cause I remember the chatter from the, um, uh, fire crew afterwards that they had to, there was some concerns around the, the fumes from it.

And so they were, um, had to set up some special sort of adjustments for that. I'm like, oh, okay. So there must been like paint or something on the structure when they burnt it, but apparently it went very smoothly.

PY: Cool. Was this up near the temple or where was it?

Miles: No, it was sort of between effigy and Abyss.

Stevan: The sound camps,

Miles: like the furthest [00:39:00] sound camp. Alright. So it was yeah, on, on, on that side of the paddock.

PY: Okay. And, and how did it work? Did they have like, like just like a tiny Sandman team and like a, like a tiny like ranger team? Yeah, I think so. Just like two people think.

Miles: Uh, actually no. I, I think the decision was made that, 'cause it was gonna be a small fire that they didn't need sand vo, but they still had, um, fire crew and uh, I think, I think there was a medic on standby.

Yeah, because I remember thinking, hang on a second, should we know about this? Should we be doing something about this? And then the decision. Came from a few different points that we're like, nah, it's not that big a deal because it's only a small fire.

Space Cake: Yeah.

Stevan: There are, there are pictures

Space Cake: when we spoke about it at committee level, um, 'cause of course it needed an exemption.

It was described as being no bigger than a dumpster fire, so burn barrel. So, and we kind of treated it like that. Like what does this need? But yeah, it was definitely supposed to be a bit of a secret.

Stevan: It was a dump stop. There was a dump fire burn, wasn't it?

Space Cake: That was a different piece.

Stevan: Right. [00:40:00] Okay.

Space Cake: There was someone going around with a bin saying, Hey, dump in all your emotional baggage.

Mm-hmm. And I'll put it in the fire. Um, but that was a different piece to the, um, the rogue art burn on Friday night.

Miles: That reminds me of a, uh, workshop that one of my friends ran, which was the, um, uh, you, you come and tell them your, you know, what's weighing you down symbolically or emotionally, and hold the stone and put it into the stone.

And then, uh, then they washed the stones and symbolically washed that weight away. It was very beautiful.

PY: But the stone's still heavy,

Miles: but you're no longer holding the stone,

PY: but the stone's still gonna sink.

Miles: This is more one of those metaphorical things.

PY: Okay. All right. They didn't like drill the core out of the stone and put something like lightweight in there to make a float or something like that?

No.

Miles: Maybe they'll do that next time.

PY: Okay.

Miles: Just for some extra theatrics.

Stevan: Okay. So what other workshops, uh, at Center Camp Oh, would you like to highlight?

Space Cake: We had such a good, broad, crazy [00:41:00] range of workshops. I love the center,

Stevan: a lot of sound bathing, a lot of, uh, you know, sonic healing and breath work. And

PY: I missed out on the beatbox one.

Yeah, that was so bummed.

Space Cake: That was the, the beatbox. We had a bumed beatbox and vocal percussion workshop on Thursday afternoon, which was fucking rad. Snug fires around that. And he is so good. He did this death beatbox thing, which was this incredible, crazy, really difficult beatbox sequence that literally has him gasping for breath by the end of it.

And, um, it, it highlights all the different techniques that he showed through, uh, he demonstrated through the workshop. Anyway, later on that evening, he wandered back and had brought a whole group of people with him and he, he did it again at, on public demand. And then the mic got shared around and it turned into a bit of an impromptu open mic session, which was really great.

A lot of people got up. Nice. Just did their own little thing. There was some slam poetry. There was, [00:42:00] there was some singing, there was some standup comedy. It was great. We're definitely gonna do that again in future, just as a bit of a heads up for next year. It'll be the all abilities open mic night at Center Camp and it's not where you go with your fully polished piece of whatever, it's just come with your half-baked thing.

So super excited for that one. Um, the movie night that you hosted on Friday night, Steven was amazing. We have full house for Dark Side of the Rainbow, so can we please do that again next year? Um,

Stevan: maybe not the same movie.

Space Cake: Maybe not the same movie, but we definitely do a Friday night movie night and maybe we do it again on one of the other nights quite late.

'cause it worked really well. Gives people an option, um, if they're a bit cold and tired, they just wanna kind of rug up and get warm and snug in center camp. I just, it was beautiful to walk through and to see people getting cozy and cute. As you mentioned, we had that extreme sound bath, which was run every morning and that was, um, cold brew coffee on tap, um, that people could help [00:43:00] themselves to.

And then you settle in and get blasted by this quite strange sound scape piece that was composed to be both. Simultaneously relaxing and also quite triggering. So you're sitting there listening to the sound of pan pipes and fucking chimes and shit. And then there'd be this really weird glitching sound that would come through the sound system and you weren't quite sure, is this just like an issue with the wifi or is this actually part of the, the program?

And then increasingly over the course of the o of the, of the audio track, like that glitching and that crunching and the squeaking and the bleeping becomes more prevalent. And so instead of being all chill, these people will are kind of twitching and getting all agitated. And that was the point. So that was, that was a really cool experiment.

Um, and I know that that facilitator's got some new ideas for next year. The unmasking, your neurodiversity, uh, neurodivergency workshop was really well attended, which was really nice to see some, you know, just different content and people seem to really resonate with [00:44:00] that particular one. Uh, we had a ARI 1 0 1 workshop at Center Camp two.

Oh, wow. How did that go? PY? How did that go?

PY: Yeah, not bad. It always takes longer to deliver than I think though, like, I think I scheduled an hour and a half this time. And it, it really needs more like two hours. There's never enough time by the time people start sort of experimenting and doing a few things, so yeah, it seems to go down.

Okay.

Space Cake: Yeah, you had a lot of people there too.

PY: Need to bring more rope. Um, gotta gotta raid the rope factory next time.

Space Cake: Note to self. Yeah. And other events that I saw around the paddock or that I, I didn't see, but I wish I went to one of them was the, um, the Sunday afternoon at pca, trashy stiletto strut walk thing where you, you're wasted and you put on a really insane pair of stilettos and stumble down, you know, a lumpy looking red carpet and in front of everybody.

I didn't get to go to that one, but I really would've liked to have, did anybody else see any cool workshops or participate in [00:45:00] anything?

Miles: I wanna talk about the movie night at Center Camp.

Space Cake: Okay.

Miles: The, uh, so it was, I, I finally got some time off after an intense first 48 hours and I was overwhelmed, overstimulated and over there.

And, um, I was hanging out with the security guy, gage. We were just like, you know, checking stuff out and I'm like, okay, this is my first time to actually like, look at things while. Off and, and he is like, oh, look there, someone's moving some files around the computer over there. And we saw the back of the projector on Center Camp and I'm like, oh, maybe they're about to put a movie on.

And then it starts playing and he is like, is that Wizard Oz? And I'm like, I don't know. It looks kind of like it though. So he went over and stood there and just stood behind for five minutes trying to figure out what it was, watching it in reverse. Then I'm like, yeah, I think it's Wizard of Oz. Then I went around the front just to make sure, and stood there around the front for about 10 minutes, like in the audience watching it to figure it out.

And at some point someone says to me, Hey man, do you wanna sit down? There's some cushions here if you like. They're like, they're being like gentle about it. But I'm like, I was [00:46:00] too overwhelmed to respond. And Pink Floyd was playing. That's right. Dark Side of the Moon was playing and there was no audio. It was subtitles.

And I, I've, it syncs up perfectly. I've known about this for years, but I've never actually watched it. And so I was just standing there watching it just like mesmerized for, I don't know, 10 or 20 minutes or something before I realized someone was telling me that I could sit down and like 10 minutes later I sat down and watched the rest of it or made it like an hour through.

Uh, I was like totally sober too. I was just like that, just out of my mind at that point. Whenever it was like nine o'clock at night or eight o'clock or something when they put it on. Anyway, that was, that was beautiful. That was a very, very calming, vibey moment.

Stevan: I'm glad you enjoyed that, miles. Yeah. The, well it wasn't, wasn't a workshop, it was a cinema experience that was the dark side of the, the rainbow.

So there, there is a phenomena that, that went around in the nineties. It started in the 95, I think it. It was published in, in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that someone said that if, if you, if you are watching the original 1939, like, uh, wizard of Oz [00:47:00] movie, and if you play the soundtrack, if you hit it into a certain point and, and the soundtrack is looped, so the movie lasts longer than the, the actual Pink Floyd soundtrack album.

So it's gotta be on loop. But even though with that loop, it syncs in in time as well. So it's, it's kind of interesting phenomena. Um, it's called apophenia, which is the minds tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated I things or ideas. So that's probably the state where you entered into Mars when you, when you saw it, and then when you heard it, it didn't really match.

So your brain sort of like trying to find patterns or something like that. Yeah,

PY: I think VJ's and it

Stevan: was interesting to see Hunter. Yeah, it was interesting to, yeah, it was interesting to survey at the end, asking people, like, there was quite a few people that actually knew about this and actually wanted to experience it as well.

Um, so I think this underland was, there was enough, I guess, crowd or punters or size participants where there is optionality [00:48:00] where there is, you know, you can go watch the un kind of like registered fire, burn, art, burn, whatever, or you can come watch a movie in this or you can go to the, to the dome, to the sim city.

So I, I thought that was spectacular how the growth and the people have put in the. The effort of making this, uh, event.

Space Cake: Yeah. And just on the, um, one last thing about the, the awesome movie night at center camp, we had that fucking rad sound system, which really would've made that sing like that really good DNB audio technique Perfect for it.

So,

Miles: yeah. So who, whose, whose initiative was it? Was it yours, Steven?

Stevan: Yeah, yeah,

Miles: yeah, yeah. Brilliant idea. Um,

Stevan: yeah, it's, it, it is part of, um, an an urban legend kind of pop culture kind of,

Miles: yeah. Yeah. Like I

heard about it years ago too. Um, but it's just one of those weird, funny, obscure things you learn and then just like immediately forget.

Mm. Well, or you forget if you wine anyway.

Stevan: And I was surprised at how many people out there because you're wondering, you know, okay, you, you, you, you are into [00:49:00] something or you found something, you go in a rabbit hole and you're thinking, well, who else is, is aware of this? And addition to go to a burn and go to center camp and, and do this experiment and find out there's, there's a lot of people out there.

Mm,

Space Cake: yeah. You're not, you're not the only tripper.

Stevan: That's right. Yeah.

Miles: Oh, I was, I was totally sober. It just felt like I was high as balls.

Space Cake: What a contact high.

Miles: Yeah, A visual, high visual and oral high from the experience. But I mean, like, I was, I was, I was physically and emotionally tired as well to the point where, you know, it was basic, almost hallucinating.

Space Cake: Sounds like you needed the buff boys to come around and give you a buff. So they were a group of

Miles: Yeah.

Space Cake: Lads quite buffed up and they were cruising around on their bikes. Do you remember seeing this? And they had these, these car buffers. So those fluffy, furry, vibrating things that you apparently buff out your car paint job.

Do you know guys know what I'm talking about?

Miles: Like a car wash, the big things. [00:50:00]

Space Cake: Yeah. But they're, they're, um, round things and they had them plugged into a battery and they're quite heavy and they vibrate really, really strongly. And you can apply them apparently to the human body and you get quite the massage and it was awesome.

I would highly recommend that. So you guys didn't have that experience?

Miles: I had no idea.

Space Cake: Okay. Yeah. Only, they only, I think they're only rolling around once. But you know, it was pretty popular.

PY: Damn. Missed out on the Buff Boys.

Miles: There was a lot of, um, unique, uh, art moments. R roving art installations is the, uh, official term

Space Cake: headless.

How the head person. Oh, so good. Did you see the first I remember

that one.

This is great.

PY: And they came up afterwards.

Stevan: There was a roving cinema.

PY: They came up afterwards and said, oh, by the way, I was, I heard the roving cinema too. Their head was person. That was great. So we gotta have a chat about it. That was great.

Miles: Did anyone see the, the salmon tin Can guy?

PY: Huh?

Space Cake: Yeah. [00:51:00] That sardines actually.

Miles: Sardines, yeah. Taste my sardines

PY: dressed,

Miles: delightfully odd. Well, he was dressed up like, I don't know, um, like a, like an ice cream man from the 1950s and he had a, a tin can on his hat, like on his head and he went around with an open can of sardines and saying to everyone, would you like to taste a sardine?

But he said it in a very interesting, weird way.

Space Cake: There was someone giving out, um, out freshly shucked oysters as well.

Miles: I remember that. Like 11:00 PM right on like Saturday.

Space Cake: Yeah. And then with the flame, you could have them flame grilled as well. They got out the, um, I dunno what you call that,

Stevan: ki Patrick.

Yeah.

Space Cake: Yeah. It was pretty popular.

Miles: Did anyone end up actually eating it low and slow?

Stevan: Mm. Well yeah,

Miles: because I remember waiting for ages and they just kept pushing it back like four or five hours before they were ready to serve.

Space Cake: Yeah, that's because of the wind.

It was impacting on the flames and the heat.

But no, I missed out

Miles: bad luck. Me too. [00:52:00] However, I remember having some incredible bond me on at least one night, which was Oh yes. Roving around on a tray.

Space Cake: Yeah, I had one of them too, Steven. Well done. How did you keep it fresh?

Stevan: Well, it's a good thing that spam has, has an upgraded kitchen this year. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Shall we talk a little bit about the team of, of how, I guess, uh. More more energized. Yeah. What, what, how would you say, how, how, how the, the team work this year? Py.

PY: Yeah. I think, uh, a bit more energized. I think a combination of being a bit more energized, a little bit more organized, and having access to a few more resources as well this year.

And all of that led to like a pretty good vibe the whole week despite, you know, the challenges of the weather. 'cause that, um, yeah, the space cake was saying the wind is killer on that site. The wind just amplifies everything. Like a little shower turns into a big deal when it's blowing in sideways. Like, we had the [00:53:00] doors of the shipping container open and the rain was making it kind of like halfway down the shipping container kind of thing.

And you know, tars were blowing around. Crappy gazebos, were getting uprooted. But yeah, we had enough enough people to handle it. And it was, you know, it was all pretty chill.

Stevan: And the, and the pack down as well, you're saying? The strike, yes. It was pretty easy. Pretty chilled.

PY: Yeah, it all went pretty well. We. I had to play a bit of a Tetris game as usual.

And it's that whole thing about, um, like that logistics always gets a bit tricky because the kitchen kind of needs to keep going for as long as possible because you want the crew to be fed and watered still, but at the same time, you're trying to kind of disassemble that kitchen area around the kitchen crew and you're trying not to disturb them and you're trying to leave a bit of shelter from them.

So it becomes a bit of a tricky balance in the end until you just say, fuck it, and then you go eat a bowl of cocoa pops and call it done. So, you know. But yeah, it was good. Having that [00:54:00] upgraded crew area was good. You know, it's one of these things that you always talk about when it comes to sites. You know, wouldn't it be great just to have a bit more permanent infrastructure?

Wouldn't it be great to have an extra shelter? Wouldn't it be great to have some extra toilets and a shower and stuff like that? And it's like, well, how much is too much? How much can we, like legally do? Because then we'll be getting into building permanent structures. How much is the landowner happy for us to have there?

And, um, you know, how much is just too much luxury? You don't wanna, you know, make it glamping. It's gotta be a little bit rough still, otherwise it just becomes too easy. And then what's the point?

Miles: Learn to love the suck. Actually, that reminds me of a, um, just on that subject of infrastructure, I see there's some, uh, discussion actually about extending the duration of underland.

What are your thoughts on that PY?

PY: Yeah, I, I, I saw that thread come up. Look, hey, it's, it's all well and good, but, you know, I think the question was [00:55:00] asked, well, what does it need? I think the, one of the, the biggest things it needs, it just needs, you know, if you extend it for another two days, another 48 hours, well that's another 48 hours of volunteer labor you need across all the teams.

So that's, you know, another two days worth of porta potties that need to be serviced, toilet paper, fresh water to go into them, an extra pump out that's needed. So, you know, it's, it's more labor and can we get that labor? I mean, how does, from, from your point of view, from a ranger point of view, if I was to say to you, okay, you've, you've got now got another 48 hours of shifts to fill.

Would that have been, would that. Being feasible with the amount of volunteers that you had this year?

Miles: I reckon we could have done it. We had, we had some gaps, but we had enough people who were willing to stretch that like it could have been done. The, the only, like the, the biggest [00:56:00] issue with lack of coverage was actually on the overnights.

That was the only real kind of challenge that sticks out for me. And we had enough redundant systems in place that, like, it wasn't a big drama to not have people do the full overnight. So, yeah. So I think for overall, for volunteers, I think we were pretty lucky. And, uh, you know, in a lot of the comms I was pushing out as well to try and get people to sign up.

Um, I was hitting comms hard and hitting, hitting social media and hitting the emails and hitting the slack and, and getting people to sign up. And anecdotally, I know a lot of other people helped out as well to boost range of signups. And so we, we had the single largest volunteer crew at, out of everything, including, I believe, including theme camps as well.

Mm-hmm. And potentially that actually came at the expense of other volunteer crews too, because I know a lot of, a lot of the veterans were pulling double or triple. Sort of responsibilities. Um, so like, we wouldn't, I, I guess what I'm trying to say is like we could have squeezed a tiny bit more, but I [00:57:00] think the, the biggest sort of area to boost volunteering is actually in more just newer, newer burners, getting more experience in getting an understanding of just how useful and impactful it is to, to volunteer and give back.

And, um, given the high rate of new burners that uh, proportionately speaking, a lower rate of new burners in future would probably result in higher volunteer rates. And, you know, there's other ways we can sort of step into, encourage that as well. So like, people propose to a quota for theme camps, which I've seen done elsewhere and I think it's probably a good idea.

And then, uh. Requirement for volunteering as part of the ticket entry. Um, confess does that, and I think it, they, they seem to look pretty successful, and confess is obviously massive. It's huge. So I think there's ways we can boost the volunteer rate and, um, the sooner we start sort of talking about those community, the better because of how volunteering is, like the lifeblood of, of any, any event in a volunteer run organization.

PY: How, how does the quota for theme camps work where you've seen it [00:58:00] previously? How does that work?

Miles: Um, so, so Modifyre did it, uh, I'm just trying to remember my head, how it worked. I believe I, from memory, so they didn't do it this year, but they went on hiatus for a while. But before the hiatus, I believe every, every volunteer for a theme camp had to also sign up for a six hour shift with one of the other crews.

Whether that was Rangers Leave No Trace. Oh, right. Or one of the others.

PY: Okay. That sounds like a good way of doing things. It's a bit of cross pollination.

Stevan: Yeah. Well, that, that model has been adopted by also at Maverick Burn. I remember them camps had to, had to pitch in at least, uh, yeah, a couple of volunteer shifts.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Whether, whether they're experienced or not experienced, we encourage all types of, uh, burners

Miles: in, in Modifyre. It was everyone, everyone who joined as part of a theme camp had to do the extra shift. Where's, where's Maverick Burn? Is that in Australia?

Stevan: Uh, it's, it, it, it used to be in New South Wales.[00:59:00]

Um, it, it folded with, with the, uh, the organization, which is now Burning Sunburnt Arts. Yeah. It's all together. Okay. In a way. Yep. Okay. So I mean, what about Common Arts Victoria Space Cake? You're on the board. How would that look for the Common Arts Victoria team? It was extended.

Space Cake: Yeah. Look, this has been floated a couple of times and we are open to it.

It's just about the reality of numbers and volunteers and then adjusting our permit and budget accordingly. So I think we wanna do things in a, um, realistic approach. We don't wanna rush at anything and then have things fall over. So we'd rather go with slow, healthy, sustainable growth than suddenly blow out and not have the, the people to, to maintain it, because it is the people that make this community and those events really smooth.

Um, and we're also quite interested in doing other events, not just underland. We wanna do community engagement events throughout the year, so we [01:00:00] just don't wanna hang our hats entirely on one big burn event each year. So there's other opportunities throughout the year. So we do the market, for example, and, you know, there's different things that we can do.

So it doesn't have to hinge entirely on Underland.

Miles: How, how would, how would that differ from the Burning pubs?

Space Cake: Uh, well Burning Pubs is run by Mel Burners and the common arts event. The, the market is run by. Common arts. It's, we do it this, we have done it in the past two, we did it this year and last year we did it in the middle of winter as a bit of a preliminary, you know, excitement builder for underland.

But we, we don't have the capacity to do it every month either.

Miles: Is there much separation between MEL burners and CAV?

Space Cake: Oh, they're completely different entities.

Miles: Yeah. Yeah. I know they're different sort of organizations, but surely there'd be a lot of overlap. Right.

Space Cake: Yeah. And we do work together, but they are two very separate groups, separate budgets, separate membership groups as [01:01:00] well, and we try not to step on each other's toes.

Miles: Yeah. From what I understand Melbourne is, is like, I don't know, 15 years old or something, and um, was founded to be kind of like the Victorian portion of the burning seed community and, and so it's got those sort of pre-existing connections, whereas Cav was spun up to have a Victorian burn in the last few years.

Yeah. Is that That's right. Yeah.

Space Cake: That's too much to my knowledge. I mean the, this community is big enough to have both. Mm. And there is a lot of overlap and people are participants of both or neither. Um, people might go up to the odd Melbourne Pub, burning pub or they might go to Yeah, I don't think they're exclusive.

We try to work together.

Stevan: Yeah, it's, it's a similar scenario as what we have in New South Wales where you've got Sun Bernards, you've got third degree, and then you also got burners of Sydney and surrounds, which is Boss, and they do the burning pubs and the decompressions.

Yeah.

So this is probably a good segue to.

If you want to mention about, let, let's, [01:02:00] let's talk about quickly, briefly, about the Mel Burners decompression in November 15th next month. We're gonna have a, a, a small range of presence there. Miles.

Miles: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, somewhat unexpectedly, I have, um, been recruited to do a little bit of organizing for it.

I'm not on the events committee or anything, but, um, Dana reached out to me a little while ago to say, Hey, we were thinking about having rangers at, at the decompression. And I'm like, cool, let's do it. We, yeah, we've got a lot of energy and motivation in the, um, in the ranger team from Underland this year who are really motivated to keep doing things, including a lot of very experienced rangers.

Um, and, uh, so I said, yeah, no, I think like this will be much more event, so it should be no problem at all to get a few people to chuck on some hats or something and, and, uh, and, and help out. And so as part of that to, to go with the theme of being strictly business, uh, we introduced a new ranger internship program for anyone who wants to, uh, get a head start on their career in Rangers, which is a, um, profitable and rewarding pursuit.

[01:03:00] You, um, are invited to take an internship with the ranger department. You will be, uh, assigned to the office of a, uh, senior, uh, a senior partner of Ranger Hood, who will, uh, supervise and mentor your career progression. And, uh, um, very excited to, uh, to be seeing a few of our very experienced senior councils return to, um, uh, oversee, oversee this, this, this corporate event.

Stevan: Yeah. I think we as rangers, we need to get back into the mindset of. That rangers happens all year round, not just at Underland or at, uh, any other burns. So, yeah, it's, it's good to have a ranger of presence. Mark, we had, we had, we had some Ranger presence at the Sydney Decom on the weekend, so it turned out well.

Miles: Oh, yes, I saw, actually, I saw some photos from that. Um, yes. I didn't, I don't, I didn't recognize any in, um, ranger gear, but

Stevan: I was in ranger gear. Yeah.

Miles: Uh, you are wearing an underhand shirt. I saw. Well, that's the, that's the, oh, wait, that was the Ranger shirt. Yeah,

Stevan: that's the thing. It's, it's, yeah, we, we gotta, we've gotta have the mindset of, of, [01:04:00] you know, we we're doing this all year round, so we're gonna have some stuff stored in hand.

Yes. Rather than on site or wherever, three or four hours away.

Miles: That, that, that was my mistake. Um, I, it was, uh, oh God, it was a fucking mess. Um, no, it wasn't a mess. It was extended form of self-harm for me during the pack up where I'm just like, procrastinating and drawing it out and making it bigger and bigger.

And in the end I'm like, okay, get it done. Got it done. Get it in the container. Got it in the container and left site with as little as possible. And then,

Stevan: but I, I, I like, yeah, I like these fuckups because it presents an opportunity for us to redesign an urban kind of ranger outfit or something, you know?

Yeah. Like, like the off years or the off seasons kind of ranger.

Miles: Yeah. Yeah, that's some of the discussions we're having. So, um, on, on the table at the moment, so we're actually looking, we're actually go, um, discussing with Melbourne is to apply for a grant for them, uh, with, sorry, with them for ranges. And so what, um, the current proposal on the table, which we've got quotes for, is to have a.

[01:05:00] Cap and a over the shoulder sash and then possibly like a tie or some kind of neck thing as well. Um, floating around a couple of ideas, but, uh, that's looking, that's looking pretty positive at this stage. Uh, everyone loves the idea of having a, uh, a city uniform and a country uniform for rangers, whatever that ends up being.

And there's a lot of interest as well in re re maybe not redesigning the Underland Ranger uniform, but thinking about how we can sort of accessorize or you freshen it up and rejuvenate it. So I have a feeling in the next sort of six months, there's gonna be some pretty solid proposals on the ground heading towards Common Arts Vic Grants team to say, um, you know, we wanna spice up the range of uniform a bit.

Can you give us 500 or a thousand dollars for, um, something not sure yet. Pro um, one of the discussions is logos on vests. Uh, 'cause at the moment they're just the straight purple vest. So a lot of, lot of energy, a lot of interest in that. And uh, yeah, get amongst it. Um, if anyone's keen to get involved in those discussions, they're happening in the WhatsApp chat mostly, [01:06:00] but we'll probably be kicking off actual team meetings at some point in the next month as well.

Formal range of team meetings, which will promote more widely to the Cav and Melbourne as community

PY: miles. Can I, yeah, I find it interesting. Can I put an idea in your head, miles to keep the range of momentum going? Spam is gonna be having our own mid-year summit. We are gonna call it the SMS, the spam mid-year summit or spam mid-year shenanigans when we're all gonna get together and, you know, do spam shit with chainsaws and burn barrels.

And, you know, you know, just power tools, that sort of stuff. Maybe Rangers can do the same thing. You can have the ranger mid your media summit. You can call it rims, RMYS, and you can get together and do ranger shit. Like

Miles: do get together and do some ranger work. Maybe if it's some ranger jobs.

PY: Yeah. Just, you know, well you can, oh, I mean, you can, you can

Miles: dare I say jobs at rims or rim jobs for short.

PY: You can, [01:07:00] uh, you know, but you can make it practical. You can do training, you can work on your radio protocol, what, whatever. But, you know, just something to keep a momentum.

Miles: That's sounds so much fun. I, I love the sound of that.

PY: Just an idea. I'm sure this rangers is gonna hear this and they're gonna be like, yes, this is a thing.

Now we're gonna do

Miles: blinds ju like burning seed Rangers used to.

Stevan: So do you guys want to hear more burner voice messages this time from Rangers? Well, not just entirely rangers, but, uh, we've got some rangers to start off with. So should we go on a break and come back after these burner voice messages?

Miles: Yeah, let's do it.

George: Oh, hello everybody. This is George here, ranger George. And um, yeah, we got, just got roped into say a few things about, uh, the community. I've been coming for now, third year, and it's a really lovely place and people and this year's, um, definitely visibly grown with, uh, quite few cool camps and [01:08:00] stages and it's really developing into something, uh, special.

There's, uh, 200 people more attending, 50 kids and yeah, it's been, uh, very much a breeze so far. Not many accidents, nothing really. Um, but yeah, good fun. So yeah, thank you everybody for respecting everybody and keeping it cool and wild.

PK Max: It's PK Max dialing in from the Rager station, formerly Ranger, but we've lost the end. So it's now a rager station and I'm out here raging on behalf of everyone and it's my first Rager mission and it's lovely and I love you.

Tessa: Hi, I am Tessa. I'm from Coberg and I've had such a great time at Underland here so far this weekend. Just got yesterday [01:09:00] and everyone's been so lovely. Got whis off

on a cracking adventure. Thank you everyone who, um, said hello and uh, was really nice yesterday. Thank you.

Brian: Hi there. It's Brian here. I'd just like to say hello to all the community, the burners, the people enjoying themselves, the amazing creators and the people that are just living their best life. It's an amazing place that's opened my eyes to many wonderful things and I hope to experience more over the next couple of days.

Jess: Yay. Um, hello, my name's Jess and I'm from Macedon. Beautiful. And um, I've been to lots of burns, but I'd just like to thank the community for being so nice and welcoming and I just love it. It's my happy place. So thank you. Bye.

Shang: Hey, good morning.

My name is Chang. Uh, [01:10:00] I am camping with the gaze. I'm from Melbourne, but originally from Taiwan in the Philippines.

I just wanna wish everyone the best time, uh, and the hope that this burn is everything that you need it to be.

Cruiser: Well, yeah, that snake, um, when it caught fire was uh, pretty, pretty good. Um, there was stuff flying frigging everywhere. It was made off of plywood sort of thing as the fire crew was a little bit worried about, um, those flying embers, but that's why they call it ember chasing.

Hey, I'm Cruiser, it's only my second burn. I was fart at, uh, at the Embers Renegade Burn and now part of this team here and it's just amazing. Um, I've met so many people and I'm hoping to get to Burning Man next year, so I'll be sure to tell you all about that if and when that happens.

Champagne: This is champagne from [01:11:00] here and there

again an absolutely amazing experience. Oh, lovely people, wonderful experience as always. It's a shit the first hour or so. Um, but after that, wonderful, thank you.

Jason: Hey everyone, this is Pond Beach, Jason Pond from the Art. And, uh, just wanna say love what you're doing. Been blown away by all of the magic and the creativity and the effort this year. Some new faces, and it's amazing. I can't wait to see you all again next year.

Pospi: Hi, I'm Pospi. I am from Thornbury at the moment, and, uh, I want you to know this has been my best burn. Not that I like to rank and rate things and put them into categories, but, um, yeah, uh, [01:12:00] had some absolutely filthy drum and bass, but incredibly wholesome, warm, gentle boogies at, uh, auntie Maria's. That's definitely been a highlight and, uh, deepened some emerging friendships and made some new ones.

Really, uh, it's been really profoundly gorgeous. Thank you all.

Wookie: Good day. Good day. Uh, I'm rookie. Wookie. I was one of the rangers here at Underland in 2025. Uh, my first Underland very much, not my first, uh, not my first burn. Um, yeah, just the midst of, uh, of packing up after the chaos and confusion and carry on. Um, bit sad to be heading home after having such a, such an excellent time.

Um, yeah, I mean, I honestly don't really know what, uh, what else to say, so I'll leave it at that.

Tolga: Hello. Hello. It's toga from, uh, rumpus Room, and [01:13:00] what a beautiful bunch of people. What a colorful bunch of people. Thank you very much for everything.

Hello. This is,

Axel: this is Axel. Fuck you burn.

Stevan: You wanna say something?

Aruna: Um,

I hate the wind. Mm. And the flies hate. The flies are all right. The flies can stay, the wind can fuck off.

Stevan: What did you reckon of this, uh, year's temple?

Aruna: Say what?

Stevan: What do you think of this year's temple?

Aruna: I thought it was very cool. It was very spiraly. It burnt beautifully and I'm very proud of Aaron and his crew.

They did a great job.

Stevan: Well,

how does it feel to be surrounded by 500 weirdos here?

Aruna: Very [01:14:00] comfortable because I fit right in 500 of some of the best weirdos.

Stevan: Okay. So what burner message would you like to leave out there for the community of Underland?

Aruna: If you can dream it, you can do it.

Stevan: Thank you. True.

Alright, cool. We're we are back. Let's talk about the temple.

Miles: Yeah, let's talk about the temple.

Space Cake: It was so beautiful. My gosh. Very spirally. It was so beautiful during the day and at night, and there was so much work that went into that. And

Miles: I, I wrote a little message inside. Yeah. And I took a couple of friends in who didn't know you could go inside and write messages and that was special.

PY: Was it?

Stevan: Yeah. Why? Why? Why did I think that you couldn't go inside? Was it sacred or something? Was it

Miles: you, you can't always go inside. Um, and so like by default people kind of know and the entrance is also on the far side of it. So you have to actually either know there was an entrance or walk all the way round and see the door.

And then also feel encouraged to go in because like it's an art installation. The [01:15:00] default is, you know, you look but you don't touch kind of thing. So sometimes people aren't used to that idea of a, a door being an entryway.

Space Cake: I wanted to know what those weird white sacks were in there.

PY: Yes. I didn't know what they were about cushions.

And I didn't quite get the alien seed spawn pot plant thing either. I didn't

Space Cake: o okay, so it wa it was to do with some sort ofmy spawn egg thing, right? That or not because that's what it looked like.

Stevan: We have to get a de, we have to get Aaron the designer on.

PY: Absolutely. We need to. Yeah. Uh, for people who didn't see, who didn't see it, it was kind of like the thing that I'm talking about, it kind of looked like a pot plant, but it was like, uh, kind of a mutant alfalfa green thing with a tongue rising out of kind of a epoxy lake is what it looked like to me.

Kind [01:16:00] of like a little bit aliens esque. Yeah. I was like, it, it looks cool. Um, and then there was the white sacks on the walls as well.

Miles: I don't remember this at all.

PY: Oh yeah. It was all there. That was all part of it.

Miles: I, I, I get what you're saying about like the alien type vibe for it, because it had that kind of ribbed, almost organic, like curved thing going on.

PY: Was it, was it technically helix because each of the squares on the layer rotated, but then the whole structure rotated around another axis as well. So it was a rotation around the rotation. Is that a helix?

Space Cake: Yeah. I got the vibe that it was a helix, and then when it burned at the end, it was so weird. There were these two spaces in the burn patch where all the burning stuff was, and there was two sections in circles, perfect circles, which had nothing.

Nothing had, nothing had [01:17:00] fallen into it, so it remained completely bare the ground underneath. Oh wow. It was really strange. Yeah. Not sure if that was intentional, but it was certainly intriguing to me to see, and gee, it was hot by comparison to the effigy. That one was a hot long burn that took fucking ages.

It was so hot. It was burning my face.

PY: Yeah, there was a fair bit of fuel there.

Space Cake: Yeah.

Stevan: I enjoyed how silent it was until. I think Mick's dogs started barking and it was like

PY: the frog frogs were raising a racket as well. And the frogs as well. Yeah. As soon as they started fueling, everyone went dead silent and the frogs were like, okay, it's, it's now our turn to shine.

Space Cake: Yeah. Channeling. And there was a, um, a, in the distance behind it, I saw a shooting star or a comment with the green tail, and a few other people saw it too, because we all kind of gassed, but it was really quick.

Miles: I wrote, um, I wrote some slam poetry, but my experience at [01:18:00] Underland and the final section is recounting part of the Temple burn.

Um, or the, like what happened at the Temple Burn as well, from the perspective of one person on the perimeter. And, uh, it was a quiet spot and you could hear the crickets and the, the frogs.

Space Cake: And then when it started burning, it was so loud because it was so quiet elsewhere. Roaring inferno. So good.

Miles: Yeah. Um, here's a bit more trivia.

That's the first time I was, so I was er lead. That was my first time doing perimeter lead for brand as well. It's pretty exciting.

Space Cake: You would've had

Nice.

Stevan: Yeah, you were very, it,

yeah, you were very, very focused in there. Uh, miles I remembered you had to meditate as well. It was

Miles: beforehand. Yeah. Not, yes. Beforehand. Beforehand.

Stevan: No. No. But beforehand you had to get some rest time and making sure you are really focused and tuned in into, yeah, into the temple.

Miles: Yeah, that felt appropriate.

Um, and also to [01:19:00] sort of, uh, sort through my head as well and, uh, work through what had been a very high energy, um, few days beforehand and then the weeks leading up to that as well.

Stevan: Do you feel, do you feel like the, the temple has somewhat overtaken the effigy as as, as a primal source of sort of like.

Cathartic experience.

Miles: I think it depends on what, what people bring to and then intend to take away from each of them. 'cause they have very different purposes.

Hmm. And, um, you know, when, when my friend came to me to say, Hey, you know, here's, here's a workshop I'm doing where you can, you know, symbolically release things that are weighing you down emotionally or otherwise.

Um, my response at the time was, I, I feel as though I'm flying right now. Nothing is weighing me down. And, uh, I, I would happily do that if I had sort of like the, um, a bit of free time. But I don't feel as though I would get much out of that workshop right now. And, uh, you know, for me, going into the Temple Burn, I, I could have sat and thought for hours and I did at different [01:20:00] times of the weekend, but, um, for me, I wanted to get something very specific about it, which was to sort of, you know, fill my role, do do my duty as perimeter lead.

And so for, for me, like that, that was the impact for me was working within a team and having a, a really, really sort of tight, rewarding, high quality sort of effort that we put in. Whereas other people might, you know, not, not, uh, for example, new Burner might not be sure what to expect and might not sort of have that orientation or induction to really get across the idea of, of what the purpose of the burn was.

And so, you know, they might have gone into a thing, oh, this is gonna be another Fig G 2.0. Um, or, or, or, or something like that, right? And not coming into it with that space to repair and think, well, this is a time for reflection, for letting go. Those who have done this a few times or, you know, a few decades do kind of look forward to that and sort of psychologically and emotionally prepare for that sometimes for, for months in advance.

Right? And, and, and, and that's, [01:21:00] you know, that, that was the way I approached modifier this year. And Underland as well. I'm thinking, look, um, the, the effigies a time for celebration, but the temple, the time for reflection and, you know, it, it's symbolic where you prepare those things you wanna reflect on and prepare those things that you want to be willing to let go.

Stevan: Yeah. I know that at Burning Man, it's become known as a thing where. Most people go, go for, just for the temple, I think, um, to celebrate, acknowledge the temple. Um, what's the, what was the feeling like with the new burners space cake? With, with the temple? Yeah. Was that talked about?

Space Cake: Yeah, we covered that.

The difference between effigy and temple and Yeah. The burgeon had no idea. It was great just to blow their minds with this. 'cause from the outside it just looks like, like one big party. Right. But there is actually quite a lot of intention, intentional spaces and, um, ritual that goes along with burning events.

We have a culture, it might be pretty loose, but there are some anchor [01:22:00] points along the, along the way. And yeah, effigy and Temple are two big ones.

Um, and I think it's really important to hold onto those spaces because yeah, the reflection. And the opportunity to grieve or to, to let go of things. Uh, we don't have a lot of opportunity in modern day default world to, to do that, at least not in a collective group.

And it is, it is very powerful to have these group experiences together and share these experiences so things can become quite heightened. Yeah, I, I really appreciated that the crowd were really quiet at Temple Burn some, sometimes you hear people kind of giggling and chatting and, you know, not being, not being really present in the moment.

But this year I think it really was quiet and I didn't feel a super overwhelming sense of sadness. And at, uh, previous Temple Burns, there has really been a lot of tangible grief collectively. I, I, I'm pretty sensitive, I can pick up on this stuff, but I wasn't overwhelmed by [01:23:00] emotions of other people. This time it was, it, it felt really grounding and as I, as I said earlier, like it was quite a wholesome event all over.

And I feel like the Temple Burn also reflected that. It felt quite balanced and grounding and a really lovely way to end.

Miles: There was a, uh, the, the, the small group of US Queensland burners that were here, one of us had put a memorial into the temple for, um, which some of you may have seen for a Queensland burner that died earlier this year.

Um, Barry Baz was, he also had a memorial in the temple at Big Burn and a little, its name, little Picture. Um, a few words about him as well. And, uh, I. I didn't know him well. Um, he was a big community figure in West End, uh, in Brisbane and was very, very well known and loved. And, um, so for, for, for those of us who were sort of part of that, there was a, there was, there was grief there.

[01:24:00] Um, but also sort of, uh, collective grieving in, uh, when, when people, you know, when people pass on, sometimes it's, it's, it's their time. So it was an acceptance as well. For, for me, a big part of the emotional impact as well as that was how I was incredibly struck and extremely proud by the number of first time burners we had on perimeter.

This, this was, this went for effigy and Temple, but a bit more so on Temple. I think where I, you know, I was, I was very clear when Rangers were signing up with our first time burner saying, look, I'm not asking you to do parameter because this, this is a, this is a very big thing for f to your temple and you know, I gently encourage you to sort of give it a go first.

But given we, we, we ended up being short of, of um, parameter ranges for various reasons. And so some first time burners did step up to jump on that perimeter. And especially for Temple, I was really, really, I felt a lot of that weight and for me, I was, part of me was grieving a little bit to think [01:25:00] that.

They were, they were making that sacrifice to, um, stand up and, um, and, and, and, and do that service to the community at a time when they may have otherwise felt very impactful to be fully present, um, with the temple without having that additional duty of being on parameter. Um, so, you know, we had a lot of first time burners, probably a sort of higher proportion than sort of Yeah.

Might otherwise average suspect. And, um, and, and this, this is one of the complications from that, I think, is that we have to ask more of them when they may not quite be ready yet in some cases. And this, they, they, they all did fantastically, but I was still very sort of shocked by that sacrifice.

Stevan: There's also the, the idea thrown around of moving burn nights.

So effigy and temple up a bit, say Friday, Saturday, and then you can have Sunday to, to rest or party. And then, yeah, usually it's anti-climatic after the temple burn, but I, I guess so. So it should be because it's more solemn and more [01:26:00] reflective. So what, what are, what are your thoughts about burning, uh, shifting the burn nights?

Miles: Hard to say. Has it been done at any other burns before? Uh, I don't think so. Yeah. It feels like it'd be kind of breaking with tradition then.

Stevan: Is, is it though, is is it traditional to have,

PY: probably back in the day before there was the temple at Burning Man, I believe the man used to burn on Sunday. So they would have stuff like the opera on the Saturday and then it changed so that then the man would burn on the Saturday and the temple would burn on the Sunday.

So the dates have, you know, moved around with the addition of the temple historically. Look, this always comes up, like what, what would, what would happen if we burnt on a different night or what would happen if we weren't able to burn it? What would we do then 'cause of weather conditions? Um, I think it's something we need to talk about a bit more in terms of having maybe a no [01:27:00] burn burn.

That's, I think definitely gonna be on the card sooner or later because the burn calendar in Australia is just getting really crowded because we have to sandwich ourselves into the time of the year where it's not too cold to get out and have a party. 'cause no one seems to like the cold and it's still safe to be able to have a fire.

And that's actually a pretty short period of time to slam so many events around the country into, so maybe sooner or later someone's gonna go, okay, we'll do a, a midsummer one, but we'll do a burn without a burn. So we'll have to do something different.

Stevan: Do you think that also done before? Yeah. Well I mean if, if you're gonna shift the burn dates, you also think that's gonna shift vibes as well.

The general vibes.

PY: Yeah. I think

it's something, '

Stevan: cause I've heard that. I've heard some of the burns in Europe where they go, they go hard and then, and then it's, and then they, [01:28:00] they slow down or something like that. It's like the tempo of things.

Space Cake: Hmm. It does feel like it has a natural rhythm. You know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, you're reaching a crescendo, big bang Sunday is still a massive party and then you, you cruise on into temple and you can choose to continue to party.

But yeah, the, the vibe does shift after the temple burn for sure.

Miles: The, um, having, having the temple in the last night is, is, it feels very appropriate to me given that, you know, it's time for reflection and a time for it. It feels like it should be at the closing of a chapter, you know, and so like, having it on the last size park then, 'cause everyone's already sort of naturally starting to wind down and, um, and, and, and change gears towards the end of the time.

Space Cake: And a lot of people leave on Sunday as well before the temple too. Right? Like they,

Stevan: they do. And that's an, that's the, that's, I guess that's the thing where, you know, ideally people should stay, but it's, it's a beautiful thing, beautiful experience. But yeah. Some people do have to leave. Yeah. 'cause of the world.

Real 'cause of the real world. Yeah.

Space Cake: Yeah. Yeah. I, I like the current [01:29:00] structure of it. I mean, it has a nice flow and I can pace myself. I kind of know what to expect and it has a natural rhythm to it. Yeah, there are other events and it would be fine to do it, to mix it up a bit. I like the idea of having more, more art burns on the Thursday and the Friday.

That's cool. But I recognize that there's some limitations around that.

Stevan: It was a good testing ground for this year though. I thought it went well.

Space Cake: Mm.

Stevan: There's a little bit of crowd behind that as well, so you know, people got to see it.

Space Cake: Or the art burn on the Friday.

Stevan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the same, same time as when the cinema was on.

Space Cake: Yes,

Stevan: when I was holding the cinema, so I just ducked out and, and, and saw the little bit of it. It was pretty cool. So yeah, definitely we need to encourage more of that if we can. If the law permits, if the weather permits.

PY: I'm always amazed at how sensible everyone is on the Sunday night after the temple burns.

Like is it just that people are like, okay, with parties done, everyone's thinking ahead to, you know, gotta drive [01:30:00] home tomorrow, gonna have an early night, gonna take it easy. Is, is that what happens? Is there just like a collective mass sensibility that settles down everyone? Or is everyone just Sha Shagged Because after the Temple Burn, I'm always like, wow, everyone has like, called it early, like it, it turns into quiet town.

Everything gets quiet very quickly. What's behind that? Is everyone just shagged or is everyone

Space Cake: Could be that everyone outta steam or maybe just someone hasn't programmed a killer party on the Sunday night yet? You know, 'cause that is the big gap in the schedule. There's not much happening.

Miles: There was, there was definitely some, there was some dance, um, some soundstages going off, some sound camps going off and late Sunday, from what I remember there,

Stevan: there was still, there was still a a, a bit of a party vibe.

Although, yeah, like you said, if everyone is sensible, everyone is doing the, uh, the, the appropriate thing is to get some rest. Mm-hmm. Um, what what surprised me was how clean people were. So as, as you would imagine there was, there would be a lot of dirty hippies out there in the paddock, but hey, I was part of [01:31:00] the LNT.

Space Cake: Burners aren't hippies and hippies aren't burners.

PY: How, how was your time on?

Miles: Yeah. It's a little of funny describing burners as hippies.

Stevan: Oh, right. Here we go. Excellent. TJ's back

Hotwire: is still going. His nerd,

Miles: we were just talking about arrived.

Stevan: Alright, perfect timing. Perfect timing to talk about some theme camps.

Okay. So we wanna talk about the Camp Kraken fundraiser. Give us a bit of backstory to that. And we also scored a a, we also got a new jingle because of your pot wire. Thank you.

Hotwire: Yay. Yeah, so the fundraisers

are awesome and whenever I'm drunk at home, the old credit card comes out. Yeah. So there was a couple things.

Um, just, yeah, supporting theme camps is just so important. Like they need so much money and so much time. And then to see them do those auctions, always wonderful thing. 'cause you just like the artists who made the jingle and then the someone who put the thought into the, the swag and then other people from the community, like, [01:32:00] um, Madox putting in, you know, their skills and their energy.

It's just such a wonderful thing. Um, and then I always try and like, I don't need the things except I wanted the trinkets, the, um, them gold medallion, but then just like, give them back to people. 'cause yeah, I just barged in it was like, yeah, I want it, I want all the things. Here's the money. And then, yeah, just give it to like, whoever needs it or wants it or whoever comes second.

'cause you know, they didn't win. So.

Stevan: So what's your, what's your connection with the submarine?

Hotwire: Um, so I think one of my first seats, camp Kraken, before they had the sub, I just managed, I think I was on a ranger shift and I just walked in and they were having like a big camp meeting or something and just sat down and I was watching these amazing people who were running it just give really awesome briefs and like really be super positive and awesome and inspire everyone.

And I just thought it was really rad and it resonated with me. And then over the years, like DJ on Kraken for Sideburn, that was really awesome. Um, and it's just a, a rad thing. Like it's the sub is so fun whenever everyone kicks along [01:33:00] and 'cause they don't always just play deep house, you know what I mean?

They're playing random crap. When he went past the um, the ranger Hutter underlay, then it just rad humans. And like if you stuck your head inside the case hub, it is a beautiful mm. There is so much tech nerd wizardly going on in there.

Stevan: And is it multi-level too? You can keep on climbing? Yeah. Up to the Periscope.

Hotwire: Yeah. And like, they just tick all the boxes as far as like, they've got all the ushers and it just works. And everyone who's on it is just having such a blast. There's, I think we were talking about new people earlier, and I always try and do the gate shift, um, in the afternoon of day one. So when the gate's open, I'll try and do that afternoon, sunset shift.

'cause it's just everyone's getting there. Decide as the sun's going down, they're exhausted, they're, you know, fired up. And I met a couple of new guys and one, no one, sorry, there was a couple of dudes mates and one guy was experienced burning. He was already shit faced by the time they got to the [01:34:00] gate.

And his mate was just like deer in the headlights. And then of course, he met us at the gate and there was greeters there. We made him ring the ring, the um, the gong and whatnot. And he was just like, wow, what, what, what? And then a couple of days later I see him on top of the cake. So I'm having the best time ever waving and holler.

And so yeah, it's, yeah, it's super awesome. I love the Kub, those, those humans. Awesome. And I love a good auction too, because Yeah. I'm so glad I got to see the song. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for winning that bid. Yeah. And so, yeah, once I won, 'cause I saw that they, some, they were gonna make a song like, I have no need for a song, but then I was like, Hey, you guys need a jingle.

So hit 'em up and

Stevan: Yeah, we do, we've been talking about it since day one. I think we, we, we wanted some community contribution, so this was perfect. This was right on the money. Thank you.

Hotwire: Yeah, you're welcome.

Stevan: Yeah, and they, they, it's the last hurrah. This year

they like, oh, last one, right? Yeah. The camp Kraken.

Yeah.

Miles: Have they, have they figured out what they're doing with it? Are they gonna trash it or deconstruct or sell it? I think,

Stevan: well we had a proposal. Uh, I think Mick, the landowner had a proposal [01:35:00] was to store it there. But I think it needs to be, you know, set sale into new ventures, I think.

Hotwire: Yeah. So what, they're just over it or they wanna do something else?

It's probably a huge logistical endeavor.

Stevan: I think it's time for something else, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But there was an option of skin on it of, of wedging it between those two containers. Parking it there, wasn't it? That that was the idea PY that,

Space Cake: that could be the new kitchen.

PY: Really. Wow. That, I mean, it would make a hell of a kitchen, um, multi-level kitchen, uh, probably could do a little bit of more head height in some of the areas there, but, um, yeah, it's,

Hotwire: it's a little tight.

Stevan: Okay. Let's talk about some other, some other theme camps that was new, which is Auntie Maria's. So these guys were a combination of what the fluff and other camps from seed and not sure, and also the gaze. Two new camps.

Hotwire: The gaze were awesome.

Miles: That was very, very, uh, a lot of effort went into the gaze. Um, but [01:36:00] shout out to Auntie Maria, one of the, um, one of the organizing teams, actually a former ranger lead Astrid, and she was fully off Rangers this year, so she could do Auntie Maria.

So that was, uh, that's a, a lovely bit of, uh, passing over the torch there to see some, uh, maybe turnover's the wrong word, but to see some circulation in the community, to see people try different things and strike out in different directions, which I think is really important.

Hotwire: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting, hey, to see people who transition from like org stuff and like kind of serious organization, lots of prep work, lots of human wrangling, and then go out and just do incredible art.

Yeah.

Space Cake: Yeah. Arty Maria's was a sensory pleasure dome for anyone who didn't get in there and not pleasure as in kinky, but that it was very clean carpets and furry, fluffy stuff. And it was a strictly no shoes policy. And they had the most plush carpets and everything in there was made out of fabric. They had these hand [01:37:00] crocheted, succulent plants hanging from hanging baskets.

It was beautiful, and I would just love to know how off on, they had to vacuum in there because there was no dust. I, I walked in there one afternoon and there was a woman swimming face down in the carpet. She was swimming in the carpet. It was magical. She was having a great time. And, um, maybe for those people who didn't get to go to the Gaze, how would you guys describe it?

What did you see? What was the vibes?

Miles: Funniest story I heard about the Gaze was, uh, someone was walking past it and they looked in and they saw a big eye, like an eye, the size of a blow up beach ball looking back at them. And then as they watched the eye blinked very, very slowly. And then they walked away and they didn't go inside and they didn't go back.

Space Cake: Uh, and they had a tongue as well that rolled out of its mouth. Am I imagining that I, did anyone else see the tongue?

Stevan: It was there. Okay. It was there. [01:38:00] So the gaze came last year with those two eyes and they were just, uh, just general camping. And I think one night they stuck those two eyes outside the Sin City dome and everyone loved it.

And they came back this year with, with the whole crew. Was the whole theme camp.

Miles: There was a, a lot of volunteers there as well. They had like 25 or 30 on their camp.

Hotwire: And did you see like they put that, that thing up quick, man. They, they got their structure up fast and down as well, just as quick. Seems like they knew I liked it too 'cause like it wasn't so serious music.

Like it wasn't just thump and techno the whole time. It was, yeah, they had a really, really well curated and just fun. Just great fun.

PY: I had a really good, uh, craft afternoon on the Saturday at the Gaze, which was totally what I needed at the time. Big shout out to Kim for putting on the UV glasses craft afternoon.

Um, unfortunately I fell asleep at 6:00 PM so I didn't get to go to the UV party to wear my UV glasses. [01:39:00] But, um, I had fun making them. Anyway,

Stevan: they also had the clothes rack on the side there so you can exchange like a little op shop thing.

PY: Oh, I didn't see that.

Stevan: Yeah. Yeah.

Space Cake: What happened at the um, Underland post office under, I didn't get down there, but what

Miles: underpants Post office?

Space Cake: Yeah. What happened? Was there workshops? Did any of you guys get any mail I missed out on mail?

Miles: Yeah. So we had several snail mail deliveries to, uh, the Ranger HQ and they arrived by a human sized snail. So it was a very evolved, elaborate process for us to receive mail. Took quite some time, but we, yeah, we got a few letters.

We got like four or five letters. Some of them were just addressed to specific ranges or some of 'em were just to like, um, the ranges more broadly. Um, I think a couple were actually from, um, either came from Bauer Camp or came from, um, various kids who uh, obviously had great interactions with our rangers.

Hotwire: Yeah, I got some mail at Telekinetic as well. Some hate mail, which yeah, was pretty confronting but hate [01:40:00] mail. Yeah. Yeah. There was a bit of confusion. Maybe some rivalry between Coco Loco and tele.

Stevan: Is it because you got voted the V-M-M-V-P of Telekinetic? Is that, that's probably why.

Hotwire: Uh, look, I couldn't talk about that 'cause it might bump me up into a high tax bracket, but um, yeah, no, it's good to see.

There's like nice bit of fucky, but the underland underpants posts is awesome. I heard, I really like the, um, postcards that they were putting out too. That was sweet.

Stevan: Yeah. There was a lot of love for, for Rangers, for Sand Folks and Spam. I, I saw some of the letters there. It was pretty cool.

Space Cake: Is it true that, um, the saloon doors at Coco went for a walk one night?

Hotwire: Yeah, well that was the story and I think where that's the confusion popped up because they ended up in Telekinetic and we have no idea how they got there. But, you know, you guys already have a door as well is nine 10th of the blame. So, but uh, yeah, it's, it's funny, those Coco Poco loco that skull, it sees everything with its big googly eyes.

You can't, you can't get anything past it. [01:41:00]

Oh. But there was a lot of, a lot of door sort of blocking doorway shenanigans. I was, uh, doing a video at Telekinetic and you know how they got the door to enter and I was like, all right, here we go. We're gonna go into Telekinetic. And then walked into the door and bang, slammed into it.

'cause it was, it was screwed shut. And again, i, I, I dunno how that happened, but that was a very particular type of screw that required a very particular type of ex-head we had. But

Space Cake: I love the, like, the Burner Frank culture is amazing.

Stevan: Well, what about the, the other controversy of, of the bay, uh, of the hay bales?

Oh, there was, there was a missing. Hey, be somewhere between Poco, poco Loco and, and Center Camp.

Space Cake: Well, don't look at center camp. We had 40 of our own. We didn't need their pesky last minute one.

Miles: I remember that.

Hotwire: Oh yeah. They were all scratchy and not fun. The center camp ones were lovely though.

Space Cake: What happened?

What? Yeah. Was it ever,

Stevan: I think the landowner was, was, was complaining about there was a shortage of hay, hay [01:42:00] bales. One, one block missing.

Space Cake: I, I reckon it got put in the base of the, um, the snake.

Miles: Oh, yeah. I heard that as well.

Stevan: Well, I just wanna give it a shout out to Cocoa Poco Loco for the fucking amazing kind of, what, what would you call it?

Old Western style kind of shack bar, pub,

PY: saloon,

Stevan: whatever it was. Mm-hmm. Saloon, sorry, that is the correct word. Saloon.

Hotwire: Yeah.

Miles: That, that had heaps of events running out, that as well. So like every day there was one.

Stevan: The tension to detail was fucking magnificent. It, uh, reminded me of Sunset duck at Modifyre.

How was like

Miles: Yes. Yeah. No, me too actually. Now you remember. I remember them, yeah.

Stevan: Just sitting inside and just looking around. Just Wow. Looking at a roof. Looking at side to the back.

Miles: Yeah. 'cause it was like a proper, proper building as well. Mm. Um, or it felt like a proper building unlike, you know, a lot of, a lot of stuff.

We said stretch, tense, stretch, 10 smart keys, kind of that kind of thing.

Hotwire: Yeah. Did you guys see the orgy top?

Space Cake: I, I heard about it.

Hotwire: That's awesome.

Stevan: Was that AJ show?

Hotwire: I dunno whose it was again.

Space Cake: I [01:43:00] don't think it was his, but he was definitely laughing

about it.

Hotwire: Super funny.

Stevan: A lot of shenanigans.

Miles: We had a, um, uh, the Cocoa Loco did a rodeo, the, the Cocoa Loco Rodeo at, um, 2:00 PM on the Saturday.

And, uh, yeah, that was awesome. As, as soon as I saw them po pull that up and post it on the, on the slack and the Facebook, I'm like, all right, here we go. And they're like, oh yeah, open for team applications. So I jumped in straight away to enter a ranger team just for fun and shenanigans and yeah, we had, we had, um, uh, six of us jump in and do it and go, um, we're, we're all all in full gear as well.

And so, um, I, I got, as part of our budget allotment, I got a six cowboy hats, the purple ones with the bright sparkly sequence thinking, oh, this'll be great. And, um,

Hotwire: rhinestones, bro. Rhinestones.

Miles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, turns out they were like super popular and I hadn't even like, thought of it, but like in the back of my head, I'm like, okay, is it worth spending 60 bucks just for like a, a gimmick event, two hours on a Saturday?

Then I realize, hang on a second. This is white [01:44:00] room hats. This is our sun protection plan. This is OHS for rangers. If you don't get a hat, you get assigned the, the cowboy hat. And they were super popular and I, I, I struggled to, like, they kept flying off the gear rack and I actually had to fight to get 'em to come back.

So we'd have them all ready for the rodeo on Saturday. Everyone loved them.

Hotwire: Yeah, the rodeo was good. Long. It was a long time. Yeah. It was a slog.

Miles: At, at one point I'm like ready to go up to the ref referee and say, look, we need to go for the burn in like 10 minutes. Is this ending soon?

Hotwire: Yeah, this is fine.

And all but wrap this shoot up.

Miles: Yeah.

Stevan: Yeah. They, they did the Olympics last year, which was fun. Right on. Yeah. So the, the craftsmanship at Underland, I thought it was very impressive. Uh, year over year keeps on getting better. You look at all the builds, you know, those two effigies, it's the, it's it's world standard craftsmanship.

I think over the years, you know, I think it, it will be these designs and these, uh, kind of effigies and temples that people will come for.

Hotwire: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think it goes back to [01:45:00] what we were saying earlier, like there's so much experience in this, in this realm. Maybe experience also in the art building, but not, they haven't been to a burn yet, but then find that they crosspollinate so well.

PY: I really love Yeah. And the support, the balloons, the string of lit up balloons that were attached to the kraken. Yeah. One night. Um, that was just awesome. Gorgeous. I'd love to talk to whoever did that string of balloons just to get a few tips. Um, 'cause yeah, that was just perfect. Hanging in the sky there above the sub.

Yeah. Lots of,

Space Cake: I thought that was just to see what direction the wind was going in. Was that actually also did that actually legitimately a bit of art? It was,

Hotwire: yeah.

Space Cake: Cool. Because it looked good. Yeah. Yeah.

Hotwire: Now they need to do double the size. They need to make it frighteningly large.

Stevan: So during my l and t sweep, I did pick up some, some busted balloons.

PY: Ooh. Balloon gate.

Stevan: Yeah. So one of my, one of my new volunteers,

Hotwire: I think they were from [01:46:00] Coco Loco.

Stevan: Well, probably someone's doing. Balloons. So yeah. One of my f yeah, one of my new, um, volunteer things that I jumped into was the leave no trace. So at the end, uh, where the paddock turns into a paddock, again, I thought it was fascinating to see how, how the site can grow into work walking from post to post.

And I think within a few years we, we could, we could fill it up probably a thousand people. It's, uh, capacity wise, yeah. Mm-hmm. It's quite comfort, I think

Miles: a lot of a, a lot of space for more campus to come in. Yeah. And there is, um, I think someone also mentioned that, um, there is, um, Mick did own another adjacent field and so long, you know, longer term there was the potential to have a discussion around that.

But, um, maybe that was just a rumor I heard. Um,

Hotwire: that's a good one. Run with it.

Miles: You can probably confirm or deny that, or maybe you can't.

Space Cake: Yeah, I'm not gonna,

but I do wanna hear more about the leave. No. Trace Mo.

PY: Yeah. [01:47:00] Steven, I wanna hear about Chicken. The Moot Bird outfit and the vocalization,

Miles: the Queen, the Brisbane mascot. It, I felt right at home.

Hotwire: You guys are awesome. He stayed in character the whole time, which I really appreciate.

Stevan: That's, that's a shout out to Per.

He's, he's, he's the one with the, with that idea. I, I saw him last year, I think it was on a Sunday afternoon, and he was doing it by himself. And I thought, well, that's pretty clever. I wanna join you next year. And that's, that's how. All began.

Hotwire: Yeah, dude,

he lives in my hometown. Yeah. My tiny

little village on the south coast of New South Wales.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a spin out. Yeah. So we, we catch up when I get up.

Stevan: Yeah. We had a good time afterwards. Uh, clearing the paddock. Turning into a paddock again.

Space Cake: Did you make the mo bird noise?

PY: Did pier? Did pier? Did you give you some

Hotwire: The whole, it didn't break our, the whole time.

Stevan: Fuck Yeah. We started telekinetic.

'cause they had all these, uh, what, what were you guys doing? Serving cheese and other, other cheese. Ies cheese. Yeah. It's, that's a lot of moop there.

Hotwire: Mm-hmm. Mm.

[01:48:00] Um, did you find any,

any, like, was there heaps of moop or was there a specific place where there was

Stevan: uh, it was just like half a bag full. Really? It was, it was impressive.

It was impressive. Just, um, just some, you know, your, your unusual, you know, suspects of cable, tires, you know, stuff like that and just, uh, random piece of paper and whatever. Yeah. Otherwise the site is clean. There were, there were a few, few feathers, but the feathers belong to. You know, the, the, the, the natural fauna of the place or all the birds shedding the f feathers.

So yeah.

Miles: Yeah. Who was, if, who came in with a feather on like the Thursday and said, Hey look, I found this feather. Is this moop? Was that you So someone was, I remember someone that was probably me. That was, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then someone said to them back, oh no, that's not me. It was really on the mindset.

You just wear that. Yeah.

Space Cake: Um, how did the lost property end up miles? In the end, how much stuff have you got?

Miles: Uh, fair bit. Um, from memory, there was about three-ish tubs worth. We, it turned out to be easier to deal with than I [01:49:00] expected, but that's only because some Sophie volunteered to take it off my hands.

And then, then she passed it on to Dan. So we documented and photographed it pretty heavily. Photos were mostly all posted. And then there was a bit of kerfuffle with, um, so I posted I, between Sophie and I, we posted all the photos of the slack and um, and there was a one or two notices put on the Facebook 'cause well, a lot of inquiries coming through Facebook, some coming through Slack and elsewhere.

And a lot of people saying Where's, you know, where's this, where's that? Um, some of the feedback I've been getting has been about multiple sort of platforms being an issue. And, and that was one of the complications with the lost property as well, that people were, um, weren't on the slack but were told to go to the Slack or, or we going to Facebook and asking for it.

It's on my todo list to sort of chase up and see how much is actually left, because I had a pretty strong gut feeling that there was gonna be an absolute arss load of, um, lost property, which would go unclaimed. Um,

Space Cake: um, I'm curious, what was the majority? What was the. What was the biggest piece of lost property?

[01:50:00] Like was it water bottles that were left behind?

PY: It's usually water bottles isn't,

Space Cake: what are people losing?

Miles: Um, the bulkiest item was things like jumpers and jackets, uh, in terms of

Space Cake: how you lose your clothes. I'm sorry, but it's cold.

Hotwire: Well, you put things down when there's lights and flame, people are taking clothes off, dark,

Miles: putting clothes on and Yeah.

Or, or like taking 'em off to dance and because, you know, so the, um, definitely in the dome, it, it got pretty, uh, it got, you know, very cozy. I think. Um, there's probably water bottles with a single most frequent item, but like, there was a couple of earrings that made it in there as well. And like, one, one interesting thing that happened was that there was the, there was a steady flow of people, like literally from almost from the Thursday or Friday coming in saying, oh, I've lost this.

If you found it. And more often than not, we actually would have it there, which was really nice to see that there was a fairly steady turnover of, um, of lost property getting, going back to its [01:51:00] owners. But yeah, the other, the other, the other thing was obviously the, the confusion around who actually had lost property and, and the two separate lost properties existed for a while.

And then someone made a decision to send it all to Ranger hq, but then not all, not all of it was moved. And someone put lost property on top of the sign at sender camp that said, send your lost property to Ranger hq. No. And so it still,

Space Cake: I, I made those signs going, oh, we don't want it here. Send it over there.

And then. Someone's completely ignored it. I think that's something that you guys put your lost property here, even though I said lost.

Miles: Yeah,

Hotwire: I think that's something you'll need to explore in the, in the future as it grows, is also it's lovely to have that honor system where it's all on a table and people can come and grab their stuff as needed, but ws are a factor.

I did see some people digging around and go, oh, sweet, a hoodie. I'll grab that. Thank you very much.

Miles: I did, yeah, there was a, there was a few, um, semi expensive items in there. Like there was one or two gold earrings [01:52:00] and

Hotwire: there was, yeah, some radios.

Miles: Radios. Oh, the radios were cheapish, but like, yeah, they're not, not not free,

Hotwire: but they still, regardless of the price, it's still people's shit.

Miles: Also, we knew exactly whose radio that was because the name was on it. So that one, yeah, got back to, its, its owner pretty quickly, but there was phones as well coming in and out too, and the phones usually made it back pretty quickly, but it was still kind of sitting there for a bit.

Hotwire: So that's a good, for all the listeners out there, please label your shit.

Label everything. Yeah. If you can label your drink bottle, label your jackets, label your tobacco pouches, so at least you get the hundred percent pouch back without the tobacco. But

Miles: yeah, so, so, um, to sort of finish off where I was going with that at some point, like there's, I'll, I'll check in with Dan in the next few days, um, but there's probably gonna be heaps left over and sooner or later we're gonna have to declare it just abandoned and, um, at that point, like I'll try and get like a full member mail out to Cav before that happens.

But I'll, what I'll say is this is the last call out for lost property. We're coming up to X date, at which point whether it gonna [01:53:00] declare it abandoned, then we're gonna donate it onto an op shop. So, um, this is your last call, call auction it off. Make some cash, man. Actually that's a pretty, that's not a bad idea.

Yeah, yeah. We, we donate it back to cav. Right. Um, or maybe even keep it for ranges or something. I don't know.

Hotwire: Yeah, exactly.

Miles: Give something to send to camp.

Hotwire: Piss up,

Space Cake: keep it for ranges.

Hotwire: Slush one, if you will,

Miles: auction off the proceeds of crime.

Stevan: Okay. So we should, should we listen to more burner voice messages and, and head on to a break?

Uh, let's, let's do that. Let's get into some more burner voice messages and we'll brought, be right back.

Petite: Hello. Hello. Um, this is Petina. I'm here at, uh, some sort of weird event. Everyone's acting strange. I'm pretty sure everyone's on a, I cannot wear a thong 'cause I'm on duty, but

shame.

Yeah. Anyway, there's a submarine over there, I'm pretty sure everyone's having. [01:54:00] And, um, weather's beautiful. Really looking forward to setting up a lemonade stand. Um, $1,

$1 for my lemonade.

Hey,

hey, are you interviewing?

Yes, yes. Um, I don't know what I was gonna ask. I'm very bad at this. And peace out. I'm back to Lee.

I already said my peace. Peace out.

Alex: It's a bit of a long story. Okay, so yesterday, um, we did the Pussy Plaing, uh, workshop, which was very amazing. And after that we came out and saw the, uh, submarine and we jumped on the submarine and we all like squashed in there. And you turned around and there was Little Mermaid and she started singing part of your world.

And then Ursula came out and she sang her song and then. Sebastian the crime came out and sang his [01:55:00] song. And we were basically serenaded, uh, with the Little Mermaid whilst holding our little plaster pussies. And that was the highlight of my underland. Oh. And my name is Alex from, um, pussy Palace Camp in Melbourne.

Marky Mark: Is this thing on? Can you hear me? Well, I, I'm, my name's Marky Mark. Um, I'm going around taking portraits of people on black and white film, and I'm just trying to capture the true essence of people's faces in who they are as an individual. And it, it's all black and white, so if you are wearing colorful clothes, it doesn't really matter.

It's, it's, it's that, that's sort of my goal for today. And Steve, Steve has found me while I was trying to take a photograph of him. And here we are. Thank you.

Andrea: Hello, my name is Andrea. Um, and we having the hippie trap. So, um, we need to trap more hippies here because there are far too many here, don't you think so?

Um, [01:56:00] yeah, like, and if you ever lost a hippie, just come to the hippie trap and have a look. If, if it's, if it's there. That hippie, if he's playing with toys. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah.

Murray: Uh, public service announcement down near the Bower and Children's Camp, there is an infestation of bugs. We need a exterminator to come and visit the third toilet from the left, please.

Can we have an exterminator to the bug toilet?

AJ: It is AJ from Camp Posi, Techer, and we're, uh, we're here again. We'd had a year off last year and we're here, myself and Stanley and the whole team and putting on some really good events. And today we're running low and slow with, uh, the, uh, with Benny and he's low and slow camp. And later on we'll be doing Stiletto Sunday.

So that'll be a lot of fun. So come along.

Shano: Uh, Shanno left out coming in from Telekinetic Chair Repair, [01:57:00] just getting ready for the longest running brunch on the paddock, the annual annex breakfast, otherwise known as, um, belts, bed posts, and breakfast. You can come over here and get your fill of pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, and in xs from 11 o'clock to two.

Richard: Hi, my name's Richard and I'm from Brunswick. And, uh, here I am at Underland with my friend Kerry. And it's, uh, Saturday morning Uhhuh, I think. Yeah. Um, and it's been a really good night. Really good couple of nights so far, and looking forward to tonight.

I'll pass over to Kerry.

Kerry: Uh, hi, it's Kerry. I'm from Preston. Um, I was gonna say that I had a very

special evening last night, thanks to the lovely Phoebe. So shout out to the [01:58:00] Phoebe Bond, who after my bedtime invited me out for tea and I ended up in a caravan drinking turmeric tea with raspberries collect and baklava.

So that was a very, and having my seashore Oracles red. Yeah. So it was very nice thing to be dragged out of bed for. Sometimes you get what you need and not what you want.

Daniel: Um, this is Daniel. Uh, we just, at about noon, the, the sun is shining. It's, there's a bit of a nice cool breeze, getting ready for a fun party down at the, the gay zoo. It's gonna be the Sunday service. There's a, a few SL nuns around the place, and I think there'll be some gospel maybe. Yeah. Other shenanigans.

Yeah. Can hear the beats pumping already, so we better get ready for the [01:59:00] afternoon.

Spacetime: Hey, I'm SpaceTime. We just set up a piece of art called the Dough Decker, which is like half a dough decker heatron drone. Uh, it was cool, but unfortunately it wasn't structurally too sound, so it started off as a dodecahedron.

Then as the days went past, turned into a turtle, uh, and then turned into the lu state of entropy. But still, the LEDs kept twink twinkling, which was lovely, but had a fantastic underland. Thanks all. Bye.

Stevan: And we're back. Okay, we're back. Okay. Tj, what was your highlight of Underland?

Hotwire: Uh, obviously seeing the ranges and just seeing how awesome that team operated. Yeah, it's just seeing like some old faces, some new faces as well, but just seeing like how the evolution of the manuals, the training and everything is going.

Um, there's obviously always room for improvement. That was really awesome. Working with Benji and the fire crew, um, it really dug how he'd structured his shifts of being like seven [02:00:00] hours and then that's it generally just one shift. I thought that was really good and a really sustainable thing. Um, py seeing your, um, speech about culture, um, between the, the departments, which were traditionally there was, there's been some like friendly rivalry, which sometimes goes into animosity or, uh, antagonism or whatever, but seeing you change that in just such a, a lovely and wonderful way I think was really quite inspiring.

The Sandman team, that was really good as well. So, you know, I, I sort of kicked off the Sandman in Australia many years ago, contacted the BlackRock city Rangers, got their manuals, crafted our manuals after them so that we're all on the same page and you can go burn to burn and it's all basically the same.

There might be some different titles and different colors and whatever, but it's all the same. So that was really awesome. And because I hadn't been involved in the, the leadership part of it at Underland or even the organizing or anything, being able to just jump in there and take over the lead. [02:01:00] And seeing that everyone read the manual, they'd done it before.

It was a very easy process. The call signs were all the same. That was really good. Um, it made it really super professional, um, which I think is important, especially like for external stakeholders to come in and have a see that we're all, you know, dressed the same, we're sharp or responding, we're very active, et cetera, and keeping people safe.

Um, that was a massive highlight for me. I would like to stop doing it in the past because I've had my back to pretty much every, um, effigy or temple for the last sort of 10 years in the Aussie sphere. What else? Highlights playing the, uh, PSI taker sound. That was amazing. Really enjoyed that.

Stevan: Which night was that?

Hotwire: Uh, that was Friday night, eight o'clock. I put a link in my, um, uh, uh, it's, it's recorded up on SoundCloud, but that sound system of AJ's like, it's, it's just incredible.

Stevan: It's the biggest on the paddock.

Hotwire: Yeah, but it's clean as a whistle as well. And if you play good quality audio files through it, it's just, you don't get that e fatigue.

It's just beautiful. Um, working with Telekinetic again, [02:02:00] I hadn't came with those guys for a good few years, so that was awesome to go back to them. They're just such rad people, super funny and like sharp and always riffing constantly and just doing rad shit. Um, I think that was the biggest thing, you know, obviously seeing all the homies from seed back in the day just doing their thing as well.

At Underland, everything just works. Like if you turned up for your gate shift, bang, here's the ticket thing, here's the fire, here's the fuel for the Jenny, there's the shiter. Um, get the people through, make it exciting and fun. So that was good.

Stevan: Yeah. What, what you mentioned about, so when I went around collecting these burner messages, some of the things, some of the themes that people are talking about was how easy of a transition or easy of an entry for returning burners.

Like they haven't been since 2019 or, or they've been away overseas and they've just come back into the burner community in Australia and they were surprised at how, how, how easy and, and, and effortlessly it was for them to integrate and be a part [02:03:00] of it and, and feel like at home again. Yeah. So that was special.

Hotwire: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, as I was saying, like all the people who are running it and, and doing theme camps and all that kind of stuff, they've been around the game for a while. It's, you know, it's not rocket surgery. All the systems are in place and all you gotta do is just get there and do your art.

Just figure it out. It's, you know, you're gonna go through the full myriad of emotions of things not being on time or breaking or, um, you know, clashes

Miles: on that note, there is, um, I think having a, having a better handle on the, um,

Stevan: so you're just buzzing there.

Hotwire: Oh. Uh, unplug your power.

Miles: How's this?

Hotwire: Boom.

Miles: Is this

better?

PY: Yep, that's fixed it.

Stevan: Yep. Yep.

Miles: Wow. Okay. I hate that having, oh,

Stevan: hold on. Back on, hold on.

Hotwire: Now the buzz is gone.

Miles: Okay. I'm not sure that's me buzzing. I'm not getting any levels here.

PY: Uh, I think you're good now.

Miles: Well, maybe it is. Okay. Anyway. Anyway. Um, I think, uh, a big a, a big sort of, uh, what we would change for next [02:04:00] time is, um, having smooth, smoother handover processes and more sort of sustainable turnover in, um, leadership teams.

'cause uh, my understanding was that, um, there was there, uh, as well as the general struggle for volunteers across most departments, um, which, which turned out to not be a critical issue in the end. Um, but there was also issues with a lot of department leads, either being. Being very centralized and not having much of a team around them, or else just simply not being a team lead.

Um, and so for example, in case of gate and greeters that, you know, obviously there was no lead for that in the end. And I think, um, Z stepped in to do it. But then in other, in other cases, like for myself and for, um. So myself as first time Ranger lead, I think also Sanctuary was a first time lead, if I recall correctly.

And then so, uh, you know, so there's a couple of cases here where there's uh, either very small or single point of failure leadership team or, um, there hasn't been much of that sort of, sort of mentoring and skill. But, so I saw a lot of, um, two ics and [02:05:00] shadowing happening at Underland, um, which was probably coincidental, but um, I thought was a really positive sign.

And I think. Can probably really be intentionally encouraged as well moving forward to, um, really, really encourage, have a, have a two IC or, or have a shadow where, you know, a lot of people I spoke to saying, do you wanna be ranger two ic? I got a lot of nos back, but when I instead started asking people, do you wanna shadow me or shadow, you know, this person doing this role?

And then, you know, that turned into a lot more yeses.

Hotwire: Yeah. And, and that's, that's a really good point too. 'cause you know, you guys, as, as leadership, it's important for you to do that. Um, like you're saying, just adjust that language a little bit and the terminology, whereas it, going from delegating to supporting instead of having your feet pointing at each other, have 'em pointing in the same direction, if that makes sense.

And the shadowing is, is a wonderful thing, especially like as you grow and get bigger, you'll have an influx of people who want those leadership roles, but then may be [02:06:00] willing but not quite capable yet, or a combination of all those things or just completely not suitable. And so that shadowing process is a good way for you to vet those potential people coming in because you're potentially giving them the keys to enormous amounts of safety and responsibility.

So that gives you the chance to get eyes on them as well and make sure that they're suitable and sort of on the path that, that you've created.

Miles: Yeah. Yeah. And um, part of that is also sort of encouraging people who, or, uh, you know, us as, as sort of upper leadership. Have to be, um, or at least like department leads.

We have to be proactively identifying people who have the potential to be middle or upper level leadership, and then proactively encouraging them to step forward too. Because a lot of people, people, a lot of time people don't even realize it. And, um, uh, you know, I went in, I went in here kind of blind in terms of picking shift leaders, um, shift managers and, and, and the like, and had to just sort of go off references or self-report experience levels.

Um, in some cases it turned out terribly. In other cases it turned out incredibly well. And, um, in other, other [02:07:00] times I saw people who were sort of maybe a little bit sort of quieter or unassuming who actually turned out to have a huge amount of potential. And so, um, that's a big part of being a leader is sort of keeping an eye on the people that, uh, you know, you are, you are, um, supervising or facilitating or working with.

And then thinking about who. Could use a little nudge and in what direction? Or at the very least, like giving people a little nudge to think, what is that sort of next direction? So I, I, I talked to a lot of budding ranger leaders and a lot of veteran rangers who stepped up to be leaders. And, um, some of them were a bit uncertain.

Some of them were just absolutely brilliant and just were just most incredible people I've, I've, um, really worked with. And,

Hotwire: uh, yeah, you did well, man, you did a absolutely stellar job for your first time. It's impressive.

Miles: Yeah. Well, I, I was lucky enough to have, um, as I said, a really, really good response from the community for signups, including a bunch of veteran rangers.

Um, one of which was you, uh, and you know, you stepped so smoothly into the, into the big hole that BJ left. And, you know, I, I feel it when you said you've had [02:08:00] your back to every burn in Australia for the last 10 years. Good, good on you. But let's, uh, let's try and get, let's try and flip you around for next time.

Hotwire: Yeah.

Miles: Um,

Hotwire: I think also there was, especially with the Sandman as well, and then the perimeter ranges when you started doing the call outs in the morning or the previous day, because you potentially didn't have formal online signups prior, but once that call went out, and because we're all in different camps and people understand these, the enormity and the, the sheer need for those positions, you know, heaps of people from Telenet came in.

I think we had two or three people come in from Telekinetic. They were like, yep, cool. I'm happy to do it. I'd like to do it. I've never done it. And they were able to come in because they had so much exposure to, to the systems, they were able to really step in very easily. And I think maybe that's something you can think about in the future is those.

Offsite trainings are a really good opportunity for you to have that engagement and identify those people and then have them self identify like, Hey, I can fill this gap. Or I see I pick up the process, I can jump in [02:09:00] here. They're really, really good because you can do all that offsite. So you already have that excitement and that experience base sort of there already.

So these people, when they get to site, they go, Hey, I was at the training, I really understand what's going on. I can do a thing. And then also just really scaling back the amount of shifts that you put on leaders. 'cause you can walk the fine line between someone being really keen in getting in there, but eventually they're just people's, um, energy levels just drop.

They just, you know, if you b it on like I did, I bung it on the night before and then I'm hung over as fuck the next day and I've turned up shift going, oh my God, kill me. You know what I mean? Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and yeah, that's another big one as well, is identifying people who are clearly overcom, committing to things.

I always have that problem. I'm like, every hour of the day is a fucking accounted for. And then if anything goes awry, then that can throw out the schedule. Um,

Miles: yeah, I think, um, I think we did okay on that. [02:10:00] Um, on that area, obviously I was like the biggest risk of Overcommitting and, um, I did end up getting a bit of time off here and there, whereas, you know, um, it's not unheard of for Rain for Ranger leads to just be on duty 24 7

Hotwire: and not uncommon forum 'em to just completely collapse.

I've seen, you know, a good few of 'em just completely collapse.

Miles: Yeah, yeah. Well, I came, I came close like maybe twice and then saw that and I'm like, all right, let's, let's sort of take some time out. Um, and, and I, I also, like, one of my priorities as well was to make myself redundant and to have like real systems as many places as possible actually.

And so that, uh, it was Ranges was nicely self-managing for approximately like 80% of the time. So I think, uh, that was, you know, a big tick there. But, uh, honestly, a lot of it did come back to the, the veteran Rangers who stepped up into leadership roles and, um,

Hotwire: and the community as well, man. Like if you have the majority of, of experienced burners, they know how to conduct themselves and how to deal with things when they pop up emergency, like, oh fuck, [02:11:00] call Ranger.

You know, it's, it's really good.

Miles: Well, that, that was another observation I made as well, that, um, the community itself was, was really just so, so self-managing in terms of wellness and, uh, and, you know, medical to, and I saw it personally as well as heard of several incidents where, um, it was like a classic situation where you might be calling rangers or getting rangers involved.

Um, or, or medics involved or security involved and community just handled it like, just by themselves. Just magically.

Hotwire: Yeah. And so that would be a very strong argument as well. We had this with seed where some in the community and all were like, let's ramp up to 5,000 people and let's go from 3000. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hang on. Like the range of teams and, and everybody was just at the very brink of their ability and their, their energy levels. Mm-hmm. Um, so that's your strong case for like really slow progressive growth Yeah. So that you can really, yeah. [02:12:00]

Miles: Well that was the thing for Modifyre for years, for like the entire time Modifyre was running, there was a very hard sort of rule might've even been baked into the Constitution that just like big burn in Nevada, we only sell 10% more tickets this year than last year.

Gotcha. Five or 10%, one of them. That's good. And um, and uh, you know, there was huge, like, huge popularity really, um, in the early years and the mid years and like a lot of community support and interest in it. And so tickets always, like tickets were selling out early, um, for Modifyre, but they stuck to that.

And part of that was because the, um, the site that modifier had for years was like environmentally fucked. It was State Forest, it was former former cattle. Property and it was just like a mud flat.

Hotwire: Oh, right.

Miles: It was dead. Very little brew on it. And so one of the other things they did was, um, to rotate the site around the paddock every year.

Different site for center camp, different site for free camping, different site for the burns and, um, to, to minimize the ground impact. But yeah, that was, that was part of the sustainable growth as well. Just, um, [02:13:00] going back to my veteran rangers, 'cause I didn't get to, I wanna do a shout out here for, um, for a few of them.

Uh, specifically who, so obviously it goes without saying that, you know, um, the three of you guys all stepped in at different times to help out with rangers and, you know, did, did excellently at that. But there was, um, there was three who I assigned. I, I deliberately assigned leadership roles as well, who was, uh, really, really stood out for me as al almost like muscle memory, being able to resolve any situation that came up.

And, um, those three were, uh, Sophie Corbett, P Star, and Kim Kim Watson. Sophie's, Bernard name is Dropsy, uh, Kim Kimmy Best. Kimmy or Precious Kimmy, I think. And then, um, p uh, piglet. Yeah. And on will mention as well to Tyrie who, uh, who, who really sort of [02:14:00] stepped up and, and had a really big visible presence quite a lot over the weekend.

And that was great. Also, I loved Tino and Misha's energy and vibe and they just bounced off each other and just like, was just incredible morale boost for any time they were around or on shift. And, uh, George Hayden as well for stepping up to be perimeter two IC for Temple. And um, and, um, him and Alex Spier both had, um, some, some really good observations around how we can sort of adjust management and, and handle, handle sort of range of leadership.

And both of them are also interested in stepping up and, and doing a bit more. Yeah. So

Hotwire: there was, uh, Ben Kay, uh, yes. Rookie Wooki, um, Yeti. Yeah. Um, there's a lot of experience in those three there. Uh,

Miles: so Wooki, I actually, um, I was actually sort of encouraging him as well because he, he stepped up in a big way.

Oh yeah. Um, in, in terms of leadership and just sort of like, he, he, he [02:15:00] mostly just sort of roved he was Rover or like, like sort of solo mentoring 'cause that was kind of what was needed and that was what he was best at. But he filled in that role really, really well and was able to, um, spot fire a bunch.

Hotwire: Yep. And um, that's really important

position that roving. I think it's a wonderful thing that run. Yeah. Roving, um, leadership or like lots of experience.

Miles: Well, well, well, one, the early conversations that I all had with him, like from the start, he is like, I wanna do, I wanna do Sandman, I wanna, I wanna do Sandman.

And, um, came Yeah. And I, and I was sort of like, yeah, okay, let's do that. Let's do that. I'll, I wanna steal you a little bit for Dust Ranger, um, on the paddock, but yeah, let's get you on Sandman. And, um, and he had, yeah, he had a great time. And then I'm sort of like this little, little, little light bulb in the back of my head.

I'm like, okay, thinking about shadowing and mentoring, like handover, like, hang on a second. Like, we're, we're obviously like. Pretty, um, pretty top heavy in terms of Sandman for, for leadership. And here's someone who's motivated, experienced, mature, and you know, has got the right mindset. [02:16:00] Why does, why don't we sort of say to rookie, and I had, I had a bunch of conversations with people like this, but Rookie was one of 'em, say to him, why, um, you know, why don't you have a think about, you know, shadowing or lead for sand folk next year?

And yeah, he was, he, he liked the idea.

Hotwire: Also, I, I think it's really important too, um, especially for those leadership, is to go to those, you know, your morning, your morning briefs with the event manager, GPI and, and really get a, a feel. 'cause that gives you a really good appreciation of all the other things that are happening in the background.

Miles: Mm.

Yeah. That's pretty valuable.

Stevan: Now with the increase in attendance, kids attendance. I'm surprised there was no lost kids during the event, which was amazing. Team.

Hotwire: Yeah. That was team. I'm sorry to jump in there. I don't know. You know how you can have those apple air tags, like little GPS thingies, they're really good.

They're like 50 bucks and you can put them into a wristband or something. And I, I just thought that's a really awesome idea. And for your friends as well. Yeah,

Stevan: well the bower kids were really well [02:17:00] organized. Um, they had their own little radio and, you know, understanding where each, each others are. So yeah.

Kudos to all the kids at Underland. Yeah.

Hotwire: Out there getting amongst it. Yeah. I saw heaps of grommets. I really enjoyed the, um, the Seesaw. I had the front of Ranger heart there. That was a big hit.

Stevan: What was that thing called? PY.

PY: Which thing

Miles: it was. It was an Octo. Octa saw, wasn't it like an eight person Seesaw.

PY: Oh. Um,

Stevan: and that being, being six only.

PY: Very good. Yeah. Glen's Ferry bloom.

Stevan: Yeah. Fairy. Bloom. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was a pretty cool installation right in the middle between. Uh, center camp and Rangers. So it's pretty central. It kind of sort of like led you to, to the effigy, to the sound stages. What do you reckon of having like road signages or roads or street?

Hotwire: I think bigger is definitely gonna be a thing.

Miles: Yeah. It'll help out for, um, the postal service too, just going back to kids. Um, it was, yeah, it was, it was really smooth and, and it really, it felt like there wasn't, uh, like, like Vanessa did a great job. She ran [02:18:00] a couple of events, but I think she's, it sounds like she might be in a bit of the sort of ideating phase about what, what presence kids could have at Underland.

Like there was the, the power camp was new this year, I believe. The kids camp and, you know, Mo most of the families ended up camping there. Not all of 'em, but most of them. Um, and then there was like one or two events that happened. There was the families tour, there was other things I, I put a little bit of energy into trying to sort of make something happen between rangers and kids.

Like o obviously a few, few of us were kind of like talking around junior rangers, but, uh, the, that was like, there, there was a few complications there with sort of getting it to happen. And so, um, in the end up we, in the end we didn't end up sort of doing anything there, but there's like a lot of ideas from Vanessa, from a lot of parents as well.

About how to sort of build on, on Bower Camp and definitely like Burning Seed has a long and very vibrant tradition of, or at [02:19:00] least like a few years tradition of running junior Rangers. And there's a lot of interest, a lot of energy from experienced rangers to make that happen. I think, I think for it to be successful, we really need to have probably a, a, a parent come on board and sort of take ownership or take leadership of that who, or, or at least someone who's, who's got a lot of that experience with youth work who is motivated and knows how to get kids invested and involved.

Hotwire: Right on, not me. Mm-hmm.

Stevan: Yeah, the, the bowel kids were, well, they were camping in the general camping where it's supposed to be quiet camping, but I think someone stuck a, a bar, someone built a bar and put it in the middle of the street there and it just became quieter camping, so it wasn't really quite camping.

But yeah, I think the kids really need more, more like a, a place to hang out, like a theme camp or somewhere where they can, uh, build, make, make their own mess.

Miles: Yeah. Well, every time I dropped into Bauer Camp I did at least, at least once, sometimes twice a day for various things. Um, [02:20:00] a couple of times it was just to see rookie for, for whatever shenanigans we had cooking up.

But, um, I was dropping to see Vanessa or talk to one of the coordinators there. So also one of the ranger scavenger hunt stations was at Bow Camp too, for anyone who didn't figure that out. And so I was, I was dropping in to sort of check in on that and coordinate the setup of that. And there always seemed to be stuff going on, like the, um, there's face painting or like, they had like tea happening, like making workshop.

Yeah. You know, the classic, classic stuff you get kids to do, like play sessions, toys. Um, the average age seemed to be somewhere between like, literally like newborn babies all the way up to like 11 or 12 year olds. I didn't really see, I don't, I don't think I saw many teenagers. Yeah. Like there would've been some surely, but, um,

Stevan: there was a handful.

Yeah. Not many. [02:21:00]

Miles: Yeah. But, but the average, average age was definitely like, sort of eight to 10. And so that, that kind of influenced a lot of what the kids' activities would or, or could, or should have been.

Stevan: Yeah. I, I think when we're talking about kids, we are talking about different, uh, ranges of, of kids, uh, different ages.

Mm-hmm. So from, yeah, like you said, toddlers, infants to. Yeah, five to eight years old and yeah, you got the tweens and they don't want to really hang out with the other kids. So a bit of separation, a bit of a personalization I guess, with, with these activities or mm-hmm. Even, uh, get 'em to volunteer early.

Miles: Yeah. Well, like I, I was a scout leader for eight years or something and, um, I really liked the way they break up the age groups. You've got, um, what is it, six, six to eight, then eight to 10, 10 to 13, 14 to 17, and then, you know, 18 to 25. So I think that really captures nicely the different developmental stages that kids go through and, um, and how you can sort of structure a youth program around that.

So [02:22:00] I would probably, yeah, split them up into at least two age groups. I think if, if, if viable, if possible, and have. Sort of subtly different roles or tasks for them. My, my initial sort of concepting around Junior Rangers as well would be to call them Dust Scouts in keeping with the theme for rangers or having like dust in the name.

Yeah. Super excited for that.

Stevan: Yeah. What, what other improvements can you see?

Miles: You mean for rangers or Underland Generally?

Stevan: Just in general? In, in, yeah. In general. Funland.

Miles: Yeah. Well, like, like I said, the, well, the two big things is, um, uh, various ideas around volunteering. And the other one is the, um, leadership sort of handover, sustainable handover with, with that handover.

Like there's a lot of docs, there's a lot of experience, there's a lot of mentoring. There's probably little improvements that could happen there. But I think the single biggest thing is encouraging a culture of shadowing and, and mm-hmm. Where possible. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And where possible having like, like a, a diversified leadership team where you can sort of delegate roles?

The, with, with volunteering? I think, oh, I, I've probably said [02:23:00] everything really covered a few times, but yeah, having that sustainable growth so that you can not sort of overwhelm yourself with increased service requirements, need increased volunteerism, but lot of newbies don't volunteer as much volunteer quotas for theme camps, I think it's probably a good idea and also worth considering a, I hate to use the word mandatory, but a, uh, a required volunteer shift for all ticket sales.

Is also, I think, probably worth discussing.

Stevan: Yeah. These are interesting points. Any, any other thoughts about Underland guys? Um,

Hotwire: I think for the word on the street that I hear from my, my homies who didn't go, said that it was awesome and I think you're gonna get a very big influx next year. Yeah, it should be.

Stevan: Yeah. I, I feel like, like, like next year there, there'll be more people. You know, contributing and participating because, um, there was some people that did miss out this year that couldn't come for some various reasons. So yeah, there's gonna be an uptick next year and um, it's something that we've gotta prepare for.

Hotwire: Um, we should, this is probably a convo for another time, but let's have a good [02:24:00] think about buying a donga that we can put on the back of a truck and kit it out as a studio for shouting fire za Red Earth Radio, et cetera. Same sort of what we're trying to do with the fart gear, with burning seed and Sandman gear.

Put it all into one sort of container and then just box it up onto a truck and ship it off to whatever burn. So that bang, now you've got radio station, or now you've got your fart kit. Now you've got your Sandman kit or whatever. Really share those resources around.

Stevan: Is that something that ties, ties into burn a lot, Py is that something that we can

PY: Yeah, it could be.

Um,

Stevan: coordinate,

PY: I, I've been doing a bit of thinking on that. I, I would like to see better use of resources in general. I know it can be very tricky because those resources need to be maintained and responsibility needs to be had for the upkeep and everything like that. But things like generators, batteries, solar panels, the usual camping stuff, gazebos chairs, tables, and that sort of stuff.

I would like to [02:25:00] see better use of those materials either. In the community where a burn is held. So for the, you know, 48 weeks of the year that they're not in use, they get put out to use in the community or just better use of those materials floating around between burns, like, like the fart stuff, like the slip on fire units and that, that kind of thing.

Um, just to avoid this situation where we've got shipping containers full of stuff sitting in paddocks across Australia, where, you know, you spend a whole lot of capital, you only use it four weeks of the year and then it just sits there for the rest of the time. And can we, and

Hotwire: that's especially those things that's so expensive.

PY: Yeah, exactly. And you know, sometimes these assets are better off being used a bit more generators and, and stuff like that. You're better off using them batteries, you're better off cycling it and taking it back up to 80%, that kind of thing. Solar panels, it's better to have 'em out there. So on keeping the [02:26:00] dust off them, making sure they're running fine, that sort of thing.

And also, you know, can we use this as a community building type thing to sort of build that bridge between the burner community and the regional areas where we go do our thing. Um, so I would like to, to see a bit better usage of assets in that regard, but I haven't really, um, hit the nail on the head in terms of a, a formula for that.

Um, so far all I've got is a, uh, solar power station. It went bang and led a whole lot of smoke out of it one day. So that's currently getting, getting repaired before it gets, um, shipped back to Paradise.

Hotwire: Yeah, I think that's a wonderful idea, man. Like, like you're saying, there's in the wider community, each sort of little burn or community might have X thing, but not y.

Whereas the other community might have Y but not X. And if that is the difference between somebody getting an event over the [02:27:00] line, then yeah, we should a hundred percent be supporting that, you know?

Miles: There's a similar initiative happening in ranges at the moment where, um, some of you might be aware of loo moss's, um, Australian Oceania, Australia, New Zealand regional burners initiative or mailing list.

And, um, number one on the firing line, there is a standardizing range of training across the entire region to, through a combination of like documentation and online trainings and resource sharing and stuff, with the idea that it'll be a lot smoother for rangers to who, who have experience in existing, you know, oceanic burns to just drop into a new burn and then know the procedures are basically gonna be similar enough, but also for new, new, new leaders or new burns starting up to be like, okay, well, like here's a plug and play format you can use for burns of this size or this size, or this size with all your infra and your training and your scheduling and everything, and promotion that you can just take this and run with it to have a pretty smooth experience.

Running ranges for the first time. [02:28:00]

Hotwire: Yeah. Yeah.

Couldn't agree more.

PY: I mean, there's just so many. We spoke about this many years ago. Good ideas out there. There was a, amongst all the rangers that can be shared around all the burns, you know, the, um, like the pager system from uh, third degree, that's something that can be rolled out to a whole bunch of little burns.

You know, stuff like that where if we could just share that knowledge around, it'd be fantastic.

Hotwire: Yeah. Did those pages, did it, they actually get used. Did anyone test them?

Miles: Oh, they got tested.

Stevan: It does work.

Miles: Everyone, everyone loved them. Yeah. We didn't up end up using them, uh, in anger, so to speak, at, uh, Underland, but they were definitely deployed and, um, were used in that sense.

And it was really nice to have that sort of backup in place as well.

PY: Big thanks. I do like the collaboration between these two burns for hooking us out with those pages.

Stevan: Yeah, I, I do love the collaboration between those two burns. Uh, third degree and underland both wish, both growing.

Miles: Yes.

Stevan: Yeah. So the, I feel [02:29:00] like this year's underland, it's a, it's a transitional year.

So the first two years, the first year was great. The first year, you know, it was, it was about forming the partnership with the landowner and the community the second year showed to the community, to the, to the general public, I guess, of what we, what we're capable of doing, you know, all the manuals and all the structures are in place.

And then the third year is about the growth phase, where we are looking to do more with the landowner. And I spoke with, you know, we, we had some really interesting interactions with Mick during, during the event, and he's, he's saying that maybe next year he'll even camp with us. So that's, that's how, that's how much, you know, he's, he's become a burner now.

So even if, even if, I dare to say use the F bomb, the F word, you know, a family, you know, I think it's, it's grown to be part of like a family now. So. It was, it was wholesome like Beck said. Yeah. So it's growing. Um, I'm excited for, for next year [02:30:00] threshold, and that's what the community voted, I think, as a new theme.

Miles: Well, um, next year, the, uh, UNDERLAND may very well cross the threshold into a next category of size to make our jobs as department leaders

significantly more exciting.

PY: Oh, no, the threshold puns have started already. This is, this is gonna be terrible.

Miles: Mm. Have we, um, have we, have we gone too far with the puns?

Have we reached a qualitative new milestone?

PY: Yeah. See,

Stevan: well, isn't there like a circulating joke about, what's the circulating joke about spam? What does it stand for? Oh, everyone's got their own version.

PY: This is the tradition. I wanna start, I, I sort of started already. When you join the spam team, um, one of the first things you have to do is come up with your own acronym, your own explanation of what the SPAM acronym stands for, and, uh, then we'll stencil that and start Sten, um, make a stencil for that and start stenciling that around site just to spread more of misinformation about what SPAM actually [02:31:00] stands for.

My favorite one from this year was, um, sometimes people, are, meet. I like that one.

Miles: I like the, uh, transhumanist representation in there. I approve. It's all my, uh, metal brethren unite.

Stevan: All right, so you've, you guys have made some shout outs before, some final round of shout outs. Some, some people you've probably forgotten.

Um, who

would you like to thank?

Hotwire: Everyone man. Shit. Yeah. Everyone's good to see the old homies again. Zul always kills it. Yeah. Benji, who else did I interact with? Uh, I think it was Cole, the medic. The oh man, that medic route. That medic and fiery team. Shit. I dunno where you found them, but keep that shit up.

That was Schmick. Yeah, that's like, yeah. From like a safety point of view, like that just gives me warm and fuzzies to see. Just such a rad outfit. You're so switched on.

Stevan: Yeah. They, they, they've been there since, uh, the first underland in Paradise. So it's good to see them back. It's, uh, with, [02:32:00] with the flow and the continuity.

Yeah. Makes a big difference.

Hotwire: PY does he, or maybe you guys know, does he do, is he just in Victoria or does he do interstate as well? What's his price tag? 'cause maybe we could use that in future and see yourself.

PY: Oh, I don't know. Sorry. Not from that Nick of the woods, but, um, I know the good thing about getting Scott is that he basically does, he's a one stop shop, so who do you first hit and fire all in one?

Yeah. Which is pretty handy.

Hotwire: And he had breathing apparatus in it, that's for sure. Yeah. Wonderful thing. Uh, who else? Who else? Yeah, all the event managers, um, all the site managers, all the spam crew, all the participants.

Yeah. It's good fun. Kin. I think also he DJ'ed for us on, uh, that gate shift. That was awesome.

Thanks. All the people who gave me beers had the gate gifted me beers.

Miles: Amazing.

Hotwire: Yeah. Thanks Miles. Thanks all. [02:33:00] Ranger team. Thanks everyone. Oh, I gotta go to work dudes.

Stevan: Yeah.

Miles: Um, I had a really nice to see a couple of Queensland burners come down, um, as well as the ranges I, uh, mentioned before. It's great.

Sort of connect, working more closely with Chow as well from the wonky Queenslander crew. Yeah, Chow's awesome. Um, Chow's actually moving on from wonky Queenslander, big announcement, shock horror, that that's, that's what happens. Uh, people on. Um, also nice to catch up with Erica who coordinated Fire Enclave on Effigy and I met her at modifier earlier in the year, so that was a really nice connection.

Uh, yeah, shout out to the, the Queensland Burner community. Thanks a lot.

Stevan: All right. Thank you guys. And we're gonna end it here with some more burner voice messages as we go out. So awesome to talk to again.

PY: Oh, hang on. Can one last thing. Can I give my shout out too?

Stevan: Yeah.

PY: Um, I think MVP on the spam crew this year definitely has to [02:34:00] go to Trish and Aaron.

This is the first year that we've had a proper kitchen crew, so we haven't been just reheating frozen, pre-cooked food. And Trish and Aaron absolutely smashed it out of the park. The quality of the food was amazing and they were able to. Cope with all the different dietary requirements. Like it was like, like it was nothing.

They just took it in their stride. It was perfectly executed and you could see the difference that it made to the team. You know, the army matches on its stomach and I know that everyone on spam and everyone on the build teams, yeah, just had that much of a better time because of their fantastic work in the kitchen.

So thank you to Trish and Aaron for working so hard.

Hotwire: Man. Every same thing. I always push for the first things you set up on site is the shitters, the showers, and the fucking kitchen [02:35:00] man. Get those three things set up there. You're good to go.

Stevan: Yeah. Thanks guys. Um, yeah, just a, about those little things that, that helps, helps people or helps the burn go around is, is the good food, the good crew, good people?

Mm. Um, so for next year, if you guys are thinking about volunteering, especially with the build crew, effigy or uh, temple, you're gonna be well fed and you're gonna be very happy with, with your build team and, and build experience. I think. So come along and, and apply and yeah, submit your, your ideas now for the, for the builds.

PY: Yeah, that's it.

Stevan: Alright, cool. Thanks guys.

Hotwire: Love you.

Stevan: We're gonna cha out end with more burner voice messages. Thank you.

PY: Thanks guys.

Miles: Thanks a lot everyone. See you later.

Space Cadet: Hi community. My name's Space Cadet. We just woke up so. Um, am. It's a clean slate at the moment. Oh, I think, lovely. It's party day today. Oh, yes. It's, [02:36:00]

Stevan: it's on now.

Popcorn: It's already on. Oh, I'm popcorn. I'm Adi. I am awake and wandering the, the sweet abyss. That is the 7:00 AM It's probably later than that Now, Underland thing.

My, my brain isn't working. Well, I'm not gonna earn it. I'm sorry, but fuck your burn. My brain isn't working, but fuck your burn.

Jayt: Good morning. My name is Jade and I'm from Melbourne and it's very nice to be here at Underland 2025. My very important message is, good morning. Have a wonderful day.

Craig: Hey guys, it's, um, yeah, it's Craig from [02:37:00] Spam. Uh, just trying to think of a beautiful message to the people out there. It's. All the beautiful faces that I've seen over the weekend for so far. I'm looking forward to all the more shenanigans and fun that we're gonna get up to. Uh, yeah, same old message. Burn bright and have fun.

Mick: Yeah, so a nice message from Mick. Um, burn Bright. You are the star that illuminates the sky.

Oh,

fucking, that was tacky. It was very cliche.

Nertz: Good day. This is Nertz from Melbourne. Uh, just here to advertise some peace and love for you all for the low, low price of 1995. The postage not included. Uh, hope you're all having a wonderful time out there in podcast land.

Mason: Um, I'm Mason. I'm from Melbourne, [02:38:00] and Underland has been like a, a big kooky mess of playful fun.

Mm, mm-hmm. Awesome. Yeah, it has.

Alex: Hello, my name is Alex. I'm from New Zealand. Got one, but I live in Melbourne and my advice is if you think you can trust a fart, you probably can't. Don't do it. Yeah, go on. Go on Tom.

Tom: I'm a bit shy.

But thanks for having me and I appreciate the good times and enjoy your time.

Woo.

Alex: I'm Alex and I'm at Underland 2025 and my message to everyone is be one, don't divide everything between everyone. Live life together.

Catherine: Hey, I'm Catherine. I'm from Thornbury in Melbourne. And um, [02:39:00] my message is bring the, the burner culture to the wider world, especially when it comes to radical inclusivity. Yeah. And radical self responsibility. I'm really big about that and I think our world really needs that. Right, right now. Yeah.

Julia: Okay. Hi, I'm Julia.

We have been manning that little purple booth and giving away chai and dah and my message for the communities, the thing I learned on this burn is to never again miss an acknowledgement to country. And I'm really grateful for that. Thank you. Great.

Doof Daddy: Hello everybody. Doof daddy Here. Just a reminder to lead with light and love and is on those who shoulders we stand.

That we are where we are now. Hello, this is N Magee. I just ate some cheese [02:40:00] and I would like to say thank you for that cheese if you gave it to me. Thank you. This n Magee,

Little Sandman: I am the littlest Sandman. Do we have a social contract?

Nita: Uh, hi everyone. Uh, shout out to the case up. 'cause that's the first things on my mind, but really now I'm trying to think about what I need to say. And so I think for the community, I just wanna tell everyone that it's worth it. Keep persisting and it's building. I'm Nita, I used to live in Brisbane, but now I live in Melbourne and I used to be a minter and now I think I'm Polyus.

Stevan: Thank you.

Big Fucking Robots: I'm a big fucking robots from the abyss and uh, I think everyone should come to Underland.[02:41:00]

Ranger Smurf: Sure. Hello, this is, uh, ranger Smurf, AKA Auntie Jo from Auntie Maria's. Wishing you all a happy burn and a happy landing post burn. Hopefully I see all of you in decompression. Right on.

Joe: Hey, this is Joe Live from the Ranger tent at Underland 2025. Um, I've just come for the night, just one night this time, which is much shorter than usual for me, uh, for various reasons. One of them is I've brought my 79-year-old mother to the burn, and she's having an amazing time. She's never been to an event like this, and really just, she's been blown away.

Um, and I've just, again, as per the previous two years, I've come in just lovely encounters with people. Um, just connecting with, you know, just chatting with people, people open, friendly. Yeah, just happy to share about themselves. Um, and yeah, included a, a a really lovely interaction with Mick, the, the [02:42:00] landowner and his wife and, and just hearing about how they're going and, and also their, their sort of commitment to, to this process.

And yeah, man, it's just, it's, it is such a lovely space to be in again, even if it's just briefly for me this time at the energy of the people, um, the beautiful art installations. Uh, such a lovely experience. And, uh, yeah, I guess my hope is that we cannot just confine this philosophy, this way of doing things to just this place.

I think this, it's great that it happens and we can break away and, and sort of really share in this kind of community, but I think how can we widen this out in sort of ripples that go back out to on all. It's not just like, no, we don't do anything. And then we come van land and then, you know, back for the rest of the year, everything the same.

It's like, how does it perfuse into other areas of our lives and, and sort of expand the, the sort of way of being together. Um, this contributory, um, mutually supportive, you know, not, not passive sort of participation, but really sort of active investment and, and contribution. Um, and yeah, I really, I really hope that that can carry on and I'm, I'm gonna try and keep coming.

I, I think it's a great event. I [02:43:00] always have a good time, always interact with, with wonderful people. The burns are amazing. So, uh, yeah, I'm feeling really good that I decided to Cameron as a bot and go, I wasn't sure if I would, but I, I'm really glad I have and, uh, I'll be back.

Kim: Um, hello, my name's Kim. Uh, I am a third year underland, fourth year burner, and my first burn was in 2018, burning seeds. I've been to the last three Under Lands now. Um, yeah, I guess my message to the community would be, uh, thank you. Um, I feel like I've gained so much from every single burn I've been to and from the community as a whole.

Um, I guess, yeah, every burn for me is a very transformative experience and um, this is the first one that I've been part of the crew [02:44:00] for. So I help build the Effigy temple, or sorry, I help build the effigy and, um, I've been helping with Leave No Trace and Spam on Pack Down as well. And I also helped out with Sanctuary, um, during the festival and a little bit of stuff with the Gaze and New camp this year that I'm very proud of my friends for doing so well with.

Um, so yeah, big shout out to the Gaze. First year camp. Absolutely smashed it. Amazing dance floor, amazing vibe. Um, Luda C Shenanigans on Sunday. Yeah, just excellent job. Um, so many camps did so well this year though. Uh, but yeah, I just feel very grateful to be part of such a wonderful community and I'm looking forward to continuing to be part of that and Shape Underland for many years to come.

And thanks everyone and looking forward to seeing you next year.

Matt: Hello everyone, this is Matt [02:45:00] Jefe, Melbourne as President, uh, also president of the villains. I wanna say this Underland has been a massive step up, um, really

hit its stride this year, some amazing camps and, and really wonderful

to see some of, uh, some people from the old camps of seed days coming back in as well.

Really good to see some of what the fluff and some old members of scratch coming back in, uh, have to say. This has been a really healing time and, and makes me feel. Uh, really, uh, proud of the community and also positive for where we're gonna go forward from here. If you don't know, the party never ends Underland.

Once it's wrapped up, give it about six weeks and we'll be coming into the Melbourne as decompression party. 15th of November day party at Abbott's Yard, uh, back in Melbourne, in Abbottsford on Victoria Street or Victoria Parade. Uh, that will be a full day family friendly party. We'd [02:46:00] love to see, uh, lots of representation of theme camps, art, and, and really a focus on our community.

This is our first decompression in 60 years since 2019 at series. Uh, it's really, it's a space for connection and, and healing and, and community growth. So, I'd, I'd love to see you all there. Um, burn brightly and get along to the next underland.

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