Will & Kate: [00:00:00] Burners of New Zealand and Australia and Asia, radically making magic on the paddock around the fire B-O N Z-A-A-R

Bonzaar podcast.

Stevan: A, Bonzaar. Welcome to all Steven Lay here or silent disco on the paddock. Thanks for listening. It's exciting checking in and getting to know some emerging regionals. In this episode, we'll be talking about the third degree, our thoughts and review of the fourth edition of the Central Coast Regional Burn.

We'll also discuss the formation and the organization of this amazing event with four of the current board members with us here. Uh, welcome to say hello to Ruth Dale. Caer and [00:01:00] Tyne. Hello guys. Welcome.

Caer: Hey there.

Tyne: Hi. How's it going?

Stevan: So let's start with some quick introductions. What you guys, what, what your roles are there at third degree and maybe a quick summary or quick description of what is third degree.

According to yourself.

Tyne: Caer, do you wanna go first?

Caer: Yeah. That's not all jumping at once.

Dale: Anyone?

Ruth: Yeah, I'm, I'm happy to take it. Um, in terms of what is third degree, it's, uh, a very sweet little burn on an absolutely gorgeous site. Um, it's a little bit bougie. It's deliberately very family friendly. That was very intentional in our setup and it's a really good place for someone who's never been to a burn before for them to start because they get a sense of the culture without having necessarily all of the burden of having to take everything with them, like their water and stuff.

Tyne: Um, I'll just quickly answer. My role has been the, uh, co-chair president. Of wilderness productions. [00:02:00] And I've also been running the social media for the last four years, so that's kind of where I've been sitting as I'm a bit of a, a Jill of all trades in what I do, helping out with a multitude of things.

Whenever I can step up and do that work, I, I try to get that done. Uh, but that's what I do in my role.

Ruth: Yeah, Tyne is amazing. She does all of the things that need to happen, no one else can manage so often. Um, in terms of my role, I most recently was secretary. What was I before that?

Tyne: I think you were just general member.

General, yeah.

Ruth: Okay.

Dale: General member. Yeah.

Ruth: Yeah. So yeah, general member and then secretary. Um, I also ran, uh, rangers for three years and then most recently,

Caer: just casually she says,

Ruth: and then most recently I was sanitation lead, which was great fun.

Caer: Alright. Uh, I'm Caer. Um, have been head chair person or head eski person as I was voted in while sitting on an [00:03:00] eski, as you do when you don't take things too seriously. I've been omnipresent across a large amount of the organization. Event management, risk management, administrative functions, effigy build, temple build, volunteering and theme camping as well.

At third degree we do a lot of things.

I would say the third degree is a collaborative and participatory experience. It's a bit of a potluck if you've never been to a burn. Think of it as a potluck festival. Uh, everyone pays, everyone plays, and everyone contributes to bring the fun, be the fun, and partake in the fun.

Dale: I'm Dale, I'm the Public Officer of Wilderness Productions.

Um, I have been there since the beginning. Um, third degree for me is, uh, a really small regional burn, uh, which is really important to, to us and to people in the community is very family friendly. Um, last year we had like 55 to [00:04:00] 60 children, which is amazing. The burn itself is really easy to come to. Um, it's one of the easiest burns you can come to with, uh, the least amount of stuff.

And, uh, it's really easy to make people to meet people as well 'cause it's so small. Um, you get to see people, you know, three or four times and make, make connections and get to know people and then also see what happens in the backend as well. So you can jump in there, maybe sign up for a few shifts when you arrive, if you haven't done anything before, which is fantastic.

Um, I'm the public officer. I also the event manager and look after operations. Uh, make sure the site is site safety before people arrive with a team. And yeah, I just, just enjoy, enjoy burning. Been burning since 2011.

Stevan: Yeah. Something I've just learned just already. Is that under Wilderness Productions you're saying?

Yeah, that's a,

Caer: yeah, I can take that one. Yeah. Wilderness Productions Incorporated Association, not-for-profit. Uh, we stood up the not-for-profit when the [00:05:00] first time we did it was a, we thought it was going to be a one-off. So Dale and I was. Very heavily involved in burning seed in its heyday. Um, 2019 was, I believe, burning seed's.

Biggest burn at a roughly 4,800 souls and something like 50 theme camps. It was enormous, um, and quite a, quite a good time. Then an entire pandemic happened, and so after seeing the difficulty in running events with all of the legislation around, you know, COVID control and spread, when we were starting to come out of lockdown, we thought, oh, what if, um, what if seed runs?

We'll see, we'll see if seed runs. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. At that time, they hadn't finished their restructure, and so Dale and myself decided that we weren't gonna participate in Red City until it became the new entity, which is currently Sunburn Arts. Uh, it was a matter of principles. We didn't really agree with the way Red Earth City had been operating, so we decided not to participate until they'd finished their restructure and since everyone was coming out of lockdown and ISO [00:06:00] we're like, well, Dale and I looked at ourselves and we said, well, what's running one more event?

So Dale did what Dale does, which is, uh, phone up all his friends and be like, Hey, you guys wanna do a burn? And that was, uh, the third degree burns first, first ever run. It's. A bit special to us because, uh, the venue is where we got married. That's how we found the venue. And so there's a very personal connection, myself and Dale, to, to our lovely little, lovely little site.

Dale: Yeah. So it was just a matter of getting together some theme camps we had collaborated with in the past when we've had fundraisers back in like 2018 to 2019. And some other camps were like, Hey, do you guys wanna do, you guys wanna do something? Let's, uh, so we all just, um, put up, we went along and it was very small.

It was like 200 people maybe.

Caer: Yeah. If that,

Dale: I don't even know if it was even that. I can't remember. It was pretty small, but yeah. And uh,

Ruth: it was 170 the first year we had 170. [00:07:00] Yeah,

Dale: 170. Wow, okay. Yes.

Caer: Yeah. But it was pretty much like, we'll just do a one-off until, um, seed gets his act together and then we're like, you know what?

Actually it was pretty fun. Let's do it again. So we stood up the not-for-profit. Um, we went in with the view that we would be working on the first principles of best principles. Um, no shortcuts, like trying to do things the right way, open to honest transparency and really with a focus on what is the best that we can bring to this event, even with it as small as it is.

And really taking that back to the first principle of our principles, which is consent. It's our bedrock principle. It's what we stand on, it's what we have all of our fun on, and we're really driving that ask first culture. We were the first regional burn to do the BED consent pilot, which we're very proud of.

Lots of learnings, lots of improvements there on how you can run with respect, but also respect and consent, which is very important to us.

Stevan: I've got, I've got a few descriptions [00:08:00] I've seen, I've seen the way, how the event has grown from you, you are saying 160 people to like over 300, 400 people now. So build up.

It's grown. Uh, my description is, it's wholesome. The third degree is wholesome, it's folksy and family friendly was a big one. Now, at times it even seemed like a daycare, like, uh, you know, like childcare because there was a lot of kids and toddlers around. Um, at nighttime it tend to rave or like a disco if you wanted to.

And I thought third degree, the whole thing is like an incubator. Like it is, it is an experiment. So that's my description there. Um, what do you guys think about the, the whole family? Uh, so the whole, uh, folksy aspect, the whole wholesome.

Ruth: So I, I wanna talk a bit about the experiment thing because for me.

The whole burner thing is one great big anthropological experiment. It's like, what happens if we get a whole bunch of people and we just separate them from default world [00:09:00] and we change the rules a little bit and we see what happens? Um, and I think that was sort of what burns have been about since the 1980s in America.

So, you know, you're saying that the third degree is, is a bit of an experiment. It's like, well, yeah, awesome. Great. Because we are carrying on that, that experimental sort of tradition. Um, in terms of it being folksy, um, that's an interesting one. I mean, it is, it is a really comfortable space, which a lot of burns are not.

A lot of burns are hard work. You know, you've gotta make sure you've got your water bottle with you if you're gonna leave your camp because you don't know where your feet are gonna take you. You don't know how long you're gonna be out for. And if you don't have water on your person, you are going to get dehydrated.

Where is at? Third degree. There's taps. Oh my God, we've got running water. Like, you know, what's with that?

Um, and, and I don't [00:10:00] know, it's one of the things I like about it is it is a bit more comfortable, a bit more relaxed. Um, like I said, we, we really intended to get the family friendly vibe in there. That was quite deliberate. Um, as you know, one of the principles is inclusion. And one of the kinds of inclusion that we were not seeing at a lot of burns was families and kids, and also disabled people.

Um, so we've tried very, very hard to incorporate those groups. And also we were the first burn to ever do the low income ticket thing. Once again, that was working towards inclusion. It was trying to get in people who wouldn't necessarily be able to afford to go, um, if they didn't have some sort of financial assistance.

So we were like, well, we're gonna do that because. Inclusion. We want these people there as well

Tyne: to be, oh, sorry. I'll let you go. Caer that's fine.

Caer: No, go ahead Tyne,

Tyne: I was just gonna say that I think the, the fact that it's folksy and feels sort of like intimate is probably more where I'd go with this [00:11:00] is it's, it gives you the opportunity to, to try all the different styles of burning in one small burn.

You have the ability to go and try new things because it's a lot smaller. There's more opportunity I found. 'cause my first burn was actually in 2019 at seed. And, uh, coming from standard festivals and then going to a burn, it's a completely different style of, of party that people would go to. And with that.

I noticed there was still like a big lot of segregation between the people who were doing ops and the people who were doing all of the different roles and everything like that. Unless you kind of knew what you were walking into, it was very hard for you to kind of go, Hey, I can see somebody going and doing that.

I'm just gonna go see if I can help with that. And the thing I like with, uh, third degree is we do have the ability to go, Hey, I can see that somebody's been doing a moop patrol, or I can see that somebody's been doing sanitation. I wouldn't like, I wouldn't mind helping out with that. And we've got a [00:12:00] very easy HQ that you can go to and then sign up for.

So it helps to involve people into the community and get them a little bit more confidence that they might not have if they were going to a big burn. So, and that's what I find is, is quite good about the smaller burns. It allows the opportunity for people to see an opportunity to step up and learn new skills and get harnessed into that, to get more confidence to then help with our bigger burns.

Caer: It's a great call out time. I will say in the larger festivals and the larger burns, it can be caught up in the US which is operations and them, which is punters. So a degree is small enough that there is nearly no divide there. Other than people who are telling other people what to do.

Ruth: Yeah. Um, when, when we as a board, were first discussing the idea of making it compulsory that everybody who came along had to do one volunteer shift, um, I was initially against it because I was like, you know, we want people to be able to come along and have the experience that they [00:13:00] choose to bring.

Um, but, um, I have totally changed my mind on that as, as a thing. I've had so many people say that, you know, if it weren't compulsory to do a shift, they probably wouldn't have because they wouldn't have known where to go, what to volunteer for. But because they had to volunteer for something, so they went out, they did the research, and now they feel like they're part of the process.

They're part of the, um, the, the creation of the event. And, and people love that. People really enjoy that, which totally took me by surprise. But it was a, it was a really lovely outcome.

Tyne: Some, it, sometimes it's just needing that first little push to get people to actually try, because there's always been a, a sense of fear.

And it's something that I, I struggle with myself, which is, this is new, this is scary. I need to try something new, but I don't know if there's enough safety net there to catch me. So kind of giving people that little push to just go try and know that it's [00:14:00] okay if you fail, we will be there to help you.

Really helps. And I think this is how we also build our. By doing that sort of thing.

Caer: Yeah. The, the tagline of third degree is really get amongst it. Like get stuck in, be a part of it. Bring the magic, be the magic. Help the magic.

Stevan: So now we're into our fourth year getting more familiar with the site, uh, with, with also the, the, the caretaker.

Let's talk about this year's burn. Any behind the scenes stuff that we can share with the listeners

Caer: behind the scenes. Um, it's only great now with the temple design.

Stevan: Yeah, we can talk about that. Yes. Let's talk about it. Let's, let's get straight into the, the effigy. So we had the theme was, um, fourth Dimension Time.

Caer: Time the fourth. Yeah.

Stevan: Yeah.

Caer: So yeah, we, we put out our er eyes for, for Temple and effigy. And we had like a little bit of interest. We had a few people be like, oh yeah, maybe I could do that. Um, fortunately the person we had, um, slotted in [00:15:00] for Temple had work commitments and had to pull out very last minute.

Again, no is a complete sentence. We respect all capacity. And I had been holding myself back just in case that happened. Uh, a cop a cop, a bit of heat from the admin crew by not signing up for any shifts until very late in the game. I like to hold myself back just in case there's a very large gap I have to fill.

And that came along in the shape of Temple build. And via team organizer. Uh, we had a bit of, bit of capacity constraint there as well on the admin side. Yeah. Talking about temple and effigy. Uh, I'm gonna give the lead to Tyne 'cause effigy burns first.

Tyne: Yeah, well, I mean, it, it, this was, this was my first ever effigy burn.

And, uh, if it wasn't for care, helping me with the, the math and the, and, and being able to get the wood because all the cut lists. Yeah. Yeah. Cut list. Well, I, I was able to develop a cut list and go Here, this is what I need to do, but I, I [00:16:00] need, like, what do we need to do to do this? Uh, 'cause it's a big undertaking for somebody who's never done GY burn before or build or design and I kind

Caer: or wood sculptures and structural fires.

Tyne: Yeah. Yeah. It was all it like, like the things I had to take into account, like, can't burn carcin, uh, carcinogenics can't use specific paint, need to make sure that it's, uh, structurally sound that if somebody tries to climb on it, then it's not gonna be a major issue. All of these sort of things had to be taken into account and, um, my design was kind of picked up very last minute.

So, 'cause we kind of had a lot of ifs and, and buts going on. So it was, it was very much a, a more simpler design, but something that I thought came together quite well. 'cause of the theme I kind of went with, um, a, a clock tower with crazy clocks on all of the sides. And then I painted the whole outside of it with the, the design, uh, that we had within our promo as well.

And I did that in UV [00:17:00] paints deliberately. So that, that way the light show that I had, uh, programmed would actually make the, the paint strobe in and out during the nighttime. So during the day, it was nice and bright. During nighttime, it kind of had this trooping effect, which then also went with the soundboard that I had installed inside.

So I went to one of our other board members, Adam and I actually said to him, Hey, I need help. Can you please create a raspberry pie for me with the tartus sounds? 'cause I really wanted to kind of bring in the time, Lord, because you know. I gotta bring in Dr. Who at some point if we're doing time in the fourth dimension.

And, uh, I hid a speaker and everything inside with different t sounds going on inside the actual structure. So it constantly had this sort of vibe of going in and out, in and out, particularly at nighttime, which was what I really wanted. Obviously it burnt really, really well. And we had the, the three men, little burning men at the top, which made me very happy.

'cause we had those guys cut out to put on top as our little spire. [00:18:00]

Caer: I wanna call out that we actually got the design from the BlackRock city man.

Tyne: Yes, we did.

Caer: As a, as a little, little homage.

Tyne: Yeah. So I, I managed to pull that and then I cut it. I, I did the whole, uh, cutout design. Sent that through to Peter.

Asked for Peter to cut it out for us, and he managed to do that for me. Um, which made life a lot easier. 'cause obviously these sort of builds are done by a team. It's not just one person who does this. It's a whole team. And I cannot express the amount of thanks that I have for all the people who came and helped me to do that and put it all together.

Um, and then also the fire crew who helped me, like learn how to load it up, how to light it, to do all of this sort of stuff that we had for it. Um, and of course when I burnt it, I also had a whole heap of soundtracks. So I tried to combine sound, uh, with lights and sight as well as the, the whole structure itself, just to give a full experience this year onto you Caer.

Caer: Yep. It was a beautiful, [00:19:00] beautiful time, beautiful build amazing crew, really, really awesome crew this year. So the temple, um, temple was a temple was a bit of a bit of a tale. I typically build pyro, kinetic sculptures as effigies and art pieces 'cause I enjoy the fun and the celebration and the s sculptural object.

Um, in the execution of movement in fire, I find the transformation element really intriguing. So I enjoy exploring that in the things that I've built. I've built HA dozen also before this year, or before last year, I should say. Uh, various small mini burns. Um, first one was water world, then we did mid solstice a couple of times and some some other things.

So to build a temple, I feel is very special. It is a very big locust point of the culture and the, I would say the spirituality of the burn. A lot of people feel very strongly about how temple is, does and goes. And so I really wanted to respect the process and not only the process, but [00:20:00] the, the people that have that emotional catharsis at the point of temple burn.

It's very, it's a very important, very special thing that burns have. I remember someone telling me early on in my burning life that the original temple was built, that anyone who had never found a place, a home or a church and to. Commemorate all of those lost, um, by taking their own lives as no church would hold them.

And so with, with that kind of very serious and heavy considerations, I really wanted to approach this build with respect to all of that and that heritage and that culture and that importance. So, uh, I looked to my own heritage. I'm not very religious, so my own personal spirituality is more historical, uh, neolithic, pagans and spiritualism.

So I looked to history and the way that people quantified, measured and [00:21:00] analyzed time, and what better thing to track time than a hinge. So a stone hinge, tracking the seasons and the solstice, calling also the ous standing stones as tracking time in some of the elements we used. And the anachronistic, uh, design element that was on times.

It was a hybrid of a stopwatch, a clock, and a sundial all swirl together, which was very fun. And so, uh, for people who haven't seen the pictures of Stonehenge, it's pillars holding up horizontal stones, uh, spaced out in rings, and because it was time, the fourth dimension time and the false dimension is the location of space and time.

So I had three portions of a hinge aligned to the cardinal points on the site. So north, so east west, the center was a hybrid. A compass and a sundial. And we built a small bridge, uh, on the approach to the temple so that when you went to the temple, you [00:22:00] were looking for a direction and you could find your direction.

'cause the cardinal points were recognized there. Um, really tried to bring in a lot of, of my heritage. So Scott's Irish, Welsh, and some English. So we had the hinge, we had compass, we had, uh, carvings as per the neolithic chalk portraits in England as well as the, the anachronistic design of the modern era.

So I feel like it really spoke to not only time, but place, uh, and ritual

Stevan: So. Was time also a factor into the design process and the build.

Caer: Yeah. Time crunch.

Stevan: You had more time. You think you had bigger ambitions.

Tyne: I'm glad I went Simple. I'm glad I went simple because we had a time crunch out. The time crunch.

It was, it was, uh, like the, the wood didn't arrive on site until, I think it was around about three o'clock on this, uh, we, Wednesday or Tuesday? Tuesday, I think it was. Yeah, on the Tuesday. So we only really [00:23:00] had a, a day and a little bit to build everything before people started rocking up on site. So it was a very much a, a rush job for us to get everything together.

Caer: The timelines were tight, but I feel like we shifted the design enough that we could accommodate not only the crunch, but the ability to execute with like, uncertain amount of crew. So boxes, lots of boxes.

Stevan: Well, how was your burn besides the, uh, the whole, um, build process design? How did you enjoy it?

Tyne: Mine was excellent.

'cause I actually started using a brand new, uh, thing that I'm working very hard on right now called boundaries. So I have a habit of, uh, kind of overcommitting myself once I'm on the paddock. Uh, there's been a, a constant running joke, uh, from certain people that when I'm on the paddock, they never see me stop.

I'm either running around on an a TV quickly doing some ops stuff, or I'm helping out with ranges, or I'm doing first aid or I'm stepping up and doing something [00:24:00] else. It, it was like constantly doing a lot of roles. And this year was like, okay, I've done a lot of work leading up to this event. Um, almost a year's worth of work leading into it.

Then I've done the, the build. I also helped with theme camp, uh, as well as, um. The, the, the build of the effigy and setting up the site. Uh, so the only other role I did while I was actually at the event was I did my first fire shift as well. So I actually got to do the, the perimeter, like the fire working in the middle, which was really good and really eye-opening.

Uh, but other than that it was mostly getting to actually be part of the burn this time was really, really good for me. 'cause normally I'm so flat chat with everything. I don't really get to enjoy the fruits of the labor. So it was really good to actually go, hold on other pe I need to allow other people to step up.

I need them to learn to grow, and so I need to step back to allow them to do that.

Ruth: Yeah, [00:25:00] we were really lucky this year too that we had, uh, enough community support to be able to, to step back. You know, there was someone else, um, who took over Rangers, God bless you, Vixen, um, sorry, Minx. God bless you, Minx.

And, um, and, and we had, I mean, you know, I, I was a team lead still, but it was such a light role compared to what I was used to before. Um, I've always helped to bring a, a theme camp to every third degree as well, but this year. I didn't have to sort of run it, I was just there to help with set up and pack down, and then the rest of it was just taken over by other people.

So same as Tyne. It was this wonderful experience of, you know, freedom while I was there for most of the time, I didn't actually have responsibilities. The third, third degree, damn. It took me, I don't know, three, four weeks after I got back before I was able to just [00:26:00] touch the earth and breathe. Um, because I was just so dead tired.

So yeah, it was, it was great. Uh, you know, just being able to enjoy the time there and not be exhausted by the end of it.

Stevan: Is it becoming more like a village Dale? With all the help that you're getting now? Like you guys are, are, are, are getting the support now, so, which is good.

Dale: It's, it's certainly becoming a village and, and the growth is getting there as well.

So, um, and we are getting people to, uh, to step up and, you know, and when I'm out at, um, events where people come up and say, oh, well, you know, what can we do? You know, and you know, we ask them, we give them the, you know, we say, well what, what do you think you'd like to do? You know, like, and give them some ideas of what's about and then try and get them incorporated.

But yeah, it definitely is a village and it takes a lot of us to do this. And for me, last year was the first year I could maybe have a few days off. Um, which is good for myself because I'm very busy for the time. It [00:27:00] starts to the time, time it finishes. Um, I don't get a lot of downtime while I'm there. A lot of people will notice that I don't get a lot of downtime, but, um, I wear a blue shirt.

When I wear a blue shirt means that I'm off duty. So just leave me alone. Don't, don't come and talk to me unless something is on fire or something radically,

Caer: then you can talk to me.

Dale: But, um, yes, no, definitely, well building the village and that is what's important. Um, and, um, I think, you know, getting more people involved and getting people to step up, um, is, is already, um, like with every volunteer organization, that is one of the hardest things is to get more people to step into the leadership roles.

Caer: It's, it's an interesting chicken and egg problem because if you don't have a lot of people, it's a lot of work. But if you have more people, it's not as much work for each person. And so trying to get enough heads to distribute hats, so it's less work for everyone is, I think, you know, the, the constant ideal.

That you're in [00:28:00] pursuit of in any volunteer organization is like getting enough heads to, to distribute the hats a little more evenly. Um,

Ruth: and, and we're trying to make it easier for people to step up as well because we are creating, um, role descriptions and procedures and things like that so that even if you've never done on something like this before, you can come in and there's documentation there that can teach you hopefully everything you need to know.

Caer: Yeah. So Tyne has done a lot of hard work on kind of quantifying the ask on each volunteer role and we're looking at even trying to do some like decision registry things around just making, making the process more transparent and more repeatable. So you can pick up a clipboard, tick off your boxes, and then the work is done.

Stevan: Yeah. Every year there's always new people coming into the community. Do you guys experience, uh, some new burners this year?

Tyne: Yep. I've dealt with quite a few new burners this year. Um, and I think it's interesting when I have a new burner coming [00:29:00] into the community, 'cause I actually brought my brother to last year's one and it was his first ever burn.

It was first ever music festival or anything like that. And he was really nervous about it. And I think one of the key things about when you have a new burner coming in is you need to make sure that they feel safe, that they also understand what's expected of them as well. This isn't a standard festival where they can just drop their rubbish on the ground and expect somebody else is gonna pick it up.

This is, this is where they need to realize that they are here to be part of a community. They're not here just to you and watch the community. Um, because that's unfortunately what a lot of our entertainment has been set up as is you go, you pay, you watch, you go home. There, there is no real interaction with a lot of community now.

Caer: Very passive consumption. It's,

Tyne: yeah,

Caer: it's almost the passive consumption model. Like you watch a television, you're just, you are consuming what's being provided to you, whereas a burn is very different. It's like a play, it's like a pento. You are, you are involved, you are part of [00:30:00] the audience, you're part of the play.

Tyne: Yeah, and I, I think it's also, you can see the, the, the, the, the, the deer in the headlights look on the ones who are kind of looking around and they're shocked and in awe and not sure what to do. I tend to, if I spot any of them, I just say a quick, hello, how you doing? How you settling in? How do you find it?

Ask them those sort of questions to see how they, how they're tracking with it. And it doesn't matter whether you're at third degree or at a different burn. If I see that look on somebody's face, I stop. And I always try to make that moment so that they have a bit of an interaction with somebody that they might see as a bit more approachable, uh, than, you know, because sometimes if you're walking past and you're seeing all these people in these fantastic outfits and, and all of this sort of stuff, and they're going past you just like, oh my God, I don't know how to take a photo.

Or I can't talk to them. I can't say, Hey, how you doing? 'cause they get too nervous about it. So I, even if I'm dressed up, I like to come up and just be like, hi, how you doing? Is this your first burn? You know, just have a quick chat with 'em, see [00:31:00] how they're doing, and then go from there. And I think this is also how we get more community with them as well.

Ruth: Mm-hmm. Um, there's a, a phrase I heard somewhere along the lines and I can't remember, but it's a, it's a good one and I use it a lot now, which is, if you see someone who, you know, has that sort of like, feeling like they're like the out of place, um, go up to them, start talking to them, talk about inclusion, talk about the idea that, you know, that is one of the fundamental principles of this place is that everybody belongs.

But then you ask them about what they might have to offer to the space, and everybody's got something. And, and then the, the, the phrase that, that I've started using is, you know, there's a lot of people out there who are burners, but they just don't know it yet. You sound like that to me.

Stevan: It's been a while since my first burn.

So let's, let's get into that conversation after the break. Um, so during the break I've got some burner voice messages that are recorded at third Degrees, so we'll play those and when we come back we'll talk about, um, your burner origin stories.[00:32:00]

Jasper: Hello, my name is Jasper. Um, I'm from Newcastle and this is my first burn. I've really enjoyed it. Everyone's pretty great. Tried new things, so yeah, been a good time.

Amoon: Hi, my name's Amoon. This is my first burn. Um, I love everything about it, all of you, and uh, I hope you all have a great time. I'll see you again as soon as I can.

Hotgazer: Good day burners. This is hot gazer here. Thank you for my first burner. It was fucking lovely and I hope you have a wonderful time.

Carmela: Hi, my name is Carmel. I'm from Wollongong and this is my very first burn. This is amazing. All the community and everyone being around and sharing everything, it's just amazing to be here.

Ruby: Hi, team, I'm Ruby. Um, I'm here at third [00:33:00] degree in Kariong and I've traveled over from New Zealand. Um, and I started Burns with uh, ignition, which is pretty frigging awesome. It's a wild party. And then I've also been to Kiwi Burn. Um. And this is my first, like, relatively small burn, and it's been so incredible. I just wanna thank everyone for being so radically inclusive.

I've never had a lonely moment, even though I'm pretty much solo here. Um, and yeah, I love the community. I think the entire world should become burners. Um, and just gonna finish up with, fuck that moon, that's stupid moon. It's coming closer and closer every day and it could collide into the earth, so we need to make sure we tell that moon to fuck right off.

Thank you.

Stevan: Thank you. Do you wanna talk a little bit about the history of the fuck the moon thing that you are telling me about?

Ruby: Uh, yeah. Okay. Um, so, uh, [00:34:00] like we started, uh, well we, I was at Kiwi Burn earlier this year in 2025, um, and was part of a fuck the moon protest, um, because the, yeah, the moon was coming closer every day.

So we need to, we need to make sure that we stand up against the moon. Um, and yeah, that was probably around 30 people. Uh, and then we've taken it to third degree here. That was great. I've got lots of moon, the moon tattoos on people's booties. Um, and yeah, it actually originated from burning seed, so it's traveled kind of around the world and we need to keep it going.

It's really important. Um, yeah, fuck that moon.

Stevan: Okay, we're back. Let's get into, my favorite part of the segment is Burner Origin Stories. So who wants to share about how you guys got into the Burner culture and Burner community?

Ruth: Okay, I'll go first. Um, so I've been going [00:35:00] to doofs and festivals since early nineties, and I'd heard about Burns and I was actually quite intimidated by the concept of them.

I, I thought, oh, that sounds like it's an a, a, a kind of a thing for people who are really hardcore. Like, I, I wouldn't belong there. That wouldn't work for me. But as much as I was afraid of it, I was also very drawn to it. And I remember someone telling me once that, that if you are simultaneously afraid and interested in a thing both at once, those are the things in life that you have to do.

So I was like, okay, all right, at some point I will have to do this. I just have to work up the courage to do it. And then, I can't remember, it was 2013 or 2014, there was this woman who I was very interested in romantically, um, and she told me she was gonna go to burning seed. And I said, right, if you are going ongoing.

So that was my first burn was um, I went to, to that one with Arian. And um, and it was just the most [00:36:00] amazing thing. I thought it would be like a festival, but more. And then when I got there, I discovered that actually it's its own thing. It's a completely different kind of a way of being in the world. And once I'd been to one, I was hooked.

And I don't know that I've ever been to another festival since. 'cause once you've been to a burn, what's the point of going to a festival? Burns is so much better.

Stevan: Yeah. Well, usually, usually I, I, I say if, uh, if you're in, like, if you're really into festivals. Don't go to a burn because they're just ruin your festivals forever.

So Yeah, I know what you mean.

Ruth: It's true. Yes. Um, sometimes I talk about people evolving. I mean, you know, it sounds all very hierarchical when you put it like that, but like we know, we, we start off as DERs and then we evolve into burners. Um, and yeah, and I, I don't know. I've just been to anything that I have bandwidth for.

Um, pretty much ever since. Um, I met [00:37:00] these guys in 2016, uh, sorry, these guys being day and care. Um, I met them in 2016 at Waterworld, which was, uh, a very small 300 person event that popped up that year. That seed didn't happen because the site was underwater. Um,

Caer: Seed got flooded. And so all the can barons were like, okay, cool.

We'll do our own burn.

Ruth: And it was great. It was so fun. Um, and we got lots and lots of, uh, war stories that we, that we'll share with our grandkids. Like, you know, having to wait the extra day because you can slide down a muddy hill, but you can't get up a muddy hill. And it was so much rain that we couldn't get off site.

So fortunately everybody had enough food and everything else because we're burners and we over prepare. Um, and we just stayed there for an extra day. It was really cool. Yeah, I don't know. Is that enough of an origin story?

Stevan: It's, it's interesting how these, um, renegades or camp outs. Spark things, right?

Ruth: Yes.

Yes. Actually, I remember, uh, at that event, I remember Dale [00:38:00] saying that, that, that the, the learning curve was very steep, but that as a result of seed being canceled, that everything was going to get, um, so many more people were upskilling and that they would then be able to go on and have events of their own.

And then we did.

Dale: Yeah. So for me, um, I got into burns in like 2011. I'd been going to festivals and to, um, to like sort of day festivals, weekend festivals and that sort of stuff. And, um, a friend of mine said, oh, I run, I run this, um, this camp at Burning Sea. And I was like, oh, I have no idea what that is. So I checked it out.

It was a bit like, it's a long way. It's all the way in Wago. That's like six and a half hours drive and I've gotta take everything with me. So it was a bit like overwhelming. But I went with a couple of friends and I didn't camp with the actual theme camp. I camped on my own, which is really great. And I got stuck into volunteering the first year.

Went into doing the gates, and I love that. And, um, yeah. Then a couple of years later, I joined that theme [00:39:00] camp, um, a few years later, took the camp over, ran it for a couple of years with care, then we changed the name, um, to the space in between. And then a few years later we, um, the, at that stage, WBA manner was leaving the paddock because they had had, they just didn't have the bandwidth to do it anymore.

And, um, Caer can talk about why we decided to take on wombat manor and change it, Deb Air Manion. But that is our primary think camp that we run now with, uh, with time as well is one of our leads. Um, it's a great little camp. We have great fun. It's, uh, just, um, vintage develop, vintage t speakeasy. It's just fabulous.

No, but yeah, I've never looked back. I've gone to either commercial festivals since then, once or twice, and I can say I do not like gonna them, you know, um, I much prefer the Burns and I've gone to things like Blazing Swan. I've gone to Underland. [00:40:00] Uh, underworld was, as Ru said, a very sharp and very challenging burn water world.

Yeah. But water world, sorry. Uh, but yet everybody really just dug in, in the last few days to get everyone out. It was like a little chain, working chain, getting people to get out of the mts. But um, yeah, that is my story.

Caer: I came into Burning 2015, uh, at Burning Seed. I believe the theme was like love revolution.

I'd only heard of burning because I met Dale at a warehouse party in Canberra. He was visiting a friend and he's like, so, have you heard about burning? I'm like, no. Tell.

And so the, the next, next seed was coming up. He's like, oh, you should come along with us. I was like, oh, okay, sure. See how we go. No previous festival experience, no previous, um, doof experience, nothing. Um, so I was just like, all right, let's see how we go. So that came into 2015, uh, helping and doing some volunteering like rangering and [00:41:00] first aid.

I was quite unwell that first year, and I remember walking around and being so profoundly accepted, just walking around, minding my own business. And what I found in the burn community that I've not found really anywhere else, is everyone was willing to positively interact with you. Kind of like, it's like a baseline thing you walk up to and you're like, Hey mate, nice hat.

And he's like, cool jacket. And just like, you just walk on, you know? And it's like that, that baseline positivity and that baseline inclusion and acceptance was really, really what made that first burn so incredibly special to me. Just the, the beauty of the inclusion in the community was just amazing.

Like, I've found lifelong friends in burner community friendships that have lasted longer than my regular ones from childhood. Like, it's, it's an amazing community and it's, it's very, very special.

Stevan: So the lack of, uh, the lack of judgment, right? It's, it's, it's quite refreshing.

Caer: [00:42:00] Yeah. Like you can be weird and that's okay.

Ruth: Or you can be normal and that's okay too.

Caer: Yeah, exactly. So, so getting involved in the, in the theme camp, I'm like, okay, like getting involved in theme camp wasn't enough. Let's volunteer. Okay. Let's volunteer and get involved in theme camp. No, that wasn't enough. Okay, let's, let's run a thing camp and volunteer and do art.

Okay, cool. Yeah. No, that's not enough. Oh, no. Uh, the Wombat Manor is no longer beyond the paddock. I love the Wombat Manor. It was one of the most beautiful little anachronistic red velvet lounge room in the middle of nowhere. Chill spot at night, really beautiful little velvet treasure box. But what was special about the wombat manner to me was the champagne lingerie brunch.

Now, if you're not familiar with the champagne linger brunch, it's literally what it says on the tin. There's a lot of champagne, there's some brunch, and there's a lot of people in, not very much at all. So going to that [00:43:00] space, uh, on my own, very unfamiliar with any of that type of community was like a real kind of call to bravery for myself back in the day.

And the sheer joy, body positivity and safety that I found in that crowd was the highlight of my burn. It was the absolute highlight, like everyone was just. Amazing. And like this, the vibes were immaculate. So I said, okay, well if, if Woba man is not gonna be there anymore, I will carry the torch of champagne linger brunch.

I will, I will take all of the infrastructure, I will find somewhere to put it so that we can keep this beautiful little moment of safety and sensuality and body positivity and lack of shame, whole and intact for everyone to enjoy going forward. I, I was like, that's a, that's a beautiful little jewel of an experience and I wanna keep that going.

And so what's two theme camps and volunteering and some art and five [00:44:00] perimeter? Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's cool. And then that was 2019. We had a five ton heno with two theme camps in it and a lot of hard yakka. And then after 2019, we had an entire pandemic. I'm like, oh, you know what? Like if volunteering is enough, art isn't enough.

If two thin cancer is enough, let's run our own burn. Let's see if that's enough.

Stevan: Yeah. So the ignition, or the spark was, was, uh, at the campsite there at Kariong at your wedding. Um, let's, let's talk more about that part of, of, of the, of the whole formation of the degree, yeah.

Caer: The history of third degree.

Right. Um, well, do we wanna get Tyne's burn origin story in before we go into the history of third?

Stevan: Yes, please.

Tyne: Well, my one's, my, I, I'm actually a baby. In, in the burning community compared to most 'cause uh, I, I was originally a raver and then I went to do ding and then I was at a subsonic in [00:45:00] 2018. I actually ended up camping with a bunch of burners, uh, just by chance.

'cause I was, uh, ended up being crew to help out with Subsonic that year. And uh, I had, uh, a couple people say to me, you are a burner. You need to come to a burn. And it'd been something in the back of my mind I'd seen for years going. I'd really like to do that, but I'm too terrified. The same as Ruth, like I'm too terrified to do this.

I'm not prepared enough. I don't think I could do this. I'm not capable. No, no. Not something I could do. And um, but they said, ah, make a commitment to come to 2019. I'm like, okay, sure, I'll do that. Went to 2019. I actually did, I think it was like four traffic control shifts as well. So it was my first burn and I was already doing like double shifts.

But, uh, I actually ended up fracturing my heel while I was on my shift, on my final shift, I think it was for, um, uh, traffic control. So I spent the rest of the burn hobbling around with a fractured heel. But, uh, yeah, after that I kind of re I did the online burn and [00:46:00] started to go. Yeah, I think this definitely is my community where I need to do more and, 'cause I did the online burn, I learnt of third degree and, uh, Dale and Caer put out a call for somebody to help with social media and I went, oh yeah, I guess I can help with that.

Next thing you know, I'm in the crew chat and it's like, it just sort of snowball, snowballed from there.

Caer: There's no slippery slope than volunteering for one thing.

Ruth: That's true. Very true. Very true. Yes.

Tyne: And, and, and, and being a capable human being. As soon as you're a capable human being, then it's just gonna snowball.

Ruth: See, see, that was your mistake, right? There was, you showed us all very early on just how very, very competent you are. And then it was like, we are so gonna use this for as much as we can. And you kept saying yes. And I'm thrilled that you've got boundaries now, though. This is really, really cool.

Tyne: Yeah, I, I, I need to, I need to make sure that I actually, I, I, I wanna make sure that I can continue to give to the community and the only way I can do that.

Is making sure that my cup is full.

Ruth: Yeah. Yeah.

Tyne: And unfortunately, I've [00:47:00] expended a little bit too much over the last several years. Yep. Uh, so it's, I have to pull back a little bit to make sure that I can continue to help the community grow.

Ruth: That that's the thing. And, and when Caer was telling her story, I was thinking, yes.

The, this is the, the classic story that you hear over and over again, right? Is, is so someone comes into the community, they start with this thing, and then they get to the point where they can do that thing and they can cope with it quite well. And then they say, okay, what else can I do? And then they do that thing, and then they get to the point where they can cope with that both things quite well.

And then they say, okay, what else can I do? And then fast forward three or four years and the person is laying prostrate on the ground, prorate burnout. And then it's like, can someone else please do the thing?

Dale: And that is a really, really big thing, is burnout in the, in, in the inverted community, you know, and how you, and how you stopped it from happening.

I mean, we've talked about this at Bonz a number of [00:48:00] times. No one's really come up with a good answer, but you know, it's something we really have to talk about at the next bonza, which I'm looking forward to and really like looking at how we can resolve that. No.

Ruth: Okay. So, so there's a phrase that I really wanna get popular, um, which is, immediacy is all very well and good, but you have to be thinking about your succession plan.

This is the one I've been using a lot lately. It's like you have to be thinking about who is gonna do this after you, and you have to be training them before you are burned out. Um, yes. Something for people to think about.

Caer: Well, burnout. Burnout in any organization, especially volunteer organizations in the creative, in the creative space, is a perennial problem.

It's a multifaceted issue. And I think us at third degree, we've really been working very hard on providing enough support and enough respect for people's boundaries and enough acceptance on consent. And no is a [00:49:00] complete sentence. And if you can't that's okay. That's okay. But if you can please do.

Stevan: Okay.

Let's segue into that. The, uh, with burnout, let's segue into the whole three year rotation kind of, uh, system that you guys have.

Caer: Okay. Well, I can kick off 'cause it was kind of my idea, kind of Dale's idea. We were thinking about like, well we've, we've all seen the person who's been in that role 10 years, and you can see how frustrated they are with the constant things that are happening to them.

They have to do so much work all of the time, but they're just, they're just hanging on to the grim and bitter end and then they burn out and you lose them completely from the community. And it's such, such a shame because they're, they've been there so long and there's so much knowledge and culture that is lost with them when they leave the community.

So we thought, well, how do we stop that from happening? And we're thinking, well, the easiest way is to make the three year rule. [00:50:00] And so we're like, okay, so one year to learn, one year to do one year to hand over is kind of the, the rough, rough structure of it. So the goal is you do your three years, you take a year off, and then if you wanna do more, you can come back.

How this is gonna work in practice is. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we might have to do a little bit of musical chairs this year and see about, um, finding some more people again to distribute more hats. Um, but the goal is basically you do three years. Let's say I'm in my third year as head chairperson of Wilderness Productions Incorporated Association.

Uh, I can take a year off. However, if there's not enough people to sustain the Incorporated association like minimum staffing requirements, then I can do something else. So, for example, this year it looks like I might be doing treasurer, let's say, for the sake of argument. And then the, during that year of treasurer, let's see if I can find more people to take over so I can have my year off.

And we can [00:51:00] make sure that the people who are contributing so much every day during the year can have their fun and their time off and they can, they can rest and enjoy their time. 'cause we really don't want people who feel stuck or obligated to continue. Uh, just because like we, we really want people to maintain the joy and the fun.

It's hard work. It's a lot of hard work, long hours, so many bloody meetings about the gate. Opening times. My God, it's a six week saga the first year. And so making sure that it's, it stays fun like that. We, we stay friends. We have a good time. Even though it's hard work, we're all in it together.

Ruth: Yeah. The three year thing we did also to some extent inherit from, um, Rangers at BlackRock.

'cause they have the same thing. You can't be ranger lead for more than three consecutive years. Um, and there's two reasons for it. One is to stop burnout. Uh, and the other is to stop empire building because we don't want [00:52:00] people, um, coming in and setting themselves up as the only solution to a problem. Um,

Caer: oh, there are no kings.

Yeah. There are no kings.

Ruth: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Caer: Or queens.

Ruth: Well, I mean, there are queens, but, well, I'm, I'm Queen Knight.

Stevan: Are there any gods though?

Caer: Olympus

Ruth: secret masters? Who knows? Who knows? Um, but, um,

Dale: no, gods keeping at this stage. No gods,

Ruth: no gods. Um, but also the, the thing about keeping it fun, I, I think that's really important. So the first couple of years that I went to Burns and, you know, so my first year I went, I didn't volunteer for anything. Um, I helped out in various different things, sort of just spontaneously, but I didn't have any formal volunteering role.

Uh, started volunteering with rangers at, at my second burn, and then, you know, progressed becoming more and more of a, I don't know, essential ranger person until I started doing ranger leads. And at some point. The dreams that I was having [00:53:00] about burns shifted. So at first I would have dreams about being at a burn, and it would be this wonderful, free, happy experience where I'm joyful and there's a sense of connection with all of the people around me.

And it's just a lovely, lovely time. And then somewhere along the line, those dreams started to morph into becoming anxiety dreams, um, where I have to take care of this thing, or I have to make sure I'm at this place at this time. And, oh no, I've missed my, my schedule or whatever. They, they, they started becoming not happy dreams.

Um, and that was when I realized that something inside of my brain had shifted and I had to do something about that to be able to continue going to these events. And I think a lot of us have had that same experience

Stevan: now from, from an artistic perspective. Now, three years may not be enough, uh, too short to like develop something that is grand or great scientific perspective.

It's probably too long because science moves so quick, right? So, um, it's, it's, uh, it's kind [00:54:00] of a juggle there. Um, three years, four years, five years. What's, what's the, what's the ideal number? Who knows? Uh, let's talk about the formation and the organization structure. Uh, on the board, you have seven members, is that correct?

Caer: Seven-ish. Um, so. The way it works is Wilderness Productions has like a membership, which is, you know, people past, present, and future. Um, you know, we're not a cult, you can leave it anytime. And so from that pool of members, um, each year we vote in the third degree organizing committee, uh, which is basically the people who have decided to go and do the event this year.

And of the people who decide to do that event this year, you sign up for Discord and a lot of meetings. And so, you know, the, the usual Incorporated Association type roles.

Stevan: So the, the primary for memory, sorry, communication tool was is, is Discord. What do you, what else do you guys use? Slack,

Dale: we use Discord.

We use, uh, we also use, [00:55:00] um, we use Use Zoom and Facebook. Yep. We also use and Google. Google, like Google Calendar and uh, Google Share drives.

Caer: So for asynchronous stuff, we have like, you know, the Google Drive, which is all our document repo. We also have the website, which now we are looking to uplift this year to be a bit more like, uh, volunteer friendly.

We're looking to integrate some more features in there to help, you know, to give out all of the role guides and the checklists and maybe even the roster. We'll have to see how the technology evolves on the website. Um, we're closely partnered with Undiscovered, which is our ticketing system slash volunteer register slash I think the developer is looking to do kind of a, a rostering module that they're working on.

Uh, they applied for a grant, uh, for, from the government for like innovation in kind of not-for-profit and volunteer management space. So they're looking hopefully to launch some form of volunteer register and rostering solution. Um, [00:56:00] hopefully in time for our burn in September, which will be excellent and we will be probably the Guinea pigs yet again for yet another feature of discover's very excellent system.

The whole integrated thing. We, we do appear to be the focus of a lot of testing, mainly because we're less than 500, uh, in total. So it's a very, very good size for testing a system enough, but not risking the event too much if something goes awry.

Stevan: And when did you get the Burning Man regional tick?

Dale: Uh, we got that in 2024, I believe.

24, correct. Yeah, 24 is my memory. Yeah.

Caer: Yeah. I can scroll back through my camera log because I took a photo of all of us, uh, pressing the Yes. On the, on the sign document.

Tyne: It was actually at bonZa

Dale: Yes.

Tyne: In 23.

Yeah. That we, we finally submitted all the paperwork to, to get officially recognized.

Caer: That's right. I've forgotten that.

Good catch Tyne.

Dale: So yes, [00:57:00] that's, um, that's very important to us to be regionally recognized. Um, some, some burns. Don't think it's, uh, is, it's so important to, to us at third degree, um, productions. We think it's quite important to be regionally recognized and, uh, we will apply for that again this year. We do have to do an afterburn report and, um, have our financials up, which we do on our wilderness productions so people can go there and they can have a look at the financials for last year.

Caer: Yep. As per our adherence to transparency and ethics. Yes. Like we do make everything available as soon as we can get it all finalized.

Stevan: You don't need a desert.

Caer: No, a paddock will do.

Dale: I mean, if had his term, he'd wanna go to Cockburn.

Tyne: Yes.

Dale: Coburn.

Stevan: Okay. Yeah. The, the, the, the, the structure. And how do you guys, uh, operate?

What can you tell us about it?

Ruth: Well, the first year was all just pretty ad [00:58:00] hoc. Um, we didn't really have a structure at all. I remember at some point when we were getting ready for the second year, um, Caer saying to me, Hey, Ruth, do you wanna be part of our not a board? And I said. Sure, that sounds like something I could manage.

And, and, and I, I, I think you tricked me into that one Caer, as, as I can tell it is in fact a board.

Caer: Well, at the time it wasn't a board because we weren't official, so technically, technically board.

Ruth: So then, then once, so once the board became an entity, and then, um, because of all the shenanigan RY that had happened around seed and, um, uh, the, the, the enormous amount of upset that that caused in the community at large, um, we were very determined to never take the risk of creating anything like that ever again.[00:59:00]

Um, so we were really careful to make sure that we were set up as a not-for-profit right from the get go. We had a really, a pretty horizontal structure. Um, it's not, you know, it's not sort of like there's the board saying to people, you must do this thing, and, and then people have to just comply or GTFO.

Yeah. It, it's collaborative. It's very, it's, it's a very flat structure. I think.

Caer: I'd say like the primary decision making model is consensus and precedent. So again, I, I'm an IT consultant, a business process improvement consultant. So I love building processes that pass the bus test, which is, say if you go outside and get hit by a bus, it will still work.

So things like, uh, voting. So if we want to hold a meeting, it has to have sufficient amount of people in it so that enough voices are heard when decisions are made. Uh, when we make a decision once and we all feel like it was a reasonable decision to make, uh, we're gonna put it in the decision register so we don't have to keep voting on that same issue [01:00:00] to make it more efficient for next year.

We could just be like, Hey, gate opens on this time because it's opened on this time, the past two years, we felt like it worked better this way. Everyone cool with that? Cool. Like, uh, so things like that that are important but mundane, um, it's just like, we'll just look at the last time we made the decision.

Did that work out great? It did Good. Let's just do that again. But as, as far as hierarchy goes, um, the board is pretty flat. Like we all vote on all the stuffs. Um, we all have areas of interest that we focus on. So for example, I focus on, uh, risk management and insurance. Um, so I kind of handle that and.

Any questions that come under that umbrella kind of come into my area of operations, so to speak, or just like, it's like, oh, hey, care, they wanna do gas art. I'm like, oh, do they, let's talk to the firing squad lead and see how he feels or they feel about that [01:01:00] because I can tell you right now, the insurance is not gonna cover it.

So,

Ruth: or, or rollerskating in the hall. Someone wants to roller skate in the hall care. Is that okay?

Caer: How many breakables are in their immediate radius? How much art is in there? I feel like we should talk to the art leads about this. So things like that is kind of the, the people on the board decide kind of what they wanna focus on and then all the questions regarding that kind of, they get kind of delegated to them to kind of chase up or pursue or like inform or go do research on.

Uh, we are very lucky that we actually have the best legal beagle, uh, on our team for all the super complex legality type stuff. And

Ruth: we love you, Tom. Thank you Tom. We love you Tom.

Caer: Best legal beagle. And so he makes my life significantly easier by saying what's, I'm like, Hey Tom, what's the law on gas art?

And he's like, he will answer those questions and we'd be like, okay, cool. Then I'll make the case to insurer and then we'll see [01:02:00] about getting that happening. Um, other than that. It's kind of a, a flow down effect where, because we've been running a few years now, we have kind of our way of doing things and we say to any new lead that comes in to be like, Hey, this is how it was done previously.

Do you have a better way? Or would you like to just do it that way? And so it's more of a collaborative approach to team management and team leadership. Then like, here's the manual. You don't deviate from the manual. We don't want any questions. We much prefer a collaborative approach because we want people to feel ownership and joy.

Tyne: I think we've also been really good at supporting each other in seeing where holes are and then fixing them up. I, I know one of my good particular skills is, oh, we don't have any documentation on that. I'm just going to quickly throw a whole bunch of documentation together about how to do that, who to do that, et cetera, et cetera.

And it's, it's also a case of Oh, okay. Presetting up. Like for example, I've already [01:03:00] set up all of our folders for next year or this year I should say. So, uh, straight after the, the, the burn last year, I already went in, created our 2026 folders, created all of our, uh, framework for this year. So it's all ready to go just to reduce the amount of mental load that we need to have leading up to the burn as well.

So trying to front load as much work as we possibly can.

Caer: And speaking front loaded. We voted on our theme last year.

Dale: Yeah.

Tyne: I wonder, I wonder who thought of maybe doing a voting system with a voting box?

Ruth: Who was that?

Tyne: I wonder, I wonder who, yeah.

Ruth: For, for a small burn, we are very, very over engineered on the back end, but, um, it does make life easier

Dale: this year for the vote for next year is when people arrive. We should get them to do the votes, the vote as they arrive and put in the box.

At the gate, at the activity.

Tyne: I, I think the, the, the, the main [01:04:00] thing I, I, I, I've pitched, uh, already is I think we need to put a poll out for people to, to put out their list of which ones they would like for the next year.

Dale: Oh.

Tyne: And then we take the top five out of those and then that gets voted on the paddock. Yeah. So it's sort of like we get people to get their input next year. Like this year was kind of like a, a throw together on, um, I kind of went through and went, okay, what are some really punny things that we can do off the number five, because it's our fifth year.

'cause it's the fifth year. And so I threw together a whole bunch of them, put them out to the board. The board then selected a, a bunch of them that we could then put to the paddock for the paddock to then vote for. And uh, then once I got back from the paddock, I undid the, uh, voting box and it kind of exploded a little bit 'cause it was that shoved with like, uh, cardboard in there.

Uh, but it did, uh, overwhelmingly show that it was, uh, the fifth element, um,

Caer: which is a banger of a theme. I'm so happy. I was root for it. I really was. [01:05:00]

Tyne: Yeah. Um, and of course we had those cheeky votes that were put in as well. Uh, so there was a few like, uh, sly comments that people had written their own little theme and stuff, which I thought were quite a, quite amusing.

Um, but, uh, you know, burners are gonna be burners. So I'm glad, I'm glad we've got the theme to share naming things.

Stevan: Um, let's talk about naming. So. When, when I go on, on online to do some research about third degree, the thing that comes up most is a medical image. What is the third degree? What's, what's the name behind that?

Tyne: Um, third degree burn.

Caer: So we like puns. Okay.

Stevan: I was looking more like, more for happy anyway, you know, like, no,

Caer: it's like, again, I can tell you, like, I can tell you the origin story of like the third degree burners, like as a name. Okay. Um, so we were all in a chat group, just like talking crap as we do, and we're like, oh, this, this one off. What are we [01:06:00] gonna call it? I'm like, uh, I'm too busy organizing the thing.

Someone gimme a name and I'll put it on the promo. And so all the theme camp leads were talking back and forth and it's like, oh, what are we gonna call that? And I think it was, uh, red Earth, Ben from the Red Brewery, I should say Ben from the brewery. He's like, oh, you know, we should do, we should do a pun.

We should do like, like, you know, it's a burn, but it's like, it's like the third degree burn. And I'm like, amazing.

Ruth: Yeah. As soon as he said that, like just everybody just went, oh my God. Yes.

But,

Caer: but also that's what we don't want.

Ruth: Yeah. And, and also because the phrase, the third degree has those, that, those double meanings.

So I mean, yes, there's the third degree burn, but then there's also giving someone the third degree, like, you know, the, the, the interrogation kind of aspect of the, the phrase as well.

Caer: Yeah. My,

my original kind of proposal was like, maybe the nth degree because we're going to the nth degree to make a burn happen.

Ruth: And then we got the, this, this sort of, um, thing about using numbers as [01:07:00] as themes, um, after we did the third, third degree. And it just became progressively more confusing. You know, the second third degree, the third third degree, the fourth, third degree. Um, and so the third, third degree we used cubed as as the, um, as as the, the theme for the year.

And then after that it just sort of, we, we just kept on getting numbers coming up as, as the themes. So, so this year we were like, okay, well it, it's gonna be something to do with the number five, so let's just go with that again.

Stevan: Yeah, there's no, there's no like secular or masonry kind of connections or anything there.

No, not at all. No, no, no.

Ruth: Not at all. I didn't even know that it was a Mason's term until, what, an hour ago.

Stevan: It's interesting that the site, the camp site has a little chapel there as well, so it's, it's inviting any, any religious, uh, beliefs or, or, or gatherings allowed. Interesting. Let's talk about the, the site itself.

Um, it's an amazing site. How did you guys find it? [01:08:00] Um, let's talk about some of the features as well and, you know, with, with all great burns, you gotta, you gotta host it next door shooting Gallup Gallery, right? Like Burning Man, like originally did. So that's one thing I noticed coming in, in the gate.

Caer: Oh yeah, look, that wasn't intentional.

Um, so tell you, tell you how we found it. So, um, Dale and I have been together for quite a while and was like, let's, let's do a marry. Um, and then an entire pandemic happened. I'm like, Hmm, well I still don't wanna move my date 'cause I really liked the date. Um, so we got married in between the Omicron and Delta Wave of COVID.

And if you were in New South Wales at the time. With the isolation legislation, it ballooned from two meters to four meters to two meters to four meters. So that means one person per two square meters, or one person per four square meters. Now the problem with that changing every other weekend is that our guest list was going from a hundred percent to 50% to a hundred percent to 50% if we tried to get an [01:09:00] indoor venue.

So we're like, let's go to a field and have a, have a wedding in a field. Um, we were originally gonna use a friend's property that fell through, unfortunately, three weeks to go to the ceremony. So we had to find a venue in three weeks for a wedding, just casually in the middle of a pandemic. It was fun, not stressed at all.

So we, we rang around, we drove around, we looked around, we were well over quoted half a dozen times. And so I'm like, let's just go to a campground, because Dale and I have been doing events management for more than 30 years, combined. We can make it happen on a patch of grass. I'm sure. I'm sure the carry on Scout camp came up and so they had a free weekend.

I'm like, I'll take it. They're like, oh, you should come and take a look at it first. I'm like, okay, sure, but I'll still take it. And we walked.

Stevan: Were you guys aware that it, it's, it's always been, it's also been used by other burners?

Dale: Uh, no. It hasn't been used by any other burners.

Caer: No.

Stevan: I, I I thought there was a trash manion, a little fundraiser there or something.

Must have been a different site. Must have been,

Dale: no. [01:10:00]

Caer: We got married in 2020. Um, so as far as we were aware, no one had used it. No burners had used it before, before we'd found it. Um, but yeah, it's fine. It's a commercial venue, like people can use it. It's okay.

Ruth: Yeah. I, I think it has been used by other burners since.

Yeah. Um, because I remember once hearing the, um, the caretaker, he was on the phone with someone at the end of a third degree. Mm-hmm. And, uh, he was saying, okay. Yep, yep. Okay. So you, oh, you're a burner. Okay. Right.

Caer: Feel cool. You can sit with us.

Stevan: We've passed on the message, we've converted people.

Caer: Uh, yeah, so we got married there.

It was beautiful, beautiful site, and very convenient. Like, you know, not too long of a drive from Sydney. Like really good facilities, like running water showers, hot showers, no less.

Dale: Yeah. So I mean, the site actually leads itself into really quite easy this, uh, where there's the satellite camping areas, which is great for people who wanna do the walking camping, which some, some birds are not used to.

They're used to just [01:11:00] pulling up their car, parking and then camping outta their car. So that's, that is one, one

Caer: unique

Dale: challenge. One unique challenge. But we also then now have the backwards site, which can hold 120 people up there where people wanna do car camping, which is great. And then we have the RV slash caravan section as well.

Uh, the site is great because it has, um, it has a full bunkhouse as well, so we can offer the bunkhouse to people who, um, are disabled or who are maybe perhaps pregnant or,

Caer: or coming from overseas and have no gear.

Dale: Yeah. Or like people coming from state burns or overseas, they have no gear. They can come in, they can rock up.

We set up a little camp kitchen for them. Then they have access to the barbecues and gas stoves. They can basically do their cooking and their cleaning and whatnot straight there. So that's really simple. There's portable water on site, so there's taps around the site and also in the backwards as well.

There's, and then we have a ports and hot, hot and cold showers for people to use. And then a beautiful creek, which is magnificent, very cold, but magnificent and fresh. And then the [01:12:00] beautiful sunsets, which is just amazing over the, um,

Caer: the edge of the waterfall

Dale: over the, um, it's the, um, the, the National Park is called.

Tyne Can you, uh, uh,

Tyne: yes, I should know this 'cause I'm a local

Dale: B something BB

Tyne: uh, Barra National. I, um, Brisbane.

Dale: Brisbane is National Park.

Tyne: Yep. Yes. That's one.

Dale: Yes. So yes,

Caer: it's very pretty.

Dale: Very pretty. Yeah.

Tyne: I, I might, I also add that the site is very much alive with animal life. So unlike some other burns we have to make sure that we keep our food, like our food goods, our rubbish and all of that sort of stuff really tack, like tacked in nice and tight because, um, we have, uh, lace monitors, we have cockatoos, we have bush turkeys, we have the whole gambit of everything.

And in fact, just this past year, I went out to the bathroom late at night after I'd been hearing a bunch of rustling and stuff going on out in one of the tents outside from us, [01:13:00] went to the bathroom and as I came back, my torch comes around the corner and there's a possum, like full on frozen, staring at me with a bag of bread right in front of it.

I'm like, ah, okay buddy. Yeah. I kind of shooed him off, grabbed the bag of, uh, of, uh, bread and then put that into the tent of the people that had kind of left it out. So, um, it, it's, uh, I've even seen owls and, and a kidners and, and all of that sort of stuff on site as well. So it, it is, uh, quite an interesting site for that sort of reason as well.

Ruth: Yep, yep. Um, I've had to chase a la monitor out of someone's tent in the past, and it tried to get out through their window. So they've now got these great big gashes in the, um, mesh that was over the window before

Tyne: I did, I did have to remove a snake from site as well.

Ruth: I remember that. Yes.

Caer: There's only one Common death adder

Tyne: was like, we just gotta move it out of the campsite.

There's a, there, there's a small child here that thinks that, uh, no ropes are friends, [01:14:00] so we just needed to remove the, the no rope and, uh, get it out into the, uh, outer bounds area. So I kind of did that. I think that was the fir uh, second year. Second year

Caer: you did, you did the full scale equivalent of like the cup and paper over a spider with like a clear plastic container over the snake.

Ruth: Yeah. And, and again, you see, you keep on demonstrating competence,

Tyne: but I, well, I, I had, I had help with the, with capturing it and then, uh, so I, I, I, it wasn't just a solo person mission that one though. So

Ruth: I do remember though when it happened

Stevan: and the site is made in use for a jamboree scouts gathering.

Tyne: Yes, yes it is.

Um, they, they have a lot of events going on there. Uh, in fact, uh, when I've done site walks, um, when nobody else can make it, just to get some photos of what the site's looking like for the board and stuff like that, I've found things like arrows because they also have like, uh, special LARPing events that happen there now and then where people fire the, the fake arrows [01:15:00] at each other and do that sort of stuff.

Caer: Tips. Yeah.

Tyne: Yeah, yeah. So you'll find those sort of things around the place. Um, I know that they have all sorts of events and stuff going on there, but there's a lot of family camping and, and just fun events for people.

Dale: Yeah. There's also like some church groups are coming through and fathers and son group as well.

Um, they have quite a few weddings, not a, not not probably two or three weddings each year. They have there as well. It's, um, it's a beautiful site to get married on because it has the full commercial kitchen and mess hall and then, and then a fireplace as well. Plus your main, your main fire pit outside.

So for having an event there, it is a really easy, easy space to utilize from a infrastructure perspective

Stevan: and perfect for a little burn, little emerging regional burn.

Ruth: Oh, I was gonna say another one of the things that we have always wanted to work towards is minimizing, um, environmental impact of our burn.

And it being so close to the city does help with that because it means people don't have to travel [01:16:00] long distances and that, that minimizes the, um, uh, use of fuel.

Stevan: Yeah. It, it is very, very accessible. You can catch a train and, um, someone can give you a lift from the train station. It's not too far away.

There's also talk about, which didn't eventuate was probably, wasn't much demand was, was maybe a, a shuttle bus, a school bus shuttle. Like a

Tyne: Yes.

Caer: Yeah. Burner bus. So we did take some poles and we basically said, Hey, if you wanna do this, like we put out a little EOI, uh, only two people were interested, which was not gonna cover the bus.

So we said, uh, respectfully, it will not run this year due to lack of interest. And then we redirected those two people to a ride share.

Tyne: But I think ideally it would be something that we'd really like to do is, is offer a ride share from Sydney into the, the actual burn itself and basically take everybody to the site and back from the site, which also reduces the amount of cars that we have on, on the, on the present site, which makes me a lot happier as well, because less cars means, uh, less [01:17:00] issues.

If there's any issues and we need to evacuate, we can get people out a little bit faster.

Caer: Yeah. The, the two major constraints we have there are parking and grass for things because that site is more than 80% bush, so you can't park on a tree.

Stevan: Okay. Shall we. Take a quick break and we'll be right back after these short burner messages.

Phil: Hi, this is Phil from Sydney. Just a reminder, do something each day that makes your mother ashamed of you.

Guy: Good morning. This is Sergeant Pepper from Planet Earth. My message to all burners is live your best life 'cause no one else is going to do it for you.

Deepon: My name is Deepon, uh, ranger named Dip Deep. Um, we are from Wollongong and we've made this very important discovery that we should, we feel the responsibility to share with the world. That is the seven taste bud. The [01:18:00] taste bud. That does not lie on your tongue. The taste bud that is in your mind. And this taste bud is only satiated When you talk about food.

You can talk about while eating it, you can talk about when not eating it. You can talk about in the toilet and that taste bud. It gets satiated. It's the seven taste bud. We haven't found a name yet, so if you have a name, get in touch. You can find us in campsite four or three. Look for the look for the heart.

And come and come and name this new taste. Bud.

I think we found a theme.

Pheonix: I am Pheonix. I'm from uh, Queensland. And um, my message for the burner community is, uh, keep the love, the love, and. Let's just build this community into the beautiful specimen that it is and the beautiful evolving world that we create.

It's so precious, and thank you for every single one of you for being part of it. And love you.[01:19:00]

Tom: Hey, I'm Tom. I'm down from Brisbane and it's fantastic to meet all of you people down here and to see what you've done with the place. Fantastic site, fantastic atmosphere. Um, yeah, beautiful, beautiful week out on the paddock and hope to see you again next year.

Sal: Hi, this is Sal, uh, co-lead of Miss Peaches, uh, from, uh, coming to you live from the third degree on the Central coast of New South Wales.

And Miss Peaches loves to get silly and wild and find excuses to play and do ridiculous things, um, which we all need more of in our life because we all take each other way too seriously out in the default world. Um, so we would love to see you and come down and get silly with us at Miss Peaches. Love you.

Phil: Hi, this is Phil from Sydney. I'm gonna need a week's holiday to get over this one.[01:20:00]

Stevan: Okay. Welcome back. Let's get into this year's burn the degree. First, I wanna highlight some of the things that, uh, so to get to know the burn a bit better, you've gotta read the Survival Guide, right? So I wanna highlight some of the things that you guys had in there. First thing was this is not a commercial festival.

Definitely not. So that's nice to see. The 10 principles was covered plus, plus one, which is consent, which is the core the SASS rangers was highlighted and explained about, and the EEMO SASS as well. Uh, no pets or drones or fire works, uh, allowed no burn barrels. Watch out for those Bush Turkey. Great.

Survival guide. Um, anything you guys wanna mention there? The EEMO can you explain the, the SASS EEMO a little bit more? You mentioned it earlier.

Caer: Yeah, sure thing. So after the first year when I just named everything, because no one else is doing it, um, I was like, let's just lean into the puns, like, we'll just, we'll just make everything puns.

Um, so SASS is the site and Safety squad, also [01:21:00] the sober adult supervisor squad emos, the EEMO, which is the emotional emergency and medical ops. So it's basically, uh, the sanctuary equivalent and first aid people. So they're kind of a little split off of the SASS squad, which is basically the site and safety squad.

So again, it's kind of the organizational structure of that is very flat, so everyone's kind of all in it together. You're all in SASS, uh, you're in SASS EEMO or you're like a, a first aider or, um. You're helping out fighting. So like it's a very collaborative approach to making an event safe.

Ruth: Yeah, so basically the, the concept is that SASS are the eyes and ears, um, of the organization throughout the entire event.

Um, and we are out there walking around seeing if anyone is not healthy and happy. 'cause that's our job is to keep people healthy and happy. And sometimes you get people [01:22:00] who need a little bit more intensive one-on-one care than SASS is actually able to provide. And that's what EEMO exists for. So they've got their own little space.

It's kept at a fairly regular temperature. It's not too bright, it's not too loud. It's a, it's a comfortable space where people can go and just chill out if that's what they need to do, and there will be someone there who can talk them through whatever it is that they're experiencing. So if they've just been partying a bit too hard for a bit too long, and they just need to collapse for a while.

There's a space for 'em to do that. Sometimes people get overwhelmed by the space and they fail to cope with the, the, the changes, um, in the culture that they're experiencing. And again, the emos are there to, to help support them through that, because SASS don't have specific psychological training to support people through those sorts of experiences SASS people do.

[01:23:00] And also, uh, sorry, EEMO people do. Um, and also SASS actually can't spend that large an amount of time with a singular person. So yeah, it's a, it's a beautiful collaborative thing. Um, the, the very first burn that I went to, um, before I knew anything about anything, and, and the reason I became a ranger was because I encountered a girl who was having a psychological breakdown and I didn't know what to do.

Um, and somebody came in wearing the bright orange shirt, and I'd been told, these are the people who were there to help. So this guy poked his head in and said, is everyone all right? And I said, no, because this, this woman who was having this complete breakdown had just been dumbed on me. I didn't even know who she was.

I didn't know her name. And the Rangers were amazing. They, they came and they supported me, and they brought me water. And like, so here's me sort of like trying to take care of this girl, but these people are taking care of me. But emo didn't exist. There was no sanctuary. At that time there was only Rangers and First aid.[01:24:00]

So we ended up having to take her to first Aid. And then when I found out that sanctuary existed, it was like, this is fantastic, because that was a gap that was very, very obvious in that particular event. We needed someone who could take care of her, not in a, you know, wearing the blue gloves and the fluoro lights kind of way like the first aid people did, but just in a, a quiet, um, someone to sit with her and, and just support her through what she was experiencing.

Tyne: Can I say that I'm very happy that you like the survival guide 'cause that's kind of been my baby for the last four years, but I need to make a specific call out as well. Uh, miss, miss Hannah from over in New Zealand, who was actually working on their own burn over there called sna, snail It back then, they sent me their guide and I used bits and pieces of theirs for the first year, which helped me to then build up on onto that.

So, uh, thi this was actually a collaborative across [01:25:00] from one country to another as well, so other burns helping one another, which I'd, I'd love to make a call out for as well.

Stevan: It's interesting to read a survivor guide when you actually coming after either end after event and, and recognize, oh, these guys nailed what they, what they, you know, talked about.

It's happening, what, what the event is all about. So, yeah, it's interesting to read that and you guys nailed it. So the EEMO is similar to what? Is is around with the Green dot ranges, is that right?

Ruth: Yeah. Um, in, in other burns they're known as Green dot ranges as well. They, they've got lots of different names at different spaces, but yeah.

Um, EEMO Green Dot and Sanctuary, more or less the same kind of concept.

Stevan: Yeah. Cool. Let's talk about some of the theme camps at third degree this year. I just quickly run through them. We've got Miss Peaches Red Earth Brewery based in between wine Sub Lab boutique Giddy Up, Dino Den The Kids Camp Debon Air Manchin Eternal Flames costume remix Manner, electric Teepee, uh, burning Seed Postal Service, fun police.[01:26:00]

That was interesting. One back in the future, the dark woods Lord Venetian's clock. The minibar sens sensory dimension, arch of burner principles, the dreamboat,

Caer: you're into art now. Those are art pieces, so Oh,

we did also have quite,

Ruth: we did also have, that's quite a lot. We did also have that one renegade camp. Um, my clit came back again. This time properly is a renegade camp.

Caer: But you had to find it

Ruth: exactly

Stevan: right.

Tyne: I think we're very lucky. We've actually got a very diverse amount of theme camps that do come to third degree as, as well as art.

Like our art is very much across the board. I've been lucky enough to do my own installation the year beforehand. It's, it's actually quite kind of interesting to see the broad spectrum of what we have. It's not just all crazy out there artwork. There's some stuff that's really profound and moving, but also seeing that we have [01:27:00] theme camps that, that cater for just going and picking out a piece of clothing in case you're like, oh, I want something a little bit more funky.

And you can go in there and then take your, take a piece or leave a piece, whatever you'd like to do. And then your children's camps where you can go in and, and sort of do your beating and stuff like that with the kids all the way through to like your TSI, which is your over eighteens. So we do have like a broad spectrum of like a charcuterie board of theme camps.

I'd like to think, rather than it just being sort of like one style of theme camp where it's all just noise. We've kind of got this nice blend of noise meets art. Like Miss Peaches is a really good example of, uh, music and entertainment and improv and that sort of thing versus uh, your more sound camps and stuff like that where Electric Teepee was an example of.

Uh, of, of doing sound camp. So, um, yeah, I, I'm really happy that we got that broad spectrum this year.

Caer: I'd also like to call out the long and ongoing efforts of Dale and the [01:28:00] theme camp team to make sure that we have such an amazing offering and we're curating relationships interstate as well. Bring a wide variety of awesome things to see and do.

Stevan: What were some of your highlights?

Caer: Well, the debonair mantzion, of course.

Ruth: Oh yeah, champagne linger. Breakfast is always a highlight. Always. Um, uh, Erstwhile Manor ran the, um, Ask a drunk scientist, and that was a huge success. And, and we're definitely gonna be doing that one again. That was way more fun than I think anybody had anticipated.

It was gonna end up being, oh, okay. My, um, my clit, um, which I did stumble upon, uh, um, they were having pussy eating competitions and this was, this was marvelous. Um, yeah, so basically I, I encountered it by accident because I was walking down a path and someone in the opposite direction said, oh, I got a great photo [01:29:00] of you eating pussy.

And I'm like, what, what, what just happened? What did I just hear? So I asked, and they told me, you know, go down here and down that corner and, and then around that way. And, um, you'll see the pussy eating competitions and they had, um, red jelly with white cream on top of it, and it was a cup full and everybody got given a cup and you weren't allowed to tip the cup.

You had to just use your tongue to empty the cup. And whoever finished first was the winner. That was one of my highlights. I loved that one.

Dale: Yeah, I think for me, my highlight was, um, you know, after many years, me talking to Mind Sub, you know, getting Mind Sub to come to the third degree, um, they assess institution in Newcastle and um, for them they've always been such a huge, massive camp at, at Burning Seed.

And to try and get them to think about what they could do and what they could come as and offer. And when they did come, they did an amazing [01:30:00] job and they realized that they don't have to do a massive camp. They could do something that is small. And what they brought was fantastic. They did an amazing job decorating the hall.

They did an amazing job of sound and lighting and drinks and food. It was just phenomenal. It was just,

Tyne: they, they completely converted that hall into like a whole other dimension. It was amazing what they did.

Caer: It was unrecognizable, it was stunning.

Ruth: It was gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful, wasn't it? Yeah.

Caer: Like what a transformation.

We're honestly

suggesting that layout in future

years.

Tyne: Chef's Kiss, that's all like Chef's Kiss.

Caer: Oh, what was my highlight? Uh, temple Down, no incidents. That was my setting. The bar very low. No, it was, but it was my build and for me to. To be part of that and to facilitate that experience for so many people was really, was really, really special.

And [01:31:00] I, I did Emma duty as well until midnight. And so it was really great to have people come up and tell me their stories and hear them share their experience of Temple and the year. And it was really, it was really special, special for me. I also managed to finish my art piece because what's a little festival and a little volunteering and a little theme camp and a temple build and an art piece.

Um, no, I did, I did manage to finish my art piece. It was a sensory dimension and it worked exactly as I'd hoped. And it was a beautiful, beautiful interactive little LED art piece that I managed to drag about 20 or 30 people into, which then spread the word. Um, so that was also really, really great to see people enjoying, enjoying the art.

Stevan: There was a combination of. Art and science?

Caer: It was, yes. So the sensory dimension was a textile art piece, um, backed by rainbow LEDs that had a frequency tuned microphone as an input. [01:32:00] So a person would hit the frequency tuned tuning fork and hold it next to the microphone, and the lights would sparkle in response to the sound frequency.

So you got to interact with the art piece and not just stare at the pretty LEDs.

Stevan: And you get a sensational tingle down your spine as well.

Caer: Yeah, lots of people were, um, hitting the tuning fork and then licking it for the vibes. I guess.

You know, your mileage may vary. This is very much like, see the rainbow, touch the rainbow. Taste the rainbow. I guess.

Stevan: Let's get into some shenanigans and fuckery. Now I like how you guys, um, arranged it to the blood moon. So the highlight for me was the full moon. That was sensational. Did you guys get into that protest?

Fuck the moon protest at all?

Ruth: I've, I've been in a fuck the moon protest at a previous burn. I didn't need to do it this time.

Tyne: I unfortunately missed it. I was, I, I believe I was busy running around, uh, getting everything sorted for the effigy burn at that point. So I couldn't really, uh, [01:33:00] go running around with that.

But I thought it was amazing seeing all these people running around screaming fuck the moon, and getting quite, uh, passionate about their hatred for the moon. Uh, while there were other people that started, uh, chasing them saying, no, the sun rules, uh, like the, no, the, uh, the moon rules, the sun sucks, was another thing I I saw a few people doing as well, which I thought was

Caer: the moon rules, the sun drools or something as well.

Tyne: Yeah, yeah.

Caer: I saw it go past. Uh, I respect everyone's right to express their opinions,

Ruth: but it's that sort of spontaneous thing, you know, where where someone says, I'm gonna create this, and then someone else says, are you, well, if you are gonna do that, I'm gonna do this. And, and

Tyne: I, I think we upset a few people with our animal crossing.

To be honest, I loved the animal crossing.

Stevan: I did bring my animal wie, but I didn't get the memo for the animal crossing, so I missed out,

Tyne: uh, that, that I, I kind of had an idea of just getting a [01:34:00] sign and running around with animal crossing and then everyone in one, uh, animal, one onesies chasing around the sign essentially.

And we disrupt, disrupted quite a few theme camps by, uh, running through them while we're all in animal onesies. But everybody kind of took it as a good joke and, and had a good fun with it. So. I enjoyed that.

Dale: Yes, it was, uh, most delightful going around to think amps and walking through them with the, the 10 or so people we had as animal, different animals.

And it was, yeah,

Caer: there were about a dozen of you.

Dale: It was quite hilarious. It was quite fun.

Tyne: It, it actually started growing as people started seeing the, were animal onesie, onesies. Everyone else went and got animal onesies and then came and joined us. So it just kept growing, which was just brilliant.

Stevan: Tyne.

Do you have a burner name?

Tyne: I don't.

Caer: You do. It's Tynamo.

That's technically my rave name, but yes, uh, I don't, I haven't actually, I haven't been gifted one.

Stevan: There was a, a, a name, a burner naming workshop at Giddyup. I'm not quite sure whether some of those names stuck, but, uh, it was interesting.

Tyne: I, I, I did see that they had something like that and, um, [01:35:00] I, I, I didn't get to attend.

I, I was got pulled away to something else, unfortunately. And that's part of the problem of being at a burn. There's so many things that happen at one time and you're like, I wanna be at everything, but you can't. So you have to kind of let go of the FOMO and just roll with it and see where you can go and where you can end up.

And that's part of the reason why I love doing it, is because you never know what you're gonna get.

Ruth: I dunno if I should mention this, dunno if I should mention this, but technically Turtle is not actually my burner name. Everybody thinks it's because it's what everybody calls me, but it's actually my Ranger handle.

Um, I was given a burner name at, uh, burning Seed 2015. Um, and my burner name is actually happy. Um, yeah, someone said, Ruth, like, do, do, do people just call you happy because you're always walking around with a smile on your face. And I was like, no one has ever called me happy before, but I think someone just did and that makes me very happy.

And then that was,

Stevan: how about a happy turtle?

Ruth: Well, yes, I actually have my burner mug, um, [01:36:00] which was gifted to me by the most wonderful Arian. Um, has a picture of a turtle and happy above and turtle underneath.

Caer: Oh,

Ruth: but you can call me whatever you like. It's all good.

Dale: Sounds like we'll have, create a, sounds like we have to create, create a name for Tyne.

Ruth: Yeah. So

Tyne: I keep using Tynamo as my default though, so it works.

Stevan: That's cool. I wanna go back to the drunk scientists. It was amazing seeing the cross section of people like into science or their scientists or medical or whatever, philosophical background, stuff like that.

And in this community, it, it is interesting to see, to see that diversity, isn't it? Um. I'm not quite sure whether, uh, some of the science was entertaining or correct, but, um, I I, I loved it. And hope it carries on next year.

Ruth: Oh yeah. It's definitely gonna have come back. Definitely. It was way too much fun for it, for us to not do it again.

Stevan: They do that blazing Swan and it's a smash it there.

Ruth: Oh, okay. I didn't know [01:37:00] that. Okay, awesome. Yeah. Um, but yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, you, you see these people who are dressed up in, in, I don't know, rainbow sequin outfits or something, and then you start talking to them and you find out that actually this person is the head of cardiothoracic surgery at some hospital and, and, and that there's a, there's a little bit of a disjoint in your brain when that moment happens, but it happens all the time, all the time.

Burners are a really disparate group of people and it's great. That's wonderful.

Dale: Yeah, I think for, for me, for burning, one of the things I love is that half the time in the friends that I have had of the years, for years, I have no idea what they do. And it's not important in the burning community. It's like, Hey, do you wanna build some LEDs?

Or, Hey, do you wanna, do you wanna go out there and put some timber together or something? And that's what I love about it. I love the interaction with people and not about what you do in the default world is what are you doing here? And it's just, I think it's just [01:38:00] fantastic and, and I love it for that reason.

Ruth: Yeah.

Stevan: Uh, are most of these interactions like, um, it's, it's open source, like, you know, let's, let's work on it together. Not, it's not kind of like a proprietary kind of secret or anything, isn't it? It's like, let's do this thing together.

Tyne: Yep. I think since Journey joining the Burning community, I have broadened my skillset.

Like I've already got quite a lot of a skillset, but since being part of the Burner community, the amount of people who I can reach out to and go, Hey, I don't know how to do this, could you help me? And then they will not only go, yeah, sure, and they'll come and help me. They'll teach me and show me the way to actually do it safely, uh, and help put that skill into my tool belt.

And I think, uh, knowledge sharing is one of the key cornerstones of burning as well. 'cause if we are not sharing knowledge with one another, then we can't help skill each other up into roles to do things as well. But it's part of giving people power in the community is doing that sort of thing.

Ruth: Yeah. And it's a real meritocracy as well.

Um, people who are [01:39:00] good at a thing do the thing and become known for being good at doing the thing, and then they get put into more, um, I was gonna say more powerful roles, but more, uh, responsible roles. Um, and it, it's not often in society that you see the people who are good at the thing actually are the people who end up doing the thing.

I love it.

Stevan: Yeah. Successful, uh, succession planning is a key thing that you talked about earlier. There was an article that there was a, a, a, I think, piece that Peter Simpson Young wrote and, um, I, I'll attach it to the show notes of this podcast. He wrote that the, the title of the piece is The Recipe for the Perfect Burn, five Ingredients.

And I'll just quickly go through this and let me know what your thoughts are. 'cause he gave the degree a very glowing, uh, review of the event. He loved it. Everyone else did. The first one is, so the five ingredients are the, a diverse intergenerational community. Uh, to have a successful bird, you need also intentional cultural development.

Another important thing [01:40:00] is that art inspires play operational excellence through passionate volunteers and radical accessibility. So he's, he's, he's looked at these things and how third degree function it works. This is the, the incubator for, for a great burden. What are, what are you guys' thoughts about that

Ruth: far out?

That's nice because there's a bunch of stuff there that we had intentionally tried to create, but I wasn't, I mean, you can never be sure whether or not you're achieving what you're looking for. But yeah, that's the, you know, the accessibility stuff, the intergenerational stuff, these were, these were intentions of ours right from the get go.

So, yeah. That's really cool. Um, the,

Tyne: it was good listening to it though. When I, when I read the article from Peter, 'cause I actually spoke to him on the paddock beforehand when he was talking about potentially writing an article about it. He said, would we be mad about that? And I'm like, no, as long as you're not like sitting there saying, we're the most horrible thing in the world.

And if you, if you are going to say that, please come and talk to me first so I can see, [01:41:00] so we can start looking at how we can improve and do better. But as soon as I read that, I like, like Ruth just said, like there's a lot of things that we aimed to do and really wanted to do, but in aiming for those things, it's then caused a filter on effect to then cause other items to fall into place.

Which is, uh, pure magic in my opinion.

Ruth: We're also though, always working to make things better. So he said something about operational excellence. Um, and there was a part of me that went, eh, we didn't though. Um, but we, we have this, um, this thing at the end of every burn where we open up a chat channel called next year was better.

Um, and, uh, a lot of stuff around the operational end of things we wanna do better next year. So

Stevan: yeah.

Caer: So respect, learning stand.

Stevan: What, what, what it would you go?

Caer: I disagree that we don't have operational excellence because we do run an amazing event to an amazing standard with an amazing focus on consent and safety.

We do have operational excellence already, and while we [01:42:00] can improve it and we are always interested in improving it, what we do have is very good. And we work very, very hard.

Ruth: Sorry, I I, I totally didn't mean it as a criticism, um, but it was more, I, I don't know. I, I guess I, I do often see the, um, I don't know.

I'm a perfectionist and, and, and I see the things that went wrong and I'm like, okay, we, we need to make sure that doesn't happen again. And, and that's the whole next year is better concept. And yeah, I, I, I think we, we did, we ran an amazing burn. I, the, the only thing that. Wasn't great from my perspective was the communication in that operations area.

And we can do better and we will.

Dale: Yeah, absolutely. It's always about approving everything each year and making things better and tweaking it. And you know, how we've decided to open the operations side of the burn and have the set up a day earlier, which is, which has become so much easier, um, for the operations crew.

So by the time the theme camps arrive on site, [01:43:00] you know, a lot of the signage is up and a lot of the HQ is ready to go and stuff like that. So when people start arriving, that's ready in place, you know? Yeah. Which is, yeah.

Ruth: And, and even during this podcast, we've been talking about how we'll do the voting differently next year.

Dale: Yes.

Tyne: It's, I, I think the, the key here is everything, every time we do a burn, if you come out of that burn thinking everything was perfect. Then something's going on because there's always an opportunity to learn. There's always an opportunity to grow. There's a new technology that could come out. There's always something that's going to ever change along the, the escape of what we are dealing with in the broad scheme of things, like if you look at how things were even just 10 years ago when it comes to technology and how we could communicate with the community, that has completely changed in the last 10 years.

And it'll probably change again in the next five years. So it's always about looking at how you can improve and how you can change it. [01:44:00] And this is a big part of why it's important to continue to pull in new voices, new sets of eyes, so that that way it's not the same people looking at the same thing over and over again because that the only way we're going to get new innovation is by getting new sets of eyes on it so we can actually grow and change.

Um, I think this year a big part for, for me, from learnings from this year, I think, uh, it's the fact that we need to front load a little bit more. For our, uh, our event, making sure that we can do the things that we can do early on, early on, rather than it snowballing near the end. I think that's the key, key one.

Caer: Yeah. And I'm not saying we're perfect because that's not it, but I'm saying we do achieve a frankly, amazing level of operational excellence because we are incredibly passionate about our production quality and making everything fun and safe. Like there'll be no perfect safe space in the world. You step outside the house and a branch can fall on you.

But what we strive to do is to provide a supported [01:45:00] space where you can explore your edges and your boundaries with support if anything goes wrong. If you find the edges too sharp and you hurt yourself, you know, if you find you're not able to cope with the radical self-expression of an entire burn going full tilt at two o'clock in the morning, you know, we work very, very hard to make sure that when we are having fun, there is that focus on safety community and that, that civic responsibility that really underpins being able to have fun safely.

Ruth: Yeah, it, it's one of the things I absolutely really love actually about working with this group of people is that there is such a focus on doing things well. From the outset. I, I do remember earlier I was saying that we're for, for such a small burn, we're very over-engineered on the back end, and that's because we do, we really do wanna make everything be as good as it can possibly be.

And, and yeah, and, and you're right, you're right. We, we actually do, you're right, we do create actually something that's pretty extraordinary, especially given where we came from. [01:46:00]

Stevan: The pathway for the future. Um, the intergenerational community part of it is also important as well. How have you guys looked at that?

Caer: We include children, we include youths and all ages. We also include elders. We don't discriminate. We include differently abled people. We try to accommodate all points of view. We collaborate. And so we're not only saying a small narrow portion of the population can come, we say all are welcome.

Ruth: Yeah.

Burner's the next generation. Uh, we, we've gotta be getting the kids coming in. And a, a thing that happens a lot at Burns is, um, children will come with their parents up until they're about 10 or 11 years old, and then they drop off through the teenage years. We don't see them again until they're 18. And then sometimes they come back.

Um, and one of the things that we're really working to do is, is to fill in that gap. To have their be something that can, um, that can keep the people who are between 10 and 18 [01:47:00] entertained and feeling welcome and feeling supported. And, and I, I think we're doing pretty well in those states. We have a lot of people in that particular age demographic who do come.

Stevan: Yeah. The wholesomeness and the folks who part of it brings people in.

Ruth: Yeah.

Tyne: I think that's the thing though. It's, um. Because we're a little bit more of a gentler burn as well, so we don't have people having to bring in all the water. They're not having to travel all the long distance. It makes life a little bit easier with kids, particularly if you do have to suddenly go home because one of them's gotten really sick or you know, that those sort of things do happen.

Um, and I think. This burn is a really good opportunity for parents to bring their kids, to get them into the culture, to get them to understand. Like, I still remember my very, very first burn. I was standing at, uh, red Earth Brewery and, uh, a little kid of about three years old came rushing up to this woman who was wearing these really cool pearl necklace things around her neck and asked if he could touch 'em.

She's like, yeah, sure. As he's touching [01:48:00] them, he kind of grabbed a little bit too hard and it pulled the, the chain of, uh, necklace apart and then all the beads came flying off. And she, instead of getting mad or anything, she just goes, oh no, you made me mop. And the little kid just goes, oh, no, Moop. And then starts helping her to pick up all of the, all of the matter out of place and, and giving them back to her.

And I just, I, I love that sort of thing. And those are the moments that I think really help to embody and get these people and these young people into the community is getting them to understand the principles from an age.

Ruth: Yeah, I totally agree. Um, I remember one of my early burns, um, being down at Trash Mansion must have been about 9:00 PM and they had the speaker stacks and there's these two kids who are, I don't know, 13, 14 years old, dancing on the speaker stacks and it's like.

You don't see that anywhere else. A whole bunch of grownups on a dance floor dancing and [01:49:00] kids basically, you know, also having a ball. I I love that. I love the fact that, that we're not segregating the children. We're actually including them.

Stevan: Yeah. You bring up the point of, of being a small burn, which allows you to experiment more.

Um, you, you, you mentioned the, the bed, the BED consent pilot programs. You pilot a few things. You also got that emergency device that, that underland kind of used as well. So

Caer: yes, the pager.

Stevan: Yeah. So yeah, you guys are like little incubators, little, you know, test test pilots and stuff like that. That's great.

Tyne: Generally, generally you test in a smaller area than before you throw it into the big area anyway. So I like the idea of us being testers.

Dale: Yeah, absolutely. It's great to test things that are burn. I think it's fabulous. And the, uh, the range of pager came about 'cause we are quite a spread out burns. We wanted to make sure people could access, um, someone 24 7 'cause we don't have rangers on 24 7.

So that came back where we can have that in the backwards and people can, uh, contact the [01:50:00] ranger on duty. So there's one in the backwards and one in the carpark. And uh, people can press the uh, button and then whichever ranger is on sleeper duty. It'll be alert and then come find them.

Caer: Yeah. So I got the idea literally from the old school beepers and the beeper was literally not a phone, but it let you know that someone wanted to speak to you on the phone.

And so I thought that concept of getting a low energy, low effort, push a button for help concept, you know, kind of like the, the police box back in the day as well, distributed across the site because it takes about five or 10 minutes to get down. HQ to try to summon someone for help. And so that 10 minutes can be the difference between safety and disaster.

And so I thought, how can we cut down that time to getting help as quickly as possible to the remote areas of site.

Dale: Yeah. And thanks to Jeremy Funke, uh, big shout off to head 'cause he actually created the, uh, the system. Yeah. And it's still being tweaked. It's still, it's a work in progress, but it is, uh, something that Underland use this year as well and I [01:51:00] believe it worked, um, pretty well for them as well, which is fantastic for them to see how that system worked for them as well.

Caer: Yeah. So an open source onsite off-grid pager effectively that was put together with components in 3D printed case.

Tyne: It's basically your help point, like what you do on the train. If you go on the train and you see a button that goes, I ask for help. Press resistance. Press resistance. It's the same thing, only out on the paddock to call for help.

Stevan: I love old school technology.

Tyne: We don't need to always reinvent the wheel just to do something.

Stevan: So all these pilot programs, uh, are amazing. Quickly talk about the, the BED consent one.

Caer: Yep. So BED is the Bureau of Erotic Discourse, uh, from BlackRock City. And they are an American organization that worked on.

Making consent more accessible and also making consent accessible with the additional lens of power dynamics, because it is often an unacknowledged pressure around consent that if someone is running the [01:52:00] party, they have extra power over you because they can kick you outta the party. So the BED model helps to ameliorate all of that by making everyone accountable at every level.

Also, making transparency and third party representatives responsible for the reporting points.

Tyne: I'd also recommend that anyone who wants to, you can go on, look at the YouTube videos that they have available. Anyone within the community who's curious about it, because I've had multiple people that have done the training not to be a lead, not to be the main consent person, but just to get more knowledge have actually come to me and said that it has helped 'em greatly in understanding how to navigate different situations when it comes to consent.

So I, I highly recommend it to anybody who is curious about it or would like to know more. Um, definitely have a look at those videos. They're, they're, they're all done in short chunks, so you can watch one five minutes here and watch five minutes there. And, uh, before you know it, you'll be through the whole course

Caer: and it [01:53:00] all starts with a, Hey, how you going?

Like, as simple as that. You don't have to come in hot with an accusation. You can just be like, Hey, how's it going? And that, that's simple. Starting point of a framework is really like one of the, the most valuable things you can take away from that. You just see something, say something, Hey, how's it going?

Ruth: Huge shout out to Teresa, um, who has been the Yeah, yeah. Um, she, she's been the, the driving force behind making this happen and yeah, she's, she's been fantastic just in helping us to, um, integrate it into the, the, the framework of the burn.

Tyne: Yeah. She, she is honestly worth her weight in gold with the amount of knowledge that, that that human being carries in their head.

I absolutely adore Teresa so much because of the amount of effort that she's put behind it.

Caer: Yeah. So to, to circle back on the results of the pilot. So we ran BED exactly like they run it in Black Rock City, and what we found was it's meant for much larger parties than ours are, so it has a lot [01:54:00] of layers of organization.

Um, for a small burn like ours, were a bit too much. A bit too much administrative work. So last year, um, Theresa and I worked on a, a v two, basically a bit more of a chopped down version for a smaller event that has less people and less, less layers of administration because again, we have ops scene camps and everyone else.

So we don't really have that extra two or three layers that BlackRock has, like, you know, the location leads and, um, stuff like that. So we found that the, the chops down version worked a little bit better for us because we are a much, much, much smaller event. Um, so we did send out that resource, I think to all think cancer everyone, and this year we'll be looking at making a bit more of a, a visual resource and kind of program around that smaller function, um, that Teresa helped us optimize.

Stevan: Yeah, that, yeah, that, that covers the intentional cultural development. Peter was mentioned, [01:55:00] uh, art that inspires play. I saw a fair bit of that as well. Some of the workshops, some of the storytelling. I remember Lumos brought his, uh, flamethrower, showed us how to carefully and safely play with fire.

Tyne: You you mean the, the, the flamethrower Not a flamethrower for legal purposes when he crossed the border.

Stevan: Yeah. Was it the Sacred Bloom Is his Art piece.

Tyne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that, that's it. Yes.

Caer: It was a storage tank and a brass art piece.

Tyne: Yes. Allegedly. I thought, I thought that was kind of amusing, but I know that a lot of people actually raved about, uh, Lu's, uh, presentation and how to do that. I, I think this is, this is also what we've been speaking throughout this whole podcast has been that we are try, like even with artists going and explaining what they're doing and trying to teach and help others to try and recognize that they could possibly try this, and there's community that help them learn these things become more creative and become the [01:56:00] things that they may admire.

They, they have the ability to do that if they just ask. And that people are willing to sit down and talk to 'em about it.

Stevan: Alright, let's go for another our, our last break. Uh, we'll be right back after these event messages.

Lucy: All right. Hey, my name is Lucy. I'm from Townsville in North Queensland. Third degree is my third burn.

And my message for the community out there is that, you know, make those connections to people when you're out in these places like this. 'cause you never know, the connection you might make would change that person's life or inspire that person in some way. And I think that's kind of fundamentally what's this about?

This is about, is about, um, sharing creativity and supporting each other in there. So keep on shining bright, you burners out there. Whoop whoop. Thank you.

Danny: Hi, my name is Danny. I am from Budgie W and had a great time here at the third degree burn.[01:57:00]

Kurt: Yeah, this is Kurt from Sydney and just finished up, uh, third degree 20, 25 and yeah, had an awesome time. So I wanna say thank you to everybody and I look forward to, uh, seeing you at the next event. If not, back here again next year. Alright, peace out.

Artie: Uh, hi there. My name's Artie and I'm from Sydney, uh, in Parramatta. And I just wanted to say, uh, a lovely thank you for giving me a space to burn, to just be and give everything that I really needed to give and do everything I needed to do. So thanks Burners.

Alex: All right. Okay. Um, this is Alex from Sydney. Uh, this is my fourth, third degree burn. And I just wanna say to the community that you're all beautiful, creative people, and from the [01:58:00] smallest to the largest thing, I love, uh, sharing the creativity and joy, uh, that I have with you.

Craig: Hi, this is Craig, um, from the local area near where third usually happens, and it was the first burner I attended. Loved it. And now I'm back here a year later, and I'd like to see the community prosper and bring more love and happiness to everyone.

Stevan: Okay, welcome back. Let's get into the last segment of talking about this year, 2026, third degree. Some of, let's, let's get some thought experiments going. Let's see what, uh, projections or patterns that you might see that could be developed in our burner community. So. What do you guys have plans for the third degree?

Fifth element.

Caer: Same shenanigan time, same shenanigan place. More shenanigans.[01:59:00]

So we'll be running it in September. Uh, final dates are TB, C, and we picked September because with the way the climate change is going, we are seeing hotter and earlier weathers, which bring the fire ban earlier in the year. So the first time we ran was November, and we were on the red edge of a total fire ban, which means we wouldn't be able to burn anything.

Obviously not ideal when we like to burn things. So our event has been creeping earlier and earlier in the year to avoid. Indicative fire band dates.

Tyne: Yeah. I think, um, next year with the fifth element being the, the theme, I think there's going to be a lot of, uh, corvin, dallases on the paddock, uh, and probably a lot of Li Lou's holding their multi passers.

Um, that, that's kind of one of my predictions for this. Uh, I think a lot of people are very excited about the, the campiness of being able to play with the fifth element, not only in just the movie [02:00:00] sense, uh, 'cause of course we're not, uh, associated with the movie or using the, the, the copyright of that

Caer: meaning copywriter material.

Tyne: No. Uhhuh, no. Uh, 'cause the fifth element, the way we were pointing at it, is the fact that the fifth element is in soul. And, uh, yeah. But, uh, everyone sort of started going on about the, the movie and quoting that at me. So I, I pre predict there's gonna be a lot of that happening on the paddock.

Ruth: There's also a book called The Fifth Sacred Thing, um, which talks about the fifth element as being spirit.

Um, and that, that's a really lovely book, highly recommended for anyone who is curious to just read a beautiful thing.

Caer: Yeah. I predict we're gonna see a lot of kind of elemental art, you know, like five elemental art and things based on, you know, the number five and sacred geometry and things like that. I reckon it's, it's a banger of a theme, and I think we're gonna see a lot of copyrighted content on the paddock.

Stevan: Whatcha looking forward to Dale? 2026.

Dale: 2026. I'm looking forward to, uh, succession for, uh, for [02:01:00] myself. Um, it's something I was hoping I was working towards last year, but I don't think that will happen this year. Um, so I'm also looking forward to seeing, um, what artwork comes as well. Uh, what amazing new theme camps come as well.

We only have a limited number of space. We can only have, um, 12 major camps and 3, 3, 3 micro camps. Um, that's kind of the maximum space we can have at the site. Um,

Caer: there's only so much grass.

Dale: Yeah. We can, you know, so we are limited by the, at the moment we can, we, we don't really, we can't really increase the numbers we have, which we, but we were happy with the size of the burn.

Stevan: What is the capacity of the site?

Dale: Um, it's the, including children would be like four 50.

Caer: So roughly 350 adults. Like plus kids.

Dale: Yeah.

Stevan: And in terms of, uh, other regional burns, um, the landscape of it, how do you think, what, what direction do you think we're heading? 'cause what people are talking about, there is a, there is a a, a craving now, like a desire now for a [02:02:00] big burn.

Like a inclusive, like what we had, like you were saying, 2019. Yeah. Peak, peak seed. Yeah. People, people are yearning back for that kind of experience or nostalgic for it. But are we heading that way or what, what's happening here with, uh, with all these emerging burns?

Dale: Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mean, I don't know.

People say they want the big burn, but every time you hear people and you go to stuff like SBA where they're trying to like, um, talk to people, there's not a lot of, um, interaction that's happening. So I'm not, I think that might take a number of years for us on the, on the, like New South Wales, Victoria side to get a burn.

That's up to 2000 people. Again. I think that's gonna take a number of years before that might happen. You know? Um, I just, the, that the community has to build the, um, the, the trust has to be built back up, back up again and has to be built slowly. You can't just jump from 500. To 2000 people.

Ruth: Yeah. It, it, the, [02:03:00] the only sustainable way to grow something of that sort of size is organically.

Um, you can't just throw it together and expect that it's gonna work because it won't. Um, we've, we've seen that happen. We've seen that fail already and because there was such a splintering of the community, um, partly because of the whole breakdown around the seed situation and partly because of the COVID.

It, it's gonna take a while now to, to rebuild that. And I don't know, I hope that the community, once it does all coalesce, is going to be stronger than it ever was before. Uh, that might be my idealistic side coming through, but because there has been the splintering, there has been this learning process of so many individual groups who started running their own small events.

Wouldn't it be great to get all of those people working together now and, and creating something big? I'd love to see [02:04:00] it. I'd absolutely love to see it. But yeah, it's gonna take some time. Unfortunately, it's not something you can rush,

Stevan: would we see more of an inflow of the younger generational crowd, you think in the next few years.

Tyne: I think I, I think we need to give it a couple of more years. The, the thing we've had is, um, a lot of the, the people who would've been really coming into burning COVID hit at the time, like as Ruth said, a lot of people who. May have been doing burning with their parents when they were younger. They might go away until they're about 18 and then come back.

So the thing is, as soon as COVID hit, uh, a lot of those, uh, people who were young bloods, who would've been coming into it, uh, didn't get to go because there wasn't any real events going on. And yeah, it's, it's all been like, oh, okay, I can't go anywhere. I can't do anything. So they haven't done it. So I think at the moment we will get the young people back in again.

But it's building that confidence, um, within the community and making 'em feel like, okay, this is something that they can do. I think, uh, there's been a bit of, [02:05:00] from what I've experienced, 'cause I was only a new burner just before the COVID hit. Is watching that there's been this confidence loss within the community, and I think that needs to slowly build back up before we can really move to a large event.

I would love to see us have a large event. I'm passionate about us having a large event eventually, but these, the smaller burns, as you've said, have been the perfect opportunity for us to learn new things. That we can even take two bigger burns like the, the emergency help button, things like that. These things will be things we can move into the bigger burn as a learning that we've taken from smaller burns.

So I think, uh, what we need is a collaboration to be able to have that bigger burn happen again.

Caer: It's a good call out Tyne. I do think we also need to acknowledge the current realities, financial pressure, legislative pressure, police pressure, mental health pressure, and frankly, the financial pressure that it takes to run an event that large, that far [02:06:00] away from anything.

It is a significant undertaking and the more you scale up, the larger those numbers get. So it's a lot of risk for an organization to take on to attempt to run a large event, not only just purely financially, but also in the attention and difficulty it is to gather on mass in Australia now, it is a lot harder to gather just overall.

We've seen it in massively inflated police attendance invoices for commercial festival. We've seen it in disperse notifications two days before an event. We've seen it in any smaller events just getting shut down because of noise complaints. We've seen the rise of the difficulty in finding a venue that you can even run past 12 at, even in the middle of nowhere, like it's getting more [02:07:00] difficult to find these spaces where you can be loud and you can be loud as late as you want.

Like the edges of national parks are some of the only places left you can point a function, one speaker at without a stone's throw of someone calling in a noise complaint and getting you shut down. Like it's, it's getting harder and harder with not only finding a place, but finding a council that's willing to accept such a large gathering in its borders.

You know, to find an insurer willing to cover the She Shining is on the paddock, you know, to find enough people willing to volunteer, willing to sweat blood and tears, to drag a container into the middle of nowhere and stand in at eight hours. Everything's getting harder and I think we really need to acknowledge the pressure and the privilege we have being able to burn as we do.

Stevan: One thing you mentioned earlier Tyne was the social media aspect. I'm fascinated by where this is gonna be going, how it impacts our kind of culture. How do you see we're gonna connect in the future and communicate it? Uh, people are probably using list of Facebook or, or [02:08:00] Twitter or whatever the medium is.

Yep. Um, what's the and what's out there? What, yeah.

Tyne: So, um, unfortunately I've been mostly a one-woman show when it comes to dealing with the, the social media. I've had Dale helping me. Uh, I also had Kylie helping me a bit last year, um, as well as Amanda gave me a little bit of help. But, uh, when it comes to social media, like we've been using Facebook to start off with, my dream would be to see us have, uh, a team of people working on social media so that they can cover like, um, Instagram and, uh, I think things like YouTube, YouTube reels are also really quite beneficial.

I'm finding most of the social media, when we are looking at it now, most people are actually moving to short term videos. And those sort of things have a really quick, fast impact with the community now. So if you wanted to go and get inta information really quickly, you tend to find that most people are like, oh, I just want something that's like one to two minutes.

Just tell me what's going on. And I think that's gonna [02:09:00] be more of the way that we start interacting with our community is through that sort of thing. I would love to see things like ask me, anythings happening. I know that, um, I've seen the Underland board do their, their, um, ask me anything, uh, moments, which I think are really good.

I think those sort of things are things that we need to be doing to get more engagement from the community year on year and not just when you're leading up to an event. Uh, the, the growth of social media obviously changes. The, the, we wouldn't have thought of TikTok being a main platform. Um, but that's become a main platform and that's what's led to more of using these short term videos.

But yeah, it, it, it will continue to change, particularly with the changes of AI and things like that coming to play. There's a lot of, uh, growth and opportunity there if you know how to plug into it.

Caer: I think there's also difficulty with the recent ban in Australia on social medias for under 16. Under sixteens.

Yeah, under

Tyne: under 16. Yeah.

Caer: So I think also having the resources asynchronously available, like websites, like Resource Docos and [02:10:00] links. So that anyone can access it at any time. Even having simple things like emails, some of our community don't have or don't want to have. I'm not on social media. I get a lot of my information through word of mouth or why the good old mobile phone when I'm talking about social media.

It's about the, the purpose. And if the purpose is to connect with the community, fair enough, but we don't really need to go viral. We can't sell a thousand tickets when we don't want to sell a thousand tickets. And I think the community we have right now is amazing. I think we should grow it absolutely.

But sustainably.

Stevan: Okay. Let's look at the burn calendar this year. Have you guys discovered any new burns that you, that you'd like to share with us? Or what's your outlook, uh, look like, uh, in terms of where you'll be heading?

Dale: Uh, I've looked at the calendar, but for myself, I'd probably like to head over to Blazing Swan this year.

Um, I haven't been for a couple years and it's a, it's a great burn in West Australia. I've always wanted to go to Kiwi Burn, but always comes up really quickly and then I forget about it. So [02:11:00] I think I need to put it by calendar for this year, for next year. Start already planning for that 'cause apparently it's a fantastic burn to go to.

So

Caer: I've got bucket list burns. Um, obviously I wanna make the pilgrimage to the desert. Unfortunately it's a desert, so it's pretty hot. Uh, we'll have to see about that. Uh, I'd love to go to Alfred Burn. I'd really, really love to see that. I also wanna go to Kiwi Burn. We'll see how the leave situation falls out, but most of my energy and attention is really going into third grade.

So not really doing a, a world tour this year.

Ruth: Yeah. I've got no interest in going to that thing in the desert until we have a new president in the US and, uh, we hope, we hope that'll happen any couple of years, but, uh, I'm, I'm not entirely certain that it will, um, Africa Burn. Hell yeah. We, we've talked a little bit about, um, going as a group to Africa Burn and that's, uh, that, that's a bucket listing for me.

I just, [02:12:00] everything I hear about Africa Burn sounds amazing. I'm not, in terms of what's happening this year, I'm not thinking too far ahead. So like in a couple of weeks, spice of Life is on. I'm thinking I might solo Spice of Life. That could be a really fun thing to do. Other than that, I haven't got any plans.

'cause I'm very much a think about what's happening right in front of me right now. And nothing else

Stevan: is spice Right. For I thought you don't go to doofs anymore.

Ruth: No. Um, no. It's run by the, oh, what are they called? Spice Cadets. Fundraiser.

Stevan: Fundraiser. Yeah. Do you guys do fundraisers, uh, or any other. Side events, so to their degree

Caer: Oh yes.

Runs the Winter Wonderland fundraiser in winter, because of course,

Ruth: um, erstwhile well has fundraisers all the time. Usually sort of one-off nights. Um, we used to do cabarets all the time, but that took a lot of organizing and we haven't done that since 2020. Yeah.

Tyne: Terms of burns for me, [02:13:00] uh, at the moment, unfortunately, I've had a lot of personal stuff come up in the last couple of months, so I am currently trying to get all my ducks in a row before I can commit to anything because it's just a, a little bit too intense for me right now.

But in bucket list items, like I, I've always like thought I wanna go to the big burn, but obviously that's a no go for now, particularly with the global climate,

Caer: not just now. Yep.

Tyne: Yeah. Um, and then we have, uh, Africa burn, uh, Kiwi burn. I have quite a lot of Kiwi friends that I would love to go see over there.

I've been to New Zealand a few times and I absolutely love it over there. Blazing Swan, of course, I'd love to go to, I, I would love to get myself down to Underland again at some point. 'cause uh, I went down there last year, or not last year, year before, and I really enjoyed it. It was a little bit windy that year, but I really enjoyed it.

Caer: It was a lot of bit windy that year.

Tyne: Un un unfortunately my central nervous system didn't like the wind. Um, but that's okay. [02:14:00] Uh, yeah, so it's, I think there's also a lot of good events coming up. I know that there's also a, um, a few fundraisers that a theme camps are doing leading up to like the end of summer where they're doing their, their fundraisers right now.

And I think they'll really be worthwhile for, if people can get to them, highly recommend going to them. Particularly if you're never been to a burn. It's a nice opportunity to sort of like. So it's like, dip your toe in just a little bit and get an idea of what they're like.

Stevan: Yeah, I feel like it's gonna be a stacked year this year.

Can we end this? Let's end this with, uh, some shout outs and great gratitude.

Caer: We love our volunteers every year you make the magic happen and we cannot thank you enough.

Ruth: Yeah, big shout out to, uh, a bunch of team leads. Um, but the one that always stands out for me is B. Um, she always goes above and beyond in terms of curating the art that we have at the degree, and she is so good at doing that.

It's just incredible. I'd also like to say hi to Verna and Salty, who we haven't seen around, um, on the board for a while, but my God, they were just fantastic when we [02:15:00] had them, and I miss them.

Tyne: Uh, personally, I I, I think it's worthwhile to, again, shouting out to all of our leads, like Minks, uh, doing the Ranger lead.

We had trouble who was running hq. We had Jess who was doing, uh, traffic control. That's just, and then like Ruth was running sanitation. We had Jimmy who stepped up to help with fire as well, and Kat, who was doing our fire twirling and, and and that sort of thing. And then we also had Rollie who was doing our first aid, like the, if it wasn't for people like this who could step up and help us out, there is no way possible.

We would be able to run this burn. So I would like to say a massive thank you to every single human who stepped up, took a leadership role as well as who volunteered or was two ic. We could not do this without you, and we really do appreciate all of your work and, um, I hope to see you all on the paddock again at some point.

Dale: Yeah, for me, like big shout out to Adam Pearce who's taken [02:16:00] on the theme camps because that's, uh, a theme family. That's a big problem. Big thing to interact with each theme camp and set them in the right paddock and have them in the right space. Um, big, uh, you know, thanks to, you know, the people have come who have volunteered throughout the years who have done stuff.

Um, who was my two RC last year was the event coordinator. She did a fantastic job to take a lot of the load of me, which is fantastic. Um, that was great. Um, you know, the people who do little things though, like little badges or little, little bits and pieces, everyone just does something and steps up. I mean, it's fantastic.

We have a great board and we also have some great leads and some great rcs and those. Without those people, we could not, we could not run the third degree. It would not happen.

Stevan: Yeah, well said Dale.

Caer: Yeah. I'd also like to take this time to thank the Scouts of New South Wales for having such a banging venue.

And also we'd like to thank the First Nation [02:17:00] people who participate in our burn do I. Welcome to country ceremony and smokey ceremony and really collaborate with us in the stewardship of the land. It's great, like love to see it, and really thankful and grateful for their participation and enthusiasm for our little shindig.

Stevan: Now, can, do you remember whether you were a eagle or a crow? Do you remember from I was a crow.

Ruth: Yes. I was a crow. Took me a second to figure what you're talking about. Yeah. God. He's good, isn't he?

Dale: Yeah. Uh,

Tyne: I'm an

Dale: eagle.

Stevan: That's something that I learned.

Dale: I'm definitely a crow. Yeah.

Caer: I was not granted, uh, time to speak with a man, so I've not been granted a, a spirit totem.

Ruth: Oh. This was something he did for everybody at the Welcome to Country.

Dale: To Country. Yeah, he did. Yeah. And yeah, with the Welcome to Country, he did it for everyone. Yeah. So he did like, he went through a, like something he was discussing and Yeah. Can't exactly remember how he did it, but yeah.

Ruth: It, it was, it was a introspection moment.

You have to sort of like figure it out for yourself. [02:18:00]

Stevan: Okay. And, and how do we get involved guys? How do we get involved in the third degree? How do we volunteer? How do we get tickets? How do we follow you? Stuff like that.

Caer: Alright, how do you find us? We have a website which needs a little bit of updating.

Apologies. We have a Facebook group, we have email addresses. Um, that's how you reach out to us.

Dale: Yeah. Uh, best email is info at the third degree, uh, org or crew at the third degree do org. Um, those are two primary email addresses to get hold of us. And if you are interested in any roles or um, becoming part of the board or becoming part of the operations, please email us and let us know what your skills are and what you'd like to learn or how you'd like to get involved.

'cause we'd love to see more people, whether you have no skills or sub skills or amazing skills, anything will help to start and you can learn from there. It's all a learning process.

Stevan: Yeah. We'll put all these, uh, information [02:19:00] in the show notes, all these information and so much

Caer: tickets, uh, through our platform.

Undiscovered except no substitutes, they're scams. And we'll be launching those closer to the middle of the year.

Stevan: Awesome. Uh, thanks everyone for coming on. Uh, appreciate that. It is interesting. Uh. Uh, this is gonna go straight to the pool room. Thank you very much. Uh, you guys are making history here. Uh, we all are.

Ruth: Thank you Steven.

Tyne: Thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate it.

Caer: Thanks for having us.

Dale: Yeah, thanks for having us, Steven. And thanks PY for the engineering background and um, I appreciate everyone's time tonight and uh, your time as well, Steven, for the community that you give to the community as well, you give a huge amount.

So thank you.

Caer: Thank you for your chronicling efforts.

Stevan: Alright. Awesome. Let's, uh, let's get together again sometime in the future and, uh, see, see you on the paddock soon.

Caer: See you.

Ruth: See you guys.

Sasha: All right, Luke, how do you feel about being the, [02:20:00] the amazing DJ who is putting the backdrop to this eclipse that,

Luke: uh, exhausted. I've been playing now track for over three and a half hours. Oh, you can do this. And, uh, but I'm really glad everyone's enjoying it.

Sasha: It's exhausting, isn't it? Do you have to do breathing exercises to get through it?

Luke: Yes. I have to do breathing every now and then. I forget to breathe and I have to go. Oh yeah, that's right. Lungs,

Sasha: we're going down because apparently the moon down here is better to see.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, I know. But you can't hear. The music is good down here.

Sasha: We'll find that bloody moon.

Luke: Yeah, I know. It's all red and shit, right?

Sasha: Oh, well. Could be.

Luke: It's about to turn red.

Sasha: Have you deliberately chosen songs in line with that red theme?

Luke: I have indeed. This is, this is the sexy song. Yeah.

Sasha: We're doing a podcast episode. Episode podcast. Would you like to be on it, Marissa? Can you give shed some light on? What kind of thoughts? Go through a DJ's head.

Luke: Totally. It's all gonna go red. So we're gonna see the moon now. And that's all of the sunsets on earth, casting on the moon. That's why it's red. Oh, that's, that is, it's a reflection of all [02:21:00] sunsets on earth.

Sasha: Incredible. Oh wow. That is incredible. No wonder you make great music. You're kind of a deep guy.

Luke: Fucking nerd.

Sasha: You are a nerd. Would you say that DJing is a bit mathematical or some too big?

Luke: Um, it definitely has a level of detail to it mm-hmm. That I appreciate. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Gotta be musical in a sense.

Sasha: You do? Yeah. How did you get that ability?

Luke: I did piano when I was a kid.

Sasha: Yeah. You did?

Mm-hmm. Were you a disciplined kind of kid that actually practiced

Luke: God? No, no, no. I got up to the point where they had to do musicianship and do all the like sums and exams and I was like. Fuck this, I quit

Sasha: and then Luke found his decks.

Luke: Well, I actually never wanted to dj. I was always gonna do the lights and all my friends are DJs.

I was like, oh, that's lame. But then one time they were all tripping out and the music stopped and I was like, oh fuck. How do you fucking use this thing then? All right. And I started putting some really strange tracks on and fucking with their heads and I was like, haha, this is pretty fun. [02:22:00] Yes,

Sasha: I get to socially engineer the room

Luke: and, and that's how I got into DJing.

Wow. Yes,

Sasha: you got bitten by the music power bug.

Luke: It helps that I have a lot of tracks that I know very well. That is a big part of it.

Sasha: And how many minutes or seconds are left of this song, please, Mr.

Luke: Uh, this is like an, this is like an eight minute song. So I got

Sasha: Oh, you just bought yourself eight minutes.

Luke: So I bought myself. It's probably got about five or six minutes left, I reckon.

Sasha: Wow. That's So I'll see the red guesstimate,

Luke: but I've already got one lined up.

Sasha: Do you, do you have to go run back? Press a button.

Luke: I will back, yeah. Yeah. It'd be disclosure,

Sasha: right? Okay. Fast. Oh, I love disclosure.

Luke: Totally. I think we got, um, hourglass by disclosure next.

Sasha: Okay.

Luke: Just a real surprise.

Sasha: Oh no, I don't, I don't, we've had surprises all night, Luke.

Luke: Ah, yes. It's been diverse.

Sasha: It has.

Luke: Yeah. Yeah.

Sasha: There was many a moment where it was like the people were doing the stank look. Did you know about that?

Luke: No.

Sasha: Oh,

Luke: the, [02:23:00] oh, that stank look like, oh, Yee.

Sasha: That's one.

Luke: I'm glad I enjoyed it.

I uh, I refrain from playing any weird Al though, so people can be Thank me for that.

Sasha: What the hell is weird elbow?

Luke: Weird Al Yankovich.

Sasha: Who the hell's that?

Luke: I'll play your track then.

Sasha: Oh no. That's gonna hurt you more than it's gonna hurt me.

Luke: Oh yeah. It's late now. Everyone's done. No one's on the D floor anymore.

I can mess with him.

Sasha: What? No, we are all headed back. This is hot. Oh yeah. Hot geezer over here.

Luke: I better, I better head. Definitely going. That's on the way out.

Sasha: Okay, Luke.

Luke: But that's cool.

Sasha: It's 3, 3, 3. Oh my God. Thank you so much for being on this podcast.

Luke: You're welcome.

Sasha: Do I have your permission to put you on the burn website?

Luke: Go for it.

Sasha: Facebook thing. Excellent. We've got that recorded

Will & Kate: bonzaar podcast.

Transcripts transcribed by Descript AI