[Will & Kate] (0:19 - 0:32)

Bonzaar podcast...

[Stevan] (0:32 - 1:10)

I'm Stevan Lay, and you're listening to a conversation show about the burner community in New Zealand. This episode, we will look back at the KiwiBurn 2026, a work of heart. Get some personal reviews and talk about what went right and what we can learn from after this year's event.

An episode to reflect, educate, raise awareness, time capsule and archive for future reference. So we're here to discuss the fun and the magical moments, the arts, the theme camps, all the event workshops, the burns and all the shenanigans from varying perspectives. Please welcome to the panel, Hippathy Valentine, Kym, Shelley.

Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the panel.

[Kym] (1:10 - 1:10)

Hello.

[Shelley] (1:11 - 1:12)

Thank you.

[Stevan] (1:12 - 1:23)

So we'll do a quick introduction for the listeners. What's your role and how did you participate at KiwiBurn this year?

Hippathy, do you want to go first?

[Hippathy] (1:23 - 1:51)

Ah, my role, I have a role on the KiwiBurn art grant committee at the moment. My role is the theme camp lead for two couches and a rug. We've been bringing two, that's two, couches and a singular one rug to the paddock since 2015.

And yeah, you have a little projects. Yeah, do you want me to go through who I am and where I've come from or just for this KiwiBurn?

[Stevan] (1:51 - 1:55)

Yeah, we can get into your background a little later on, your original stories.

[Hippathy] (1:56 - 1:57)

That's all I did, cause trouble.

[Kym] (2:00 - 2:28)

Hi, I'm Buggy or Kym. It was my second KiwiBurn this year and I went from zero to 100 and decided to lead a temple build, which was an amazing experience. So yeah, I was running around on paddock, a bit of a bug nerd, hence how I got my paddock name.

And I just love being part of this community. Super excited to have been embraced and brought in the way that I was.

[Shelley] (2:30 - 3:14)

I'm Shelley.

I'm one of the regional contacts, Burning Man regional contacts for New Zealand. And I also this year worked, volunteered for the arts team. So I did a shift at the, I can't remember what it's called, Arts, I think.

The Arts Centre at KiwiBurn, which is for artists who have brought art to the paddock, come and ask questions and they might come and need to borrow a tool or sellotape or anything. So we're just there to facilitate helping out the artists who bring amazing things to the paddock.

[Stevan] (3:14 - 3:17)

And how was this year's art compared to the previous years?

[Shelley] (3:17 - 3:28)

It was pretty good, but actually Hippathy may have a bit more insight because he, a lot more detailed insight because he is on the committee, Arts Committee.

[Hippathy] (3:29 - 4:20)

That's right. You think I would, but did I pay attention to the art at KiwiBurn? I'm terrible at paying attention at KiwiBurn because I am a distracted little squirrel.

I think the art at KiwiBurn, there was less of it than there was last year. There was definitely less art grant applications that came through and that's because KiwiBurn was in an ignition year and ignition, which started as an answer to when KiwiBurn wasn't running one year, has become popular in a different way and does, there's somewhat of a split in the community of who goes to what. I'm sure if everyone could, they'd go to both, but yeah.

So being in an ignition year, there was not as much at KiwiBurn, which has come to be expected because ignition only runs every two years.

[Shelley] (4:20 - 5:10)

Yeah. The population for KiwiBurn, I think that they were selling 1750 tickets, sort of around about, something like that, when last year was 2400. So they planned for the fact that it was an ignition year, which is every two years, and knew they wouldn't get as many volunteers.

So, you know, it was smart thinking to not try and meet the expectations of high volunteer buy-in and have a big population, because that would just be really hard on all people that do put their hand up to do things. Yeah. So that meant less art.

But the art was still, you know, some amazing pieces. Absolutely amazing. Such a clever community.

[Stevan] (5:10 - 5:23)

So I heard that this year was also called, was also labelled the rainbow year because of the weather. You guys faced some wet weather earlier on, but then the sunshine came out and the rainbows came out.

[Shelley] (5:23 - 5:25)

Yeah, the rain came out again.

[Hippathy] (5:25 - 5:42)

Yeah, I think it was persisting down, as they say. Yeah, it rained a lot. It was pretty much Mudburn 2.0. Possibly less mud, possibly more mud, but definitely different mud.

[Shelley] (5:43 - 5:43)

Different mud.

[Hippathy] (5:43 - 5:50)

Yeah. It's kind of, it's one of those things where it's like, was there more?

Was there less? Was the mud just different?

[Stevan] (5:50 - 5:55)

It dampened the spurs a bit, but people were still out there dancing in the mud and in the puddles.

[Shelley] (5:55 - 5:59)

Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It didn't stop anyone.

[Hippathy] (5:59 - 6:22)

Yeah, it certainly didn't stop anyone. And I saw, personally saw, some of the most vivid rainbows ever seen in my life. You know, when the sun did come out, boy, did the skies put on a show.

I remember just staring at one of the rainbows, just being like that, like, you know, the colours were so well defined. It was kind of like a cartoon rainbow, almost. You know, it was wild.

[Kym] (6:23 - 6:37)

There was somebody that posted some beautiful photography of the temple with a huge rainbow right behind it, just as a massive arch over the temple centre. And it was stunning. It's probably my favourite photo that I've seen of the temple.

It really just encapsulated.

[Shelley] (6:37 - 6:37)

That's my favourite.

[Kym] (6:38 - 6:42)

Yeah, it really just encapsulated the whole feeling of the event, you know.

[Shelley] (6:43 - 6:48)

I agree. It was a stunning photo, like, of your art, and it did just capture the event.

I agree.

[Kym] (6:49 - 6:51)

Yeah, that felt really nice.

[Shelley] (6:52 - 6:52)

Yeah.

[Hippathy] (6:52 - 7:05)

Yeah, I think those first few days, it rained quite a bit, and then the sun would come out for bits and bobs, and then it would rain quite heavily again. And yeah, it was very on again, off again, hot and cold. Yeah.

[Stevan] (7:06 - 7:11)

And that's not expected, is it? Usually, Kiwi weather is quite good during the summers.

[Hippathy] (7:15 - 7:16)

No.

[Stevan] (7:16 - 7:17)

Unpredictable.

[Kym] (7:17 - 7:19)

It's always temperamental.

[Stevan] (7:20 - 7:20)

Yeah.

[Shelley] (7:21 - 7:36)

Every second year, I have La Nina and El Nino, so we get a lot of, we had a lot of wind this summer, and like a cool wind, so that happens every second year. And it certainly hasn't stopped.

[Hippathy] (7:37 - 7:58)

Yeah, it all depends on what's happening in the South Pacific, right? You know, if it's hot and moist and the ocean's warm, then we get a lot of tropical lows, then we just get blasted with lots of rain, and that's kind of what happens for a good chunk of the summer. Not much worse than other summers, really, I don't think.

[Stevan] (7:58 - 8:11)

Was it much of a showcase for, say, for new burners? So people that really don't know, haven't experienced a Kiwi burn, was it much of a showcase? So you got the wet weather, you got the rain, you got the rainbows and everything.

[Shelley] (8:11 - 8:14)

I met a lot of new burners. Oh, sorry, you go.

[Hippathy] (8:14 - 8:33)

They probably experienced a lot of community, because a lot of people were hunkering down, you know, that's what always happens when it's a rainy burn. And definitely in our camp, we experienced a lot of time together and whaka whanaungatanga, building of relationships and coming together.

[Kym] (8:34 - 9:19)

You get that kind of panicked, oh no, the rain started again, I need to duck into this camp and take cover in the cozy area because it's pouring down. And that's when you end up making heaps of friends and meeting new people and forming all of those really good connections. So I think the rain contributes in a lot of ways.

It does throw up some problems and logistical problems and some build problems and things like that. You know, there are moments where it's like, oh, we don't know if the temple is actually going to burn because everything is so wet. But it's an exercise in faith and hope, just not in a religious sense, but in that very deep spiritual sense of like, I have faith in the community to get us through this.

Yeah. So I think there's a lot of really cool stuff that comes out of a burn that has some challenges like that.

[Shelley] (9:19 - 9:51)

Yeah.

And like you said, there's always problems to solve. And so there are people whose tents got wet or whatever, who needed help. And that's, you know, like Hippathy said, the community provides and helps people who maybe have a broken temple or something, you know, like that's when it really is magic.

In the face of adversity of some sort, this time being mud and rain, people really do come together to help.

[Kym] (9:52 - 10:31)

We had a hilarious moment where our marquee or gazebo thing that we'd set up for the temple build crew actually just took off, the whole thing lifted up, flew up over the hill, if you're familiar with the Kiwi Burn site, went way up over the crew kitchen and came down in a paddock on the other side. So we're very grateful to the rangers who, and Zanthi from EBW, who said that we could have the ranger tent up until that was needed for the actual start of the event, because otherwise we would have got very, very wet.

It was quite the sight to see this huge blue sheet just go, get torn into about 60 pieces and just go flying up into the atmosphere.

[Stevan] (10:32 - 10:45)

Yes, community building was what you talked about, Hippothy. Let's talk about the theme then, this year's theme was titled A Work of Heart. What's the backstory behind that?

[Shelley] (10:46 - 11:11)

There's always a theme competition and that was what was chosen. I think on the website you'll find a description for it, but I did read it at the time, but I can't recall, but a lot of people really resonated with the theme, that it really, really, really spoke to a lot of people and some people said it was their favorite theme ever.

[Kym] (11:11 - 11:30)

Yeah, I definitely felt that way about it.

I just, I felt like it was, there's been a lot going on in the community this year and I think a theme that centers around heart and solidarity was really, really important and just a really, the perfect choice for it, essentially.

[Hippathy] (11:31 - 11:36)

I'm not going to say how I voted for the themes this year as someone who was part of the group who decided on the theme.

[Stevan] (11:38 - 11:43)

You wanted mustard economy last year, was it? That didn't go well. Actually, it went viral.

[Hippathy] (11:45 - 11:46)

They must have mustard something.

[Stevan] (11:47 - 11:59)

Yeah, so I love the theme. It actually worked well into the temple as well. So shall we talk about a bit of background about that, Kym?

Do you want to share some insights?

[Kym] (11:59 - 13:41)

So I was at a birthday party and I was reckoning with the idea that this year I was going to have my kids on paddock and the idea actually started out as a, this is before even knowing what the theme was. I thought how cool would it be to get some kids together to be involved in building the effigy, sorry, the effigy or the temple and doing something that was collaborative within the community. So everything camp bought a part of the build or the kids built part of the build or something and from there and just talking to people, it kind of evolved.

And then I'd recently had my friend pass in an awful situation and I was really grieving the loss of him and the community really just held me through that time and they were absolutely incredible. Like I've never experienced a space where grief is okay and accepted. I was used to the idea of my friends being like, oh, you know, don't come into the space when you're down.

Like I don't want to bring the vibe down, all of those kind of attitudes and the community just really brought me in and held space for that grief. And so I felt really strongly about being able to provide that space back for the community when that idea came up and it felt meaningful and perfect. And then I started the design with my friend in mind and when I found out the theme, it was like, oh my goodness, this fits everything that I want to represent.

Like this is a really important temple build because it ties in so nicely with that theme. And I started sketching and planning and putting together ideas for what we wanted that to look like.

[Stevan] (13:41 - 13:45)

And also the poster as well, it tied in well with the poster, the theme, the whole.

[Kym] (13:45 - 15:09)

Oh, that was a crazy synchronicity. When I saw the poster come out, it was a beautiful piece of art by Izzy, I believe is the name. And it was literally a heart surrounded by these figures of this ring of people dancing and holding hands, which was essentially what I had drawn for the temple build concept.

And I was just like, I messaged everybody. I was just like, have you seen the poster? Like every single person that I'd run the idea past, it was like, it was like we just downloaded it out of each other's brains.

And I sent Izzy this message, I swear, I had no idea what your poster was. This is blowing my brains. And Izzy was like, this is crazy.

We love it. Yeah, it was an amazing moment. And it really helped solidify that the concept that I had was on the right path and that it was bigger than I was, that it wasn't just a thing that I thought was the right thing.

It felt solidified in that moment of like, this is the thing that is supposed to be happening. This feels out of my control right now in the sense that I'm just receiving from the universe exactly what the plan of action is without having to put any effort into this whatsoever. So that was like even talking about it now, I'm almost shaking about it.

It was really, really incredible. And it got rid of a lot of fear that I had around the build as well.

[Shelley] (15:10 - 15:11)

How did the build go for you?

[Kym] (15:12 - 16:57)

The build was challenging and rewarding. It was, in some ways, it was a lot easier than I expected and in some ways, it was a lot more difficult than I expected. It's funny because the areas that I expected would be hard were the easy parts and the parts that I thought, okay, that bit's going to be fine.

They were the ones that presented the most challenges. I don't think I would have survived it unless I had the chaotic personality that I have. If you're a very structured, you need everything to be exactly how you say it's going to go, a build is probably not going to be for you because you have to have that flexibility of like, oh crap, now we have to divert and take another path, but it's okay because I have backup plan B, C, D, E, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think that that was really great. I had an amazing team of people. I relied on my construction lead a lot, not having any construction experience myself.

Tara was incredible. He was just calm, no nonsense, just like this thing needs to be done. We're going to do it like I know how to do it.

Super, super grateful for that. I had an amazing co-lead that had a lot of experience, David Yates, who has a lot of experience in safety and fire and all those kinds of things. And he just, I had a broken arm at the time when I put my proposal through.

So he was just like, let me type everything for you, write all your stuff. And I was like, oh my goodness, yes, just leave me with the big picture planning things. And if you can take care of the admin side, it really was collaborative in so many ways.

I just had tons of people around me just putting the boot up my butt when I needed it and all the things in the best way.

[Shelley] (16:58 - 16:59)

Would you build again?

[Kym] (17:00 - 17:07)

Thank you. Yeah, I want to build again. Yeah.

If I can find the space to do it around parenting, I would love to build again.

[Shelley] (17:07 - 17:10)

Amazing. Yeah, it was really, really great.

[Kym] (17:10 - 17:52)

Thank you. I had incredible feedback on it. It was really nice.

And I got to do a lot of walking around and hearing people's stories about what the temple meant to them and a lot of hugs, a lot of crying, lots of just holding space for people in those moments. It was so rewarding, honestly. And just being able to hear people's experiences of their loss and their grief that so closely had married mine in that community and also things that I just couldn't fathom that people were sharing with me.

That was the feel. It wasn't the wood on the fire. That was the feel that kept me going.

[Shelley] (17:53 - 18:02)

Yeah, it was amazing. When I went into the center of the temple and it just felt like you were being held, it was a really nice feeling.

[Kym] (18:03 - 18:48)

Yeah.

And getting the size of it right, I think, is really important for that too. You want to provide enough space that it's not suffocating, but it needs to be enveloping. You need to enter that space and be wrapped in something.

Because I actually have a background in game design, environment design, and these are all the things you think about when you're considering how people interact with spaces, how they flow into a space, what they see first, how they interact with things, and making something that's relatable and familiar. A lot of that came from game design background. But yeah, I think it did the job of...

I think it did what it was supposed to do.

[Stevan] (18:48 - 19:04)

You called it Heart and Home, and you said it was a simple, single-layered, kind of ground-level design, and that was what you were going for. Do you want to talk a bit more about that? Having that, I guess, on ground level, at human level, it brings people together?

[Kym] (19:04 - 19:54)

Yeah. I mean, honestly, part of that was just to reduce the complexity of it for a first-time build. We knew that doing something that was tall and things brings its own challenges.

Also, what Shelley was saying earlier about we knew that it was going to be a year that we would struggle for volunteers and things like that. One of the core elements of it was also we didn't want to burn out our team because everybody is feeling incredibly tired. 2025, it was so rough for so many people.

So just the ethos behind it was like, let's not make the biggest, craziest, 10% bigger than last year thing. It was very much on the feeling of the space. So one level just made absolute sense.

Also, you've got to think about things like accessibility and that side of things as well. So there were tons of reasons to go for a one-level style build. Yeah.

[Shelley] (19:54 - 19:56)

I was going to say, how did you put your team together?

[Kym] (19:57 - 20:59)

Honestly, I took who I could get, and the universe gave me the right people, and the community gave me the right people. Yeah.

That was one of the big challenges of having only attended one prior KiwiBurn. I still don't know that many people on Paddock. I'm a social bunny.

I love getting out there and meeting people. Applications started coming through, and it was very much just follow my instincts, choose who looks great, basically, if they had good availability. I had lots of applications for we can be on site four days prior and things like that, and I was like, oh, it's not enough time given that we started prefabbing the whole thing in the middle of December.

So we started really early to give ourselves a big window, but it was kind of like people turning up for the last three days. We knew there wasn't going to be a whole lot to do, so if you were available over that Christmas, New Year's period, then it was pretty certain that you'd get in, and thankfully, we just made it work. Beggers can't be choosers.

[Stevan] (20:59 - 21:08)

Some of the things we were inspired by also was the Burning Man temple in 2025. Some of the shapes and structures, you brought all that together.

[Kym] (21:09 - 23:58)

Well, that was actually just another weird synchronicity. I was talking about the Izzy poster thing. I started researching, of course, once I'd kind of got the concept together, I was like, how are we actually going to build this thing?

And then I saw the photo of the, is it the Temple of the Deep? Is that correct? The big jewel-shaped structure with the kintsugi kind of cracks in it, and they had all of those beautiful facets and was up on this plinth, and I was like, hang on a minute, this looks kind of familiar, except now we've made ours heart-shaped and this and that, and these things were popping up through the whole build.

I realize I haven't even described what the temple is for anybody listening that wasn't familiar with it, but it was a big heart-shaped room in the center that was faceted like a diamond, so imagine a big three-dimensional heart with flat panels to kind of create that diamond shape, and it was up on a base and surrounded by a group of 10 people, so when you concertina up a piece of paper as a child and cut out the little people figures and then you unroll them and you've got a paper chain, so it had a ring of those around the outside that represented the 10 principles. And even when I was thinking about how to burn the thing, I always had this idea that I wanted the community to be the ignition points for the burn, so basically start with the people on the outside as pilot fires and then have the fire converge in the center to burn that heart last so that the heart was supposedly the last thing standing. There was one very resilient person that stayed up right till the end of the burn, and it was funny because it was the one that represented radical self-reliance, which I thought was hilarious, but even thinking about the way that it burnt from the outside in where I was going with that is that there's an image on the 10 principles page that shows that central hub, and then it's got all the little spokey-dokies with the principles around the outside of it, and even that lined up, and I was like, okay, this is just getting weird.

What is going on here? And again, just more little markers like that that was like, oh, okay, these things feel very natural and this feels very right. I'm not trying to force my object to fit the brief.

All of the components of this are here and already very integrated in what the seam is and what I want to represent, so yeah, I would love to get along to a Las Vegas, sorry, Nevada Burning Man, but I lived over there for two years and unfortunately didn't get the opportunity to go, which I still kick myself for, but it would be incredible to be on a build team somewhere internationally and pick up those skills and just watch what they're doing over there, learn different construction methods and things like that, and I will make space for that at some point in the future.

[Stevan] (23:59 - 24:06)

Yeah, it looked like an incredible burn. For you guys that was there, Shelley and Hippathy, how was the warmth for you, the fire?

[Kym] (24:08 - 24:09)

We're sorry about that.

[Hippathy] (24:10 - 24:37)

I wasn't actually next to the temple. I always watch the temple from afar because I've got a big mouth and I can't keep quiet for too long, so I actually usually prefer to watch the temple not at the temple itself, and I actually watched it from our camp and actually got some really beautiful photos of the heart burning, you know, just like between the trees. Yeah, so I really enjoyed kind of watching the temple from afar and it was a very beautiful burn, very, very beautiful burn.

[Stevan] (24:37 - 25:20)

I did realize that there were some talks around saying that people stayed a bit longer usually after this temple burn this year at Kiwi Burn, whether it was something to do with, there were rumors around maybe there was an AGM on the spot or something or some kind of performance or some kind of announcement, I'm not sure, but people stayed back and just talked to each other and just, you know, just community building, I guess, just to see each other again rather than, I have to leave, I have to pack up because it's on a Sunday or whenever you guys burn it. Yeah, and usually at the temple burns that I've been to, it's more like a quiet, but at this year's Kiwi Burn, I heard that it was more like a community forming, people getting together. How was the vibe there?

[Kym] (25:21 - 27:36)

Yeah, I really felt that too. I didn't get to relax until the perimeter dropped. On a personal note, I thought that I would have more time to sit and release my own grief from the air, but I was watching it going, please burn, please burn, please burn for the first 15-20 minutes until it started roaring and then it was a, oh what's that noise, oh my they're putting out embers that are raining down on people's tents because this thing is burning too hot, please stop burning, please stop burning, so there was a bit of duality there, but I did notice that a lot of people hung around. I tried to go in and be in that space and again, but I'd been collecting people's stories for the whole event, so I grabbed my bottle of wine and I was out of there.

I was like, okay, I feel like my burn is starting now. I finally exhaled and I went up to a camp called Low Expectations and sat up there with good intentions to drink a bottle of wine. Ended up getting about three sips into it and passing out on their couch because I was so tired.

I didn't really get to experience a lot of the vibe afterwards, but I think it just felt really heavy. I think it was a very heavy burn this year and I really appreciated, one of the things I really want to know and say thank you for is the respect from the community for the quietness. They knew that it was a structure that was dedicated to my friend who had passed and everybody held that space for it really beautifully.

Thank you Hippathy for knowing your own limitations and finding your own spot because that was something that was really important to me this year. I wanted the silence to be held and I really feel like the community respected that. So the fact that people were gathering afterwards and still sharing that space was really special, really special.

I think we also needed a really poignant burn after. I mean there was even, if you didn't have grief going into the week, you probably had it when the effigy fell. I think there was a lot of people really mourning the loss of the effigy with that collapsing.

So it felt more important to just have a super good burn, like let's make this a really good fire.

[Stevan] (27:36 - 27:41)

So the effigy this year, a bit of dramas to the effigy?

[Shelley] (27:42 - 27:42)

A lot of drama.

[Kym] (27:43 - 27:45)

It was a very exciting effigy this year.

[Hippathy] (27:45 - 27:46)

It was epic.

[Stevan] (27:46 - 27:47)

How would you describe it?

[Shelley] (27:47 - 27:48)

Epic.

[Kym] (27:49 - 27:53)

My kids gave it a nickname and it was the giant lollipop of truth.

[Will & Kate] (27:54 - 27:54)

Oh is that what it was called?

[Kym] (27:55 - 28:00)

Like ah the giant lollipop of truth, oh hail the giant lollipop of truth.

[Stevan] (28:03 - 28:07)

It was a ball in the middle, some kind of ball, some kind of lollipop in the middle.

[Kym] (28:07 - 30:40)

It was a 12 metre tall pole and I'm very much simplifying the beauty of the saying but it was a 12 metre tall pole with a huge globe on the top formed out of hundreds of pieces of driftwood. And it had a lifting system in it so that you could use these pulleys to raise it up the pole. And they actually did a test lift for the crew a couple of, you know, while we were all getting set up just to make sure that it would work.

And it did, it worked beautifully, it raised up, it looked incredible. And then at some point it was dropped down to do something. But I think in one of the lifts what happened from my understanding, and like I say limited understanding, was that the first time they lifted it the tension on all of the pulleys was evenly spaced and it raised well.

And then for some reason there was some tension more to one side and so what happened is the platform in the middle actually broke in some way. And then it lifted, they managed to still get it to the top of the pole but it was something to do with that potentially. I don't really want to speak to that's exactly what happened but that was about the gist of what I could understand.

So I was dancing at the DOS house with both my kids and having a good time and I just heard this like a crackle, like an absolute crackle. And I actually thought it was part of a weird music track. I was like, oh that was a really weird noise or interference or something, didn't think anything of it.

And I walked up to, this is about probably I want to say 15-20 minutes before everybody was sort of really gathering to see the FG burn. And I walked up there and Blaise who was the leader of art support came racing out and was like, we can't burn it, the FG's on the ground. And I hadn't even processed at that stage what had happened.

And there was concerns about the pyro and things like that that could have been directional so it might not have been able to be lit because they didn't want pyro firing off into the crowd and unknown directions and things like that. So they had a big hui, a big team huddle with all of the people to decide whether they could actually go ahead and light it while it was on the ground. But one of the amazing pyro team actually was working underneath it when it fell and had to tuck and roll out of the way.

So it was literally a sprint and a stage dive as this thing came down to, yeah, it was apparently quite impressive. Hippathy can probably talk more about what it actually looked like when it fell.

[Hippathy] (30:41 - 33:33)

Yeah, I mean, yeah, so I think the ball was meant to be representative of the sun and at night it had these awesome projections on it. It was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful effigy. I think this is the second or third that Lou's done a temple, Lou and I did a temple together in the past, but I think it was the second effigy that Lou has built.

Always gorgeous, always gorgeous work. Yeah, I remember on effigy burn night, our camp went and got situated quite early because it looked like it was going to pelt down with rain again. So we went and we found another camp where we could camp under the structure when they're right on the outskirts of the effigy.

I remember sitting down and kind of looking at the effigy and being like, oh, that's listing. And it was on like a maybe five degree angle, definitely wasn't standing upright anymore. And I think I was just looking for my photos actually, just trying to work out what did I take a photo of that?

But yeah, and then over time, then we noticed, I think I was just staring at the effigy and then all of a sudden it just started tilting even more. I don't know the mechanics of actually what happened behind it. I mean, I've heard stories, but there's no point in me speculating.

But yeah, for whatever reason, it looks like something came completely loose somewhere. Something went terribly wrong and you saw it kind of tilting. And then there was a person who was completely 180 degrees away from it.

So it was falling directly to them. They were looking in the complete opposite direction. And of course, it's falling silently.

Everyone around is going, whoa, what the? But this person clearly didn't know what was happening. Now, I don't think it was actually going to hit them because I had a full on sideways vision.

They might've got hit by some falling debris. To me, it looked like that actually kind of worked out where would it fall and then maybe we should make the circle of people just outside of that because that's basically where it fell is like perfectly to not hit them. But as it kind of hit the ground and started crumpling, because as it fell, it kind of crumpled and fell apart and started sprawling out from there.

Obviously, this person could hear the sound of it crumpling around them, realize that what was happening and tumbled forward. And it already hit the ground at that point by the time they were kind of tumbling. So yeah, I mean, they might've got hit by debris if they hadn't heard it, but yeah, it was quite wild.

[Shelley] (33:33 - 34:26)

Yeah, it's very sad, felt very sad for the team. During the week when it was up and acting like the center of everything, it was just the most beautiful thing. Daytime and nighttime.

Nighttime, it had projections the whole night, I guess, or until the power ran out or something, but it was just amazing. You'd always just see this orb in the sky no matter where you were, especially the top paddock. It was really something else visually.

I really loved it. It's one of my favorite, favorite effigies. It was really nice not to have a form, like a person or an animal, whatever.

It was actually really nice to have something quite simple, designy, really effective, really, really well considered. Yeah, it was really incredible.

[Kym] (34:29 - 36:17)

As we say, my heart really broke for the team because obviously we'd worked quite closely with Lou as well in terms of just as a first-time build lead, I'd been relying on him for his huge wealth of knowledge and support.

So to see something like that happen after the amount of work that I know that those guys put into it was really heartbreaking. I was sitting in that circle trying to hatch a backup plan just in case it couldn't be burned with a bunch of friends. I was like, what if we get all the effigy and we take them down and use them for the fuel for the temple burn and do a combined burn because I know that that's been done in previous years.

If the concerns of the pyro, then we can move the majority of the burnable stuff away from the pyro. I was just frantically trying to hatch plans to help save them. I'm really glad that they still got to burn it.

It still looks spectacular burning on the ground. I think watching the flares go through all the colors and things like that whilst it burnt as it was, was still really, I know it wasn't the intended plan, but I think that even also spoke to the theme of the burn about the community just being on board no matter what and sharing in that collective effort and the collective resolution of the things that happen, which I just, yeah, I really loved it, but I hated the fact that it was down for them. I know what it's like to pour your heart and soul into something and I kept just thinking that could have just as easily been the temple burn. We could have experienced the same challenges and disaster and it felt very, I felt a really strong empathy because I had the experience of what it took to create a build.

Yeah, tugged at my heartstrings for them for sure.

[Hippathy] (36:18 - 37:23)

I haven't asked Lou and I've kind of been wondering, you know, what was going to happen if it hadn't fallen over, you know, that Lou is definitely, you know, like Shelley said, very considered and a bit of a pyrotechnics expert. So I really, I look forward to hearing the story of what it was actually meant to do because like they said, it raised up, it raised down. I'm sure there was some crazy plan for what it was meant to do.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it was, if the plan was that the sun was going to set on fire and then collapse down and smash, you know, because it was the bottom of the bottom of the effigy, you could actually walk inside it. That was actually one of my favorite parts actually, was that kind of the bottom part of the effigy was kind of like a nest, kind of like a cup, and you could go and you could sit on the inside of it and stare up at the, up at the, up at the, up at the wall. It was, yeah, it was gorgeous.

It was beautiful. I had some good times sitting there in the daytime, staring away at it.

[Stevan] (37:24 - 37:45)

How is the fire element at, I mean, for our regional burns in Australia, it's primal, it's the main attraction, but for KiwiBurn it is also, you know, the, you gotta have, you gotta have the effigy and the temple burn. So do you guys ever consider of maybe one year or something that you cannot burn anything?

[Hippathy] (37:45 - 37:46)

There's nearly been years.

[Stevan] (37:48 - 37:49)

What happens then?

[Kym] (37:50 - 39:32)

So we do a, we do a no burn plan. In case of, in case of that being the case, there was a period in, I think, November that we wondered if we would be allowed to burn. Things get dismantled and stored.

You know, we throw around options of leaving things on the paddock to burn at a later time. Yeah, it's, it's one of the things that we have to put forward when we do our proposals is if we cannot burn this, how are we actually going to have the manpower to take this down and leave no trace? So we always cross our fingers that that's not going to happen, of course, but we, we do write a game plan for that.

Although the game plan's never really too fleshed out because in the back of your mind, just like, this is not going to happen. Like, please don't let this happen. We need to be able to burn it.

I think that if we hadn't been able to burn this year, there would have been that sense of incompletion. People kept asking me how I would feel once the temple had actually gone and burnt and how it must be sad to see something that you've created burn, but I didn't feel that way about it at all. I very much felt that it needed to burn, like throughout that whole process.

I was like, if I don't get to burn this, I'm going to be super, super upset about it. And I said from the day that the festival opens, the temple has been gifted and that's, that's job, you know, job done in a lot of ways. How the community interacts with it and responds to it and treats it after that is off my shoulders.

Basically anything that happens to it after the opening day of the festival, it's, it's no longer, for want of a better word, it's no longer my property, my baby, you know, but yeah, it's definitely always a fear when you're building that you won't get to burn it for sure.

[Shelley] (39:33 - 41:20)

Yeah, the EXCOM reached out to me in my role as regional contact to get information from other regionals around the world about what, what, what options, what things they do when they can't burn. Because we had very, very hot, dry few weeks in November and that really looked like, you know, we were heading towards the possibility of a fire ban if that weather kept up, which it didn't, but you know, you never know.

And yeah, so I gathered a whole lot of information. There were some really, really interesting things. There are some burns that can never, some burn events that can never burn, they can never have a burn.

So they have a whole lot of, you know, really great initiatives about how to get around that. And so I, you know, I gathered information and shared it with, with the team, but you know, there are, it is something that maybe, you know, needs to be looked at as, as options, you know, if we do have an extremely dry, hot year, which might be next year. And, and the other observation I guess is, is Ignition Festival is, is a couple of weeks before KiwiBurn.

And I always find it really interesting going from Ignition to KiwiBurn and Ignition don't burn, they can't have a burn. They had a school ball this year, which was, you know, amazing. The energy was very high, very, very exciting, but it's not a burn.

And some people really, really want that fire element. And it is, when I go to KiwiBurn, it really is, makes such a big difference having, having that element there.

[Hippathy] (41:20 - 41:45)

Yeah, you got to give those hippies an excuse to, you know, rip off all their clothes and run around a giant fire, right? You know, as were the old days of Burning Man in the States, you know, the Gerlach Regional, they still have the, that strong tradition, which is definitely not alive at that, on the playa these days. You don't see a bunch of naked hippies running around the man fire anymore, although you certainly used to.

[Stevan] (41:46 - 42:05)

Well, Hippathy, can I ask you, like, most of the stuff that you built, most of the art you built, are burnt, gets burnt down. And that's the, the fire is a crucial element to it. You've built some great art pieces and temples and effigies over the years.

How do you feel about, about KiwiBurn and the whole element of fire there?

[Hippathy] (42:06 - 43:16)

I mean, I mean, I love fire. I love the chaotic energy of the effigy fire. One of my, I mean, yeah, for me, the effigy is that full chaos, that full, you know, full noise.

And we tend to, we tend to heckle quite a bit during, during the, during the effigy burn. I think my favourite heckle from last year was more chaos. I was told this year that the best heckle I did was screaming, repented everyone while all the naked hippies ran around the fire.

Yeah, I don't know. There's something, there's definitely something primal about it, you know, and you really see people act and do things they wouldn't normally do, you know, like it, it, it, it creates a transcendent moment, you know. Yeah, personally, you know, like in, though I've burnt quite a few of my art installations, I was actually just thinking while, while you guys were kind of talking about fire, is that there's also a lot of value in building permanent art and that, that's actually what I kind of prefer.

Burning stuff is fun, but I think other people do it better than me. Well, not better. Differently.

[Kym] (43:17 - 43:52)

It was, it was interesting to watch my kids go absolute feral as well, to watch that, that change in them. They were, in, in the nature of heckling, they had a trogdor the burninator going at one point. I don't know if you remember the very, very old, yeah, so they're sitting there going, you know, burninating the countryside, burninating the peasants and having a great time.

For them, it was doing something that you're not usually allowed to do, you know, you're not allowed to go and set things on fire. So I think there was a lot of rebellion that came out in that moment.

[Stevan] (43:54 - 43:59)

That's encouraging to hear that kids love, you know, they, they will keep the tradition then. That's, that's great to hear.

[Kym] (44:00 - 44:32)

Yeah, yeah, and that's what I was saying before about getting kids involved in these burnable builds as well, because I know that, you know, Pete's talked a lot about, sorry, Lumos has talked a lot about the rangers and things overseas and they have like junior rangers and things like that. And it's, it's kind of like, why don't we have a junior build squad? Why don't we have, why don't we teach the next generation of people how to build art and how to burn art and how to, how to keep these things going?

Because at the end of the day, they're going to be the people that need to value it in order to, to keep that fireside going.

[Stevan] (44:32 - 44:38)

Yeah. What's the restriction? I mean, you don't have to be 18 to hold a hammer.

What's the restrictions? We should have more of that. I think that's a good idea.

[Kym] (44:39 - 45:21)

There's a lot of legalities around having kids build, a lot of safety concerns and things like that, which was probably the main reason that I didn't go ahead with that. Lots of liability and just, you know, all of those fun red tape things. So it was kind of like, that would need to be done in a safe way.

And then you've got restrictions around the materials that you could use. So you start thinking, well, you know, couldn't they make it out of cardboard or something, but no, because that comes with its own risk of, of pieces flying off as it burns and its own, its own challenges from a safety perspective. So I think it's just impractical being the big word, so I think it's just important that we foster the passion in other ways, even if they can't be involved in the hands-on side of things.

[Stevan] (45:22 - 45:30)

Okay. Shall we talk about some of the arts that you guys participated in? Hippathy, you had, you had a telephone art, a telephone installation or something, telephone game.

[Kym] (45:30 - 45:31)

That was so great.

[Hippathy] (45:32 - 47:28)

Yeah. Well, that was, that was, that was the leftover of, it's a project we've done for a few years and it's actually, it kind of, every year it's gotten smaller and a little, but this year it got better after getting smaller. But I think the, so last year we'd built it, we built the phone system and all you could do was ring between a wall, between one, between art support services and the hub or centre camp.

We had another phone running across the street, but there were some issues with that cabling. So that kind of never came to fruition, but they had left that one of the phones are going to left in the storage somehow, in the art support services storage. So technically we made art out of MOOP and we, yeah, when we were unpacking some of the stuff, some of the stuff when I was there, popping out, I saw this phone and I was, I mean, oh, I should get this going.

I wonder if I can just, I wonder if I can just get this going and put a public phone number on it and get it out there. And everyone around me was like, that's a brilliant idea. I'm like, okay, this is easy for me.

I work in, as being an artist, I work in voiceover. So it was extremely easy for me to set up a phone, put a phone number on it and put it out to the world. We geolocated the phone number in Martin, which is one of the major towns next to Kiwiburn, major town, not much going on there.

It's like calling Matong a major town for a reference for Burning Seeders. And yeah, we got the number out into the world. Some of the other teams, some of the team from town planning then mounted the phone on a mannequin and it was all on.

You could only answer it on speaker phone, which actually kind of made it work a lot better because whenever someone called in, they weren't just talking to one person, they were talking to a whole group of people. Yeah. And the phone ran hot.

[Shelley] (47:29 - 47:47)

I answered it a bit when I was working at art support services. It rang a lot and spoke to people in London and Singapore, a couple of places in New Zealand. It was really, really, really fun.

[Kym] (47:48 - 48:03)

At some point you got this great little umbrella as well. He had this little, so in one hand he had the phone being presented and the other hand, it was just this umbrella just keeping everything dry as well. So sometimes when it was raining, you could just go and stand under the phone man's umbrella with him and answer the phone.

It's really cool.

[Shelley] (48:04 - 48:38)

That's very cool. And some of the people I spoke to, the cool thing for them is they couldn't be at Kiwiburn and they felt connected.

It was just really important. I think some people rang back a couple of times. Someone asked me what my favourite something recipe was.

I can't remember. Yeah, it was pretty random. And I think the other great thing about it is it's interactive art and that often lands so well.

[Stevan] (48:38 - 48:44)

Yeah. Were there any other interactive arts around at Kiwiburn this year as well? There's a bit of randomness.

Performing arts?

[Shelley] (48:44 - 48:52)

There wasn't any cabaret this year, was there? Oh, yeah, there was up at MCC. They had like a talent quest.

[Stevan] (48:52 - 48:55)

There was no sequel to Kiwiburn on ice?

[Shelley] (48:56 - 48:59)

No, sadly. That was so good.

[Hippathy] (49:00 - 49:02)

So, so good.

[Shelley] (49:03 - 49:03)

Yeah.

[Hippathy] (49:04 - 49:36)

No.

There was, yeah, Emma and the, oh, I'm going to save her name. I'm going to save her name installation wrong, so I'm not going to name it. I'm terrible with remembering names.

Gemma and the Normal Worm was quite great, which returned again this year, which is like an audio recording, audio documentary, audio story, which has been, which is now, was at Kiwiburn last year and returned again this year. What else was there?

[Kym] (49:36 - 49:37)

I'm trying to think.

[Hippathy] (49:38 - 50:17)

I, to be honest, I, the thing is what happens when it's muddy at Kiwiburn, you don't tend to go out much. I certainly spent a lot of time at camp and was never really that keen to go out because going out involves getting quite, quite muddy and where our camp is is up on the top paddock and the top paddock tends to not get as muddy as other places and to get anywhere else you really have to, at some points, honestly, it feels a bit like going for a war zone or something. It's pretty intense.

I mean, I'm sure a war zone's probably overkill, but. I think so. It's bad, you know, like it's bad, bad.

[Shelley] (50:18 - 51:35)

It's definitely challenging. Like, I mean, I actually camp near Hippathy and it is, it wasn't too muddy up there except for the little path up, but, you know, it does sort of make you think about, like, we've got four paddocks. So, you know, for me, I've got slight mobility thing with my leg.

So I'm going to think about, well, do I want to go down to the third paddock to see my friend? But I did go out a lot, but probably I just didn't go as far as I often would. I wouldn't go as far as often.

So I just, yeah, probably the weather maybe curtailed a little bit of impromptu performance art. I don't know. One night, I think Thursday, maybe, there was the art tour at night time.

And so they'd come and do like a five minute party at a dance camp. So one of my friends was playing. So I went to listen to him and hang out and support him.

And then along comes like, I don't know, 30 or 40 people. Suddenly it was just this huge crowd and this huge energy. So there was like things like that.

And then off they went to their next destination. That was pretty cool.

[Stevan] (51:36 - 51:45)

Do you think the, I mean, you guys have been onto the site Huntersville for over 10 years now. Do you think the site needs a bit of rearranging now and then, a bit of improvement?

[Shelley] (51:46 - 52:43)

It's good now. When we got new town planners, what, six or seven years ago, the way they looked at it differently, which is really the current layout still, which is probably just being tweaked here and there. It just works so well.

I think it's good to review it. But I mean, if it gets reviewed, I don't think it would be a major review. I think it's quite a logical layout.

There were a few changes, a couple of little changes this year, like where car parking was. Car parking has always been on quite a flat area. And then there's a little sort of hill behind it.

So the car parking was on the hill and there was camping on the flat, like just things like that. But in terms of the actual street layout, it was very, very similar for the last many years.

[Hippathy] (52:44 - 53:16)

Is it just me, or was there a new spot for art this year between the middle paddock and the lower paddock? I think when you walked down kind of in the middle, there was a glade, there was a labyrinth and something else. I don't think I've seen art there before.

And I was, it really got my mind going, going, oh, this is a great place. What could we put here? So it's a little bit off the beaten path.

So I might have some ideas for that maybe next year. We'll see.

[Stevan] (53:16 - 53:31)

Let's talk about FOMO a little bit, because I want to ask you guys, was there any events that you were fearing missing out? Some of the things that you wanted to see, but you couldn't. Any events or workshops out there this year?

[Shelley] (53:31 - 54:33)

Yeah, we have an app that some clever person in our community made an app last year, I think it was, for the first time we used it. And all the events, all the registered events get loaded into it. And that's really cool.

And you can star something and save it to your favorites or whatever. And so I was really good at doing that. And then really good at sleeping in.

And that's probably not a new thing. And it has nothing to do with the app. But when you have the app and you're choosing things, you're like, wow, that sounds really interesting.

It does get you excited about going to things. And then you're like, oh, I'm a bit late for that. Damn.

So yeah, it's just more of that. Probably later in the week, the mud thing maybe became a thing. But earlier in the week, it was actually not too bad to get around at all.

[Kym] (54:33 - 55:37)

Yeah, I approached KiwiBurn really differently this year. My first year, I was like, I looked at the event guide, I kind of scanned through some things. It's like, that sounds cool.

That sounds cool. And that sounds cool. But I took absolutely no notice of when and where things were.

And I was kind of like, if I end up there, I end up there. I had a lot of people telling me, oh, you need to come to this thing and that thing, because it's amazing. So I relied a lot on my camp to just drag me to things.

Because, you know, through word of mouth, which I really loved, because they were things that I hadn't considered going to. And then I ended up there. And then the other thing that ended up happening was, I just accidentally ended up at all the things that I wanted to be at anyway.

So there was an emo party night one night that I was like, that looks really cool, ended up there. There was a karaoke event by Camp Wannabe, a bondage karaoke event, where they tied you while you were singing. I was like, that sounds really fun.

I want to go do that, and ended up there accidentally, which ended up being the highlight of my 2025 burn. So I just...

[Shelley] (55:37 - 55:38)

What song did you sing?

[Kym] (55:38 - 57:28)

I think last year I did Alone by Heart, and this year I did Defying Gravity. I did the duet by myself. It was great.

And it was quite fun too, because at the end when I'd been tied, I actually broke out of my ties for the last line, which is, you know, they're never going to keep us down. And I ripped my arms out of my shibari and was waving them around above my head, and everybody was going crazy for that. So that was really fun.

But I try not to schedule things. I did want to do more this year, and I did want to be better organized, but also I knew that that was pretty unfeasible, considering that I was going to have to worry about generators for the lights on the temple, and just be occupied with the ongoing stuff that needs to happen during the actual burn for that space. And so I was like, if I don't get to anything, I don't get to anything.

But I really did make the effort to go and check out some camps that I'd never visited. It was cool to see Creature Lab back this year, so I went to have a couple of dances over there for the first time, and things like that. I tried to make sure that I was still expanding my experiences.

But I think having a really rigid game plan when you go to Kemipuna is just a terrible idea in general. It's fun to look for the little things though, like the smaller camp run events that you're really not sure how many people are going to show up to, and go and try and do the little niche activities as well, rather than spending the whole time dancing up at the larger camps. Because I think that was a regret from 2025, was I also spent a lot of time dancing.

And I was kind of like, well, I'm enjoying dancing with the community, but also I could go and do this on a Saturday night. I need to go and experience some of the things that I wouldn't have the opportunity to do usually. And dancing didn't really feel like that space this year.

I mean, I still got in a boogie, but it felt quite different.

[Shelley] (57:29 - 57:44)

Yeah, I really wanted to go to the NPW. They had like a pub quiz thing one night, but I didn't get there.

But I love quizzes. I love going to things like that. It would have been great.

And it was really cool that they put that on.

[Kym] (57:45 - 58:15)

Yeah, I had an awesome time up at NPW for the Air Guitar Champs, because I walked in at the end and they were just kind of finishing up, and they were like, does anybody else want to go before you wind this up? And I was like, wait, what are you doing?

And they told me about it. So I did a great ACDC slide on my knees across the AstroTurf floor and tore a hole in my leg. But it's always the things that you find just kind of unexpectedly.

Having your eyes open, I think, just being open to being dragged into the shenanigans.

[Hippathy] (58:15 - 1:00:05)

I had a really good time at Blood Sports at Creature Lab, where I won some money, I lost some money. There was a lot of gambling. I did a lot of gambling.

I lost some schmacks. I lost some bock. But I won some schmacks, and I think I won some other weird currencies as well, which I'd never seen before.

But they had sock wrestling, where you would start wrestling with just a single sock on, and they had a boxing ring. And the aim of the game was to rip the other person's sock off. So that's how you won.

And then they were taking bets on everyone. So I thought I was really backing a really good hippie, but turns out I backed the wrong hippie. That's all right.

The hippie I backed that lost me a big wad of cash. I told him as I was putting the money on, I said, look, I'm putting my life savings on you, and he lost it all. He had his sock pulled off pretty quickly.

I was very disappointed. But he's told me he's got a way to repay me. So I'm looking forward to seeing that as well.

Also, another great event I saw at the Creature Lab was their interrogation. They were interrogating people. So they had a set up with electrodes, which they would stick to different parts of your body.

And then they had a bright light, which they would shine in your face, and then they would demand answers from you. What is your mother's maiden name? What are the last four digits of your credit card?

And they would shock you more and more and more as the time got on. It was quite intense to watch. That was quite good.

[Stevan] (1:00:06 - 1:00:07)

That sounds therapeutic.

[Kym] (1:00:09 - 1:00:38)

I stumbled across some weeding too between Creature Lab and Low Expectations. Apparently, there's a long running feud. And on my Sunday night up there after the temple burn with my bottle of wine, I was sitting there, and I woke up to this gorgeous rendition of What a Wonderful World.

And it was during some dispute-settling marriage that I got the gist of. Apparently, they were just settling a feud the old-fashioned way with a good marriage to solidify.

[Stevan] (1:00:39 - 1:00:50)

So what other inter-camp shenanigans or fuckery? I mean, with you, Hippothy, you've been involved in some with your theme camp, two couches and a rug over the years. What has continued?

[Hippathy] (1:00:52 - 1:00:57)

Well, we had our couches stolen again this year. We didn't try and steal them back.

[Stevan] (1:00:57 - 1:00:58)

That's predictable, isn't it?

[Hippathy] (1:00:58 - 1:01:45)

Yeah, it's pretty predictable, though the hazards slowed down because we just don't try to steal them back anymore. It makes it not so fun for people. I did participate in the theft of our own rug from my own camp.

I did participate in that, but I had some friends who turned up, and they asked me to join them as a shattist. And they said, oh, you need to come join us as a shattist. So I went, and I joined them as a shattist.

And in character, I stole the rug from my own camp. My campmates were none too happy with me, but it wasn't me. I was in character.

This year, we're getting a little bit old with the shenanigans, I think, our camp. Yeah.

[Shelley] (1:01:46 - 1:02:07)

There's still the MCC, the Mint Country Club, have a high ab, so things get hung up quite high, up the high ab, like stolen things. So that carried on. That happened at Ignition, and then it happened again at KiwiBurn.

It's pretty funny.

[Hippathy] (1:02:07 - 1:02:17)

That may have been where I took the rug straight away, and watched it get put up in the high ab.

[Kym] (1:02:18 - 1:02:39)

That was one of my favorite shenanigans moments from 2025, is us walking past coffee home at like 5am, and I see all these people rigging up the coffee viking ship to the crane. And I was like, what the heck is going on? I thought something had gone wrong.

And then the next I woke up and I saw the entire ship just hoisted over MCC, and I was like, this is great.

[Hippathy] (1:02:40 - 1:02:58)

There was an art installation that came from Ignition, a giant pencil. The theme for Ignition was high school. It started off saying KiwiBurn High, and by the end of the week, it said Ignition High.

[Kym] (1:03:00 - 1:03:53)

I heard the people's court at Easily Distracted was really good this year too. They created a giant guillotine. So not only did you go to the people's court for your past transgressions, you actually ended up getting executed as well.

I've got a real soft spot for Easily Distracted as they were my first camp that I was on paddock with. I don't know how to describe them. Very eclectic.

We had a dune pile. It was very in keeping with the Easily Distracted theme. Those guys still feel like home in a lot of ways.

Their events are always super funny. I don't know if Lucy was doing bad drink mixing this year, but they collect all the alcohol from all the people leaving and then mix them up into cocktails of whatever you get. I didn't actually manage to attend the people's court, and I'm really sad that I missed it.

[Stevan] (1:03:53 - 1:04:05)

What about some of the theme camps? Were there any theme camps you thought there was stunning decor or stunning vibes or newcomers? What kind of awards would you give these camps?

[Shelley] (1:04:05 - 1:04:13)

I was about to say that actually. You're just breaking up a bit there.

[Hippathy] (1:04:14 - 1:04:15)

You go.

[Shelley] (1:04:16 - 1:04:59)

Oh, Techno Oasis is a sound camp. They obviously play a lot of techno, but they very simply create a beautiful space. There's not huge amounts of decoration.

There's a lot of just a very simple amount of lighting, like a huge stretch tent. They always put seating at the back of the dance floor or even have a separate space. They kind of have a double-sided DJ area, so it can face either way.

It's just very cool, very welcoming, very simple, just a cool spot to hang out. The bonus is you can sit there and listen to good music. It's really good.

[Hippathy] (1:05:00 - 1:05:02)

Yeah, I think I was there. Was it the Saints and Sinners?

[Shelley] (1:05:03 - 1:05:04)

Yeah, Saints and Sinners.

[Hippathy] (1:05:05 - 1:05:44)

There was a great moment where, like Shelley was saying, they have their sound system that can point inwards and point outwards. When I arrived at the party, the speakers were all pointing outside, and there was a massive crowd of people dancing outside in front of their camp. Then when the DJ changed over, they flipped the speakers onto the inside, and everyone starts moving on inside.

Then the party continued into a bit of a boiler room kind of environment. Everyone stuffed into the room. It really created quite an awesome vibe.

Yeah, they're always coming out. I'm always super impressed, and it just keeps getting better.

[Kym] (1:05:44 - 1:06:17)

Decor for me, I think, was—I'm probably going to butcher the name, but it was this little camp called Ye Olde Dragon or something like that. They had this kind of medieval tavern set up with tablecloths and all of these goblets and things like that on the tables, and it felt so cozy. It was just such a warm, welcoming—lots of little couches and places to sit, but it just had rows and rows of tables and lighting and that kind of dim tavern-y vibes.

Really pretty.

[Shelley] (1:06:17 - 1:06:25)

Oh, that sounds amazing. Low Expectations had a really lovely vibe.

Very welcoming space as well, I thought.

[Kym] (1:06:26 - 1:06:27)

Yeah, super cozy.

[Shelley] (1:06:27 - 1:06:28)

Yeah, really nice.

[Stevan] (1:06:28 - 1:06:36)

Sometimes when I'm on the paddock, I follow my nose and follow my stomach, so what are some of the food camps that really excited you at KiwiBurn this year?

[Shelley] (1:06:37 - 1:07:08)

Definitely Souper Kitchen. Just what they bring is amazing. They're baking.

They'll have a plate, you're walking by, and they've got a plate with cut-up small pieces of chocolate brownie, or they've always got a big pot of soup going. They did pancakes on Saturday morning, which were amazing. They just nourish the paddock.

They're just really wonderful people. I think it might be their third or fourth KiwiBurn.

[Kym] (1:07:09 - 1:08:11)

Yeah, Souper Kitchen was my son's favorite camp.

Every half an hour it was, can we go to Super Kitchen and see what they've got? Because they have these plates of food out that you just help yourself on the way past, and they were just the loveliest people. Always greeted him with a smile, no matter how many times he came back for more food.

I'd be doing a real disservice to Raph if I didn't mention Raph's Argentinian barbecue. He's just a powerhouse of food. We had the privilege of actually using his shared space to build, because he lives five minutes down the road from the paddock.

Raph and Turtle were just the most amazing hosts. We were going to do all of our own food while we had our crew there at their place. He just ended up cooking for us every single night.

Just an incredibly generous guy. We appreciate that so much. The food is, I just can't even describe it.

I wish I had that passion for cooking, but unfortunately I don't. To be fed was beautiful.

[Shelley] (1:08:12 - 1:09:00)

They do an Argentinian barbecue every year at KiwiBurn.

Not everyone likes to see the meat, the animals getting cooked, but the food is just stunning, and it's an amazing gift to the community. It's a really community thing. People queue.

It's very social in the queue. You line up with a plate to get your meat. It's a really lovely thing.

It's in the forest as well, and if it's a hot day, it doesn't matter. It's just really nice and cool there. Just a really, really incredible, incredibly generous gift.

[Hippathy] (1:09:01 - 1:09:10)

I heard they had butterfly cow this year. They had a full cow stretched out on a giant metal plate, Argentinian barbecue style.

[Stevan] (1:09:12 - 1:09:19)

The community potluck and gathering and whole sharing thing. Is that still going on at KiwiBurn?

[Hippathy] (1:09:19 - 1:09:27)

I heard there was a lot of confusion as to where the community potluck was on Sunday night. Sometimes there is. I think lots of different people have it.

I never go to them.

[Shelley] (1:09:31 - 1:09:36)

I haven't been, actually. I'm generally not hungry then.

[Hippathy] (1:09:36 - 1:09:44)

People eat at Burns. It's not just protein shakes and snacks.

[Kym] (1:09:45 - 1:10:37)

I think I exclusively ate at the crew kitchen, to be honest. Also, massive shout out to Biz and the team and Skittles for the coffee and all the guys up there that spent their Burn cooking for all of the teams and all the people that were working. That, again, was just another huge gift.

Especially when you're embarking on a build, you don't have time to think about eating. Food becomes a source of potential stress when you're trying to manage a whole bunch of different things, especially if you're on paddock for three weeks or so, like I was. It's like, how do I go do my food shopping runs?

And just knowing that that provision is there, it really allows all the other teams to do the jobs and be so much more effective in their roles. Thank you so much to those guys, too.

[Shelley] (1:10:38 - 1:10:39)

Superstars.

[Stevan] (1:10:39 - 1:10:50)

What are some of your favourite moments at KiwiBurn this year? Some of the magical moments? Some side adventures?

Side adventures that you guys talk about?

[Kym] (1:10:50 - 1:12:50)

Walking back from top paddock at five o'clock in the morning on the first night and it had started raining and the path had got really muddy, so I was coming down past centre camp, and Shelley will know exactly where I'm talking about. There were the portaloos on the right-hand side before you pass through the gate to the temple paddock. And being the really smart cookie that I am and being very bold about the fact that I was here last year, I know where I'm going, we decided to walk to the right-hand side of the portaloos instead of staying on the main muddy path.

And if you're not familiar with that side, that path to the right of the portaloos, you hit a ditch. So four or five o'clock in the morning, I go absolutely like nipples deep in this ditch full of water. My radio's soaked, my whole body's soaked.

And I'm trying to clamber my way out with my friend alongside me who's also fallen into the ditch. So he took two steps and kind of went in fairly shallow and I, taking my huge paces, just yeeted myself into the middle of this thing. And then we hear the scream about 20 seconds after and a guy starts swearing and I'm like, oh mate, did you fall in the ditch as well?

And he's like, yeah. And I was like, that was silly. What did you do that for?

And he was like, I was following you guys. So I'm very sorry to whoever the sad soul is that we walked into the ditch. But it was funny because about two days later, I was walking back through there and I was laughing about it with a friend and showing them where I'd fallen in.

And you could see the three punch holes in the grass that had kind of been swept along by the water. And you could see very distinct three holes. And sitting on top of the third hole, there was a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.

And I had just run out of tobacco because of course, being on a build, I'd been smoking like crazy the whole time. And I was like, oh, the ditch provides. Thank you for your gift, ditch.

And I like got this unopened packet of cigarettes. So to whoever that person was tracking me down next year, I owe you a packet of ciggies. And I'm very, very sorry.

[Shelley] (1:12:51 - 1:12:59)

I've heard a few stories. I've heard a few stories about people falling in. I think you're find.

It wasn't just you.

[Kym] (1:13:00 - 1:13:33)

No, I put a post about it and there were definitely other reports of people doing the same thing. But I reported it to site and they, thankfully they put some lights on there.

So it wasn't a hazard for the following nights, but I definitely know that I wasn't the only one. We actually, I was nicknaming it Ditchburn until the rainbow thing started happening. That was my second choice for a good name for it, because of all the people that had fallen in the ditches.

And they would, they stink. They stink like farm runoff as well. It was not a pleasant experience at all.

[Hippathy] (1:13:33 - 1:13:34)

Ditch Daz.

[Kym] (1:13:34 - 1:13:36)

Yeah, Ditch Daz bro.

[Hippathy] (1:13:38 - 1:13:41)

Yeah, so it was a terrible burn. Tell your mates, don't come.

[Shelley] (1:13:42 - 1:14:26)

I had lots of little magical moments, but I mean, nothing like falling in a ditch. Luckily. But just lots of like laugh out, like lots of laughing.

And it was a really nice burn. I really enjoyed the burn. Probably because it wasn't as massive a population, it didn't feel hectic.

It felt really nice, but they felt busy enough. Dance floors were busy. Camps had enough people in them generally to create a beautiful vibe and for people to enjoy their gift of what they bought.

I just, yeah, I thought it was a really nice burn overall.

[Hippathy] (1:14:26 - 1:14:43)

Yeah. As much as the mud can kind of suck, it does. Yeah. Like we started talking about earlier, it really does bring your camp together.

And yeah, I really enjoyed so much of the time that we spent in camp and all the silly things that we did with friends, new and old.

[Stevan] (1:14:44 - 1:15:02)

Yeah. The whole, I guess, the notion of having, I guess, what's the threshold of KiwiBurn of having things, maybe too much people and the number of just having it just enough, just right, like the Goldilocks kind of thing. Is it 1,500?

Is it 2,000? What's the number?

[Shelley] (1:15:02 - 1:15:45)

Last year was 2,400 and that felt really good. Our resource consent is 2,500. So we've never had 2,400 before.

It's just been very, very slowly increasing over the last many years. I know 2,400 felt good to me last year. It was really nice and sunny and dry.

So that did help. And it was probably, I don't know how many actually were on site this year. I think a few people, I mean, I had a couple of friends who were like, yeah, it looks like rain incoming.

We're not going. Well, I don't know. Let's say there were 1,500 and maybe, maybe more.

I don't know. But it was a good number, I thought. I think more is better.

It was still good.

[Hippathy] (1:15:46 - 1:17:25)

Yeah, I'm very much a more is more kind of boy. And I certainly think that KiwiBurn could grow more. Probably be one of my biggest critiques over the years is that, you know, that the event could grow.

There's been lots of discussion over the years, you know, do we have enough volunteers and we're doing it this way and we're doing it that way. And I think it's, I think there's kind of different ways of thinking about it. But personally, I think, you know, if you make an event longer, when you're volunteering two days, even three days out of an eight-day event, it feels a lot easier to volunteer.

And that can actually increase volunteerism, where if you're trying to cram partying, enjoying time with your friends, running your camp, running all your events in a four or five-day event, you know, and you can't get early entry, then that's quite difficult. And, you know, you're trying to cram a lot of things into a lot of space. Yeah, so there's lots of different ways of thinking about things.

And, you know, I personally think that it would be great for us to be able to, and some of the problems that come with having an event that's popular and sells out really quickly can be avoided just by allowing more tickets to be there. So I think KiwiBurn is in kind of a pretty bit of a sweet spot right now. I think it's uncool again, which is great.

You know, the heat isn't on, it hasn't got the outrageous popularity. It'll be interesting to see what happens next year with ticket sales, depending on how many they have available, how fast it's sold out. Certainly wasn't hard to get tickets this year.

[Kym] (1:17:26 - 1:18:50)

Yeah, I think it's really important with community growth is that it's paced well. I've watched a fairly new festival expand incredibly quickly and it brings a lot of problems to the community. So when you have one person that's new and nine people that already have the adopted ethos and culture of the community, that person gets bought in and they adopt the culture of the nine.

But when you have a lot of people coming in all at once and you get that rapid expansion, a lot of the core principles and things like that can get quite diluted. So that's when the each one teach one becomes really super important. And the way that you are integrating those newcomers becomes really, really crucial.

So for me personally, as much as I would like to see KiwiBurn grow, I don't want to see it explode. I really feel strongly that the people that are coming in need to resonate with the community. You know, you don't want to push it into that mainstream where we're suddenly just getting a whole lot of people that don't have KiwiBurner principles and ethos and culture just flood the place.

And I mean that causes problems logistically, it causes safety concerns, it causes a whole lot of other concerns as well. But I, being an extrovert, I'm very much the same. Like the more people, the better.

Just with that balance of care for the community as well.

[Stevan] (1:18:50 - 1:19:02)

Yeah, cool. Okay, let's talk about the KiwiBurn AGM, which happened on the 24th of February 2026 this year. So this is after a month afterwards, after the event, KiwiBurn event?

[Hippathy] (1:19:03 - 1:19:49)

Well, it was actually the AGM for the 2025 event. So KiwiBurn would usually have its AGM around August, well after Burning Man time, kind of middle of September to sometime in November, depending on the year, but usually kind of that latter, that last quarter kind of time. But for whatever reason, yeah, the 2025 AGM hadn't happened.

It ended up happening, what, about a month after? Yeah, about a month after the 2026 event. So, which was interesting because it meant we were passing a bunch of motions that were a bit moot, like the budget for 2026 event, which obviously had just been...

[Shelley] (1:19:49 - 1:23:27)

Yeah, actually the rules of the society, I think, say that the AGM should be held by the 31st of August each year. Yeah, so the Treasurer stepped down last year, I guess kind of a rage quit situation, maybe in about April, I think, about a week before the EXCOMM summit. It wasn't announced for another month, I think, but anyway, that happened.

And so that meant there was no Treasurer to, like, do all the expenses after the event last year and all put together, all the financials for the Afterburn report, and the AGM can't be held without the Afterburn report, sort of is how it usually goes. So that contributed to the delay of the Afterburn report, therefore the delay of the AGM. When the AGM did happen in last month, the Afterburn report was released, but it was still in draft form with three significant areas not filled out or completed, and they were the responsibility of the chairperson.

And yeah, they're just not there. They're still not there. The financials were completed and presented.

Yeah, so it was a fairly pedestrian AGM, but there had been some very interesting posts and discussion on the Kiwiburn Facebook group the week before. So things got, you know, interesting. It's multiple posts by different people who are very passionate about Kiwiburn and had genuine concerns and offering some really good solutions or ideas for how Kiwiburn could proceed and just try and be inclusive of people.

People have very strong opinions, so it became quite heated. But, you know, it's just very much passionate people, kind of all trying to achieve the same thing, just not necessarily in the same way or the same direction. So, you know, it kind of comes through as a clash.

Not everyone understands everything going on. In fact, we don't always know what's going on very much, unfortunately, so there's probably a few assumptions that get made. But yeah, it was just a lot of passion, and it was an eventful AGM, and the chairperson stepped down before the AGM, and it was announced at the AGM that the chairperson is no longer the chairperson.

And then two other people, two other ex-comm members announced their intention to step down during the AGM as well. So a lot happened, and people were very respectful in general at the AGM. So yeah, it was probably quite interesting for a lot of people.

I don't think I've ever seen so many people attend a KiwiBurn AGM. It's probably 150, 140, 150 people. Yeah, so normally we'd have 40, maybe, you know.

[Hippathy] (1:23:27 - 1:23:30)

That would be the previous maximum, I would have said, would have been about 40, so yeah.

[Shelley] (1:23:31 - 1:24:14)

Yeah, so that was good. I think all the ideas and exchanges and posts on KiwiBurn and really intrigue people because they're like, well, hang on, this is my community, what's going on? Because we don't have an overly interactive community in terms of people really jumping into conversations.

There's a few things that trigger people and get them chatting. But, you know, overall it's, you know, the forums are quite quiet places, generally. The forum being Facebook at the moment.

[Hippathy] (1:24:14 - 1:24:18)

There was a saga in of it itself at this, last December.

[Shelley] (1:24:19 - 1:24:25)

Yeah, yeah. So KiwiBurn's supposed to be leaving Facebook sometime soon.

[Kym] (1:24:25 - 1:26:08)

I think that was one of the things I really noticed because being quite new to the community, as I was saying, and obviously leading a build this year, I felt like I got pulled into the political side of KiwiBurn really quickly.

I feel like there's a lot of, a lot of kind of, if you don't agree with us, you're against us in some ways. Even if it's like, I understand and I agree with parts of what you're saying, but I think, you know, the method that you're going about this, or I think it should be achieved in a different way. And it really drove me to go in and participate in that meeting and sit there and hear what was going on, which I think was the reason why a lot of people wanted to be there.

Like you say, that vested community interest and like, what's happening? Are we going to be forced to decide something? Like, are we asked to being, you know, are we being asked to pick a side?

And I think, I really agree with Shelley. I think it's a lot of people who are ultimately striving for the same thing. Just nobody can agree at the moment on how to achieve the thing.

But I'm not a person that likes to be involved politically with things. I don't have an activist kind of nature. I know that there are people that are very good at getting in and reorganizing structures and things like that.

But as somebody that doesn't feel equipped in any of those roles, it feels a little bit disconcerting at the moment, not knowing what's going to happen in terms of the path forward. So I think the faster that we can get clarity around that, the better.

[Shelley] (1:26:09 - 1:26:52)

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, a lot of the frustration that gets vented is just because people aren't feeling heard. And that has to change. You know, the one thing I've been banging on about for years is the lack of transparency in decision making or whatever's happening.

And sure, a lot of people in our community don't want to know all the ins and outs, but we're not even really getting or haven't been getting broad, even broad sort of updates on things. So I feel that that message has finally landed and that there will be change. But, you know, always hopeful.

[Hippathy] (1:26:52 - 1:29:08)

Yeah, I've heard rumors that there is now a Department of Transparency within Kiwiburn, which is a great result. And I too, like Shelley, have been, you know, kind of talking within Kiwiburn community for quite a while about, you know, transparency and where things have changed in that space. You know, I think, you know, but for me, it kind of stemmed back in 2020 where, back to that conversation about population growth, I was personally a bit frustrated with how slowly Kiwiburn was growing and seemed very conservative to my kind of eye and thinking, surely there's room to grow faster than this, you know, where we can grow carefully and diligently and acculturate people like what Kim was saying. But yeah, surely there'd be more. And I went looking for information on decisions.

Having been on the excomm, I knew that, you know, all the content of the meetings was meant to be public. And so I should be able to go and have a look through the minutes or look through the discourse that the Xcom had been having and kind of work out what their thinking was, you know. Well, what were they thinking?

Maybe there was some reason for it and I couldn't find it. And when I asked why I wasn't able to find it, I didn't really get much of an answer. It's taken a while.

I don't think that's ever really got a complete answer. So yeah, I think it's, for me, it was very much just time for a bit of a culture shift, you know, just because you're doing really great things and your heart is in the right place, doesn't necessarily make you the perfect person for the job. And I think within volunteer organisations, especially, and I've certainly seen it with KiwiBurn in the past, is that, you know, and I think other burns have seen the same thing, you know, it's, you know, how do you, whilst allowing people to drive their passion, which is what, you know, as a volunteer in an organisation, you know, that's what's really driving you to do it, without trying to curtail people's passion to try and do what's right for the community and the growth of the community and to keep the wider community healthy.

[Stevan] (1:29:09 - 1:29:37)

Yeah. Yeah, it is an important conversation to have. These are the issues that we face when we're growing, but it's not isolated.

I mean, it's not a KiwiBurn thing, it's, I think we all face, all regionals face these. But what's the, so I have read some of the sentiments and some of the, you know, feedback in the forums and the socials. What's the, what lies ahead, do you think?

How would you like to see it pave forward? Obviously, we need to fill some of these positions, volunteer positions.

[Shelley] (1:29:38 - 1:29:44)

There's a lot of volunteer positions available. There has to be, oh, sorry, go ahead.

[Kym] (1:29:44 - 1:31:32)

No, I was going to say, I think the pressure on one person to carry so much of a role is quite hard.

I think I really strongly agree that we need two ICs. And I say that as a person who happened to have a really strong person with me to build Temple this year, you know, like I benefited from, even though I had the overall vision and the big passion for it, I benefited from having my admin person, David, you know, like it was, and I think one of the things that is going to be really hard is that without a chair, we don't have a handover period. And I think what I was, you know, in alignment with what I was saying before about cultivating that next generation of people to step into those roles.

I think we also need to be doing that for our, for our structure, because it's ridiculous that when somebody leaves, after putting structures and systems in place that work, the next person has to come in and completely fly solo and then spend so much energy, you know, creating those structures again, rather than having a suitable training period or, you know, people to share that workload with. And I think, I think that having, you know, more volunteers, like it's the same, it's the whole thing of like many hands make light work. You know, there's lots of people saying, we want change, we want change, we want change.

And feeling like they can't do the entirety of a role. As I said, you've got to think about who goes into those roles and what their strengths are and what they can feasibly manage. But then also you run against that thing of like, you know, many, many chefs spoil the broth.

So it's like, how many people do you need to run something before it starts getting really messy?

[Shelley] (1:31:33 - 1:33:02)

Yeah, I think one of the considerations with the chair role, for example, well, specifically, is that it wasn't just a chair role. It is an event manager role.

And it is a community liaison role as well. Like it's, it's almost a full time role. So regardless of how the chair changes, like, yes, the chair stepped away.

But who do you, when you're advertising in a volunteer organization, for someone, it's a very, very big ask to have to think that someone could fulfill all those things. Like, it's almost a single point of failure set up for KiwiBurn by having one person carry out those important things. And sure, we have a really capable person who was doing that.

But it wasn't good for KiwiBurn, I don't think, for future proofing. It's sort of, it's just didn't make sense. No matter how good the systems were, no matter how well the job was done, you kind of got to think ahead of the next person who's going to be doing that.

And how do you get someone who can put in 40 hours a week or 30 hours a week year round to do the things? Maybe there is another person out there. But, you know, I thought that it just wasn't going to be good for KiwiBurn to keep that structure.

[Kym] (1:33:02 - 1:33:38)

Especially with the state of the economy and things like that as well. You know, like, if you think about it, the only person that is suitable for that role from a practical perspective is somebody who's already financially stable and things like that. There's a lot of people that would have to drive to be in those roles.

But we're all too busy managing our day-to-day lives and our nine-to-fives and trying to get by on what we currently have the spoons for. So inevitably, you're going to get somebody in that role with a business mindset because they probably are already financially literate and all of those things and less, potentially, less community focused. That's just kind of...

[Shelley] (1:33:38 - 1:33:39)

It's a really good observation.

[Kym] (1:33:40 - 1:33:55)

Yeah. Yeah.

That was one of the conversations. I can't take full credit for that. I was having an amazing discussion about that with somebody recently.

And I just, I really resonated with that point because I just, yeah, lots of people with the drive and not the means.

[Shelley] (1:33:55 - 1:34:06)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So, yeah, maybe there's a chair to IC or, I mean, that role gets broken down to three or whatever, three different things or four or whatever it needs to be.

[Hippathy] (1:34:07 - 1:34:10)

Yeah, I think they've already announced that they've broken it down into three different roles.

[Shelley] (1:34:11 - 1:34:11)

Okay.

[Hippathy] (1:34:12 - 1:37:29)

So they are looking for three different roles to replace the chair role is my current understanding based on reading what's in the EFP recently.

But, yeah, I think, I think, you know, like I was kind of saying before the AGM in social media, you know, I think we just need some time to kind of reset, rethink, look at our wounds and kind of think about what is the future. And I think that is what the EXCOMM's kind of doing. Of course, they would have to given, you know, the number of people who resigned and have moved on and looking to do other things.

But, you know, I don't think I wouldn't, although this particular, this particular series of events is unique. I mean, there have been similar situations in Kiwiburn's history in the past, similar situations in other burns in the past, you know, where there's a bit of a reset. So, you know, and yeah, I personally, I've kind of seen these kind of circular, sorry, circular kind of patterns that kind of tend to occur that it's like every five to so years there seems to be something happening and there's some kind of reset.

I think it's definitely a conversation worth happening for burns around the world is, you know, how do we avoid, you know, how do we build structures? How do we build systems? How do we put checks and balances in places that well-intentioned volunteers can end up in positions like this, you know, because obviously, you know, I don't think any of these people involved in any way, shape or form are bad people, you know, or, you know, even what is happening is necessarily bad, so to speak.

But, you know, there does tend to be, you know, the burning seed is the classic example, right? It turned into an absolute shitstorm. And, you know, if you look at, and a lot of conversations I was kind of having with people kind of this time last year when there was quite a few kind of fevers within the community was that asking people to kind of turn things back a little bit because we didn't want to be in the same situation as the community was at the precipice and there was room for it to be massively fractured, like kind of what happened at Burning Seed. And, I mean, I think what just happened with the latest Burning Seed is the classic of that, right?

After all this time, people pouring their hearts out to fix the structure and doing amazing, incredible and great work to reclaim something for the community and then to have the community itself reject it, you know? So, yeah, it's quite interesting how funny little things we have in paddocks, you know, turn into quite debacles and how tribal people can be with their thoughts. Yeah, definitely interesting.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a burn as well, right? It's an experiment in community. That's for sure.

[Stevan] (1:37:30 - 1:37:41)

So, you mentioned the EFP. So, for the listeners out there, the EFP is the Electric Fence Post, which is the communication of excomms. What's the communication from?

[Hippathy] (1:37:42 - 1:37:55)

It's what's like the Jackrabbit Speaks, right? So, Burning Man has the Jackrabbit Speaks and we have the Electric Fence Post because, well, KiwiBurn has and traditionally did have a lot of electric fences.

[Stevan] (1:37:57 - 1:38:07)

That's the communication that people can follow with the howabouts, whereabouts and all the stories and all the cultural stuff from KiwiBurn.

[Hippathy] (1:38:08 - 1:38:12)

Yeah, and what's Burning Seeds? The Flaming Galah Squawks?

[Stevan] (1:38:13 - 1:38:20)

Yeah, Flaming Galah, that's right, yeah. And the Bug Spray for Modifyre? So, there's a lot of variations.

[Kym] (1:38:20 - 1:38:25)

The Bug Spray. As somebody with a nickname, Buggy, I approve of this.

[Stevan] (1:38:29 - 1:38:35)

They burn a lot of bugs at Modifyre. That's the thing they have. They love bugs.

[Hippathy] (1:38:35 - 1:38:38)

I've seen swarms of bugs out on Playa before.

[Kym] (1:38:40 - 1:38:44)

The shrimp, yeah, the little shrimp that came up out of the mud.

[Hippathy] (1:38:44 - 1:38:51)

Temple of transition year, 2011, we reckon it was coming out of all the wood. Stink bugs everywhere. Massive swarms of them.

[Kym] (1:38:52 - 1:38:52)

Amazing.

[Stevan] (1:38:52 - 1:38:55)

So, they're attracted to the firewood, to the wood, yeah.

[Hippathy] (1:38:56 - 1:39:18)

Yeah, we reckon they were crawling out of the wood because, you know, we built it and, you know, massive, you know, it was 24 semi-trailers full of wood. So, then they've been sitting in a yard for a long time.

So, we reckon they might have come for it, but God knows. The Playa does weird things. Maybe it was the first sign of the apocalypse or, you know, there's some biblical thing with locusts, right?

I don't know. I've never read the Bible.

[Stevan] (1:39:19 - 1:39:35)

All right. So, it's quite some quite interesting discussion points around KiwiBurn, definitely. I guess we're in an inflection point.

Yeah, what's the next important event for KiwiBurn?

[Shelley] (1:39:36 - 1:40:26)

Northern Burn is happening at Easter. It's not an official regional, but Northern Burn is quite little. It's also a quiet burn, so there's no amplified music.

And they have had many problems trying to have the event for the last few years, but land always keeps, like a venue keeps falling through. And so, yeah, they are actually having it this year. And there's Raglan.

When's Raglan Burn? I'm not sure. That's been going about eight years, I think.

And Raglan Burn just made an announcement that they actually are keeping it local. And so, they're restricting who can buy, who's invited.

[Stevan] (1:40:27 - 1:40:30)

I heard the theme was radical exclusion.

[Shelley] (1:40:31 - 1:40:32)

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:40:33 - 1:40:39)

Yeah. Well, they do have a limited number of tickets, so, you know, you've got to find a party.

[Shelley] (1:40:40 - 1:40:56)

I just think it's good to do, you know, follow the original intention or look at your intentions again and review them and just have the burn that you have the capability to put on. I think that's really important.

[Kym] (1:40:56 - 1:41:00)

So, if that's what they need to do, then that's great.

That's what they need to do.

[Stevan] (1:41:01 - 1:41:08)

They also have a limited capacity as well. So, I guess once it's limited, it becomes restrictive in that way.

[Shelley] (1:41:08 - 1:41:34)

Yeah, and really popular. And Hippathy is trying to drum up interest at the moment for a decompression type event for Auckland Burners. It's very hard to get Auckland Burners together.

They just kind of stick in their own little suburb or their own little theme camp group or something and it can be really hard to get them out.

[Stevan] (1:41:36 - 1:41:37)

How many people did you get?

[Hippathy] (1:41:37 - 1:41:57)

I think we sold 400 tickets to one decomp many moons ago, but I think we've really been selling about 100 to 200 kind of for the last few years. We don't quite have the reputation we used to.

We used to run them quite consistently and they became quite the scene.

[Shelley] (1:41:58 - 1:42:30)

That was when we were building the giant weta and we had a centrally based warehouse space in Auckland. So, it was very easy for a lot of people to get to. And so, now with the last sort of few years, we've been having them at warehouses that are a little bit not that far out relatively like, you know, 15 minutes from the centre of the city type of thing.

So, that does put some people off, but it doesn't put everyone off.

[Hippathy] (1:42:30 - 1:42:49)

Yeah. So, we're kind of in the first early planning stages. We're going to be having some community catch-ups and kind of see what ideas people have.

We haven't had an official decompression for a little while. I can't remember. No, maybe the cone party was the last one.

Fundraiser for the cone. Fundraiser for Coney McConeface.

[Shelley] (1:42:50 - 1:42:50)

Two years?

[Hippathy] (1:42:51 - 1:43:34)

Yeah, two years ago now. Didn't do one last year, but yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what happens. I think probably the most important thing is to work out where the venue is because, you know, like Shelley said, we used to have that central warehouse.

That was great. It was an amazing venue. And yeah, I don't think we've really found the next natural home for what we want to do.

Yeah, we'll be talking about it at the meeting, but it depends on who wants to be involved. But yeah, I think the street party, which is San Francisco Decompression, is quite something. You know, I think it would be awesome if we could pull off some kind of street party or something like that.

Could be quite cool. Yeah.

[Stevan] (1:43:35 - 1:43:46)

Let's end this episode with some shout-outs and gratitude. So Kym, would you like to say a few words to who you want to thank with your build, with your experience of the temple?

[Kym] (1:43:46 - 1:45:13)

I think I've shouted out a lot of my people already, but I just want to thank again Dave, David Yates. Amazing. Couldn't have done it without him.

Tara, the build lead. Rinky Dink Construction. Those guys were hilarious.

Rinky Dink was Moses and Leif and also Emilio. Absolutely hilarious. And yeah, Powerhouses.

Nori, amazing Nori, who was like my right-hand person. Highly recommend every build team to just have a gopher. Like, I need cigarettes, I need this, I need that.

Drove to Wellington at one point to pick up one of our crew mates who was stuck down there after the ferry broke. Like, just like any way that she could help was, yeah, was right there. Who else?

There's so many people. I'm so scared I'm going to miss somebody amazing. Honestly, I hate doing shout-outs, but all the people, all the people, all of art support, all of everybody that advised, Nico, Lou, people that had done the role before, just, I don't know, all of them.

All of them. And I'm going to come back in 10 minutes and be like, oh, I forgot to mention this person and now I feel terrible. So, ADD brains.

But yeah, you know who you are. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. And all the people that put their stories on the inside of the temple. Holy moly.

Yeah. And allowed me to share that space with them.

[Hippathy] (1:45:14 - 1:45:34)

Shout out to all my crew. Gary, Maddie, Bo. You made my two couches in a life life easy.

We're actually taking two couches and a rug to Africa burn in a little over a month. Oh God, only a little over a month. So, that's quite exciting as well.

[Stevan] (1:45:34 - 1:45:36)

It's a logistical nightmare to bring two couches and a rug.

[Hippathy] (1:45:36 - 1:45:43)

I'll whole two couches and a rug. Not sure how I'll deal with it.

[Stevan] (1:45:44 - 1:45:50)

Yeah. You mentioned that you had some first-time burners at your crew, at your camp, Hippathy. What was their experience like?

[Hippathy] (1:45:52 - 1:45:59)

We had some amazing burgeons in our camp and I feel like I can't speak for them.

[Stevan] (1:46:00 - 1:46:01)

Are they coming back?

[Hippathy] (1:46:02 - 1:46:35)

Oh, hell yeah.

The ideas bear flowing and I'm excited for what we're going to do next year. Yeah, I'm quite excited. I'm quite excited at the new energy.

So, yeah, two couches and a rug expanded as a camp massively. We've about doubled our usual population and there's a whole bunch of new energy and people wanting to do new and interesting things. It's great.

[Stevan] (1:46:35 - 1:46:36)

Shelley, do you have any shout outs?

[Shelley] (1:46:37 - 1:47:30)

Oh, yeah. I'd really like to shout out to my campmates, Charlie, Leah and Matt, Halo, Piripi and Ash. They were just amazing and we had a great little camp.

I'd also like to shout out to Andy, who has been the chair and treasurer of KiwiBurn for a long time and chose to step away. But, yeah, a big shout out to him for all the work that he has done. He did a lot of good things for KiwiBurn.

And shout out to the EXCOMM. I've been on the EXCOMM a couple of times. I know what is involved.

I know how much work there is to do and I know how much flack you get and have to deal with it. So, you know, a big shout out to all the teams, all the team leads, everyone who makes stuff happen.

[Stevan] (1:47:31 - 1:47:38)

Yeah, well said. Yeah, definitely shout out to all those people behind the scenes, definitely making the magic happen. Yeah.

[Kym] (1:47:38 - 1:47:48)

It's so hard to list everybody, honestly. I've just come up with another 10 names in my head, like APW people, site management people.

[Stevan] (1:47:48 - 1:47:49)

All the fire crew, all the rangers.

[Kym] (1:47:49 - 1:47:52)

Yeah, all the rangers, all the perimeter team, the pyro.

[Shelley] (1:47:52 - 1:47:54)

Your family.

[Kym] (1:47:57 - 1:47:58)

My pet fish.

[Shelley] (1:48:00 - 1:48:01)

My dog.

[Stevan] (1:48:02 - 1:48:15)

Awesome. All right. Thanks.

Thanks very much, guys, for coming on the show and talking about your experience and your opinions. Yeah, fantastic to have you on. So what's next for you?

AfrikaBurn, Hippathy, Shelley, are you burning somewhere?

[Shelley] (1:48:16 - 1:48:22)

Yeah, I'm supposed to. I need to get my SHIT together. I'm going to AfrikaBurn as well.

[Hippathy] (1:48:23 - 1:48:24)

Don't let me go there.

[Shelley] (1:48:26 - 1:48:59)

I've just had a house renovation, so I've finally just moved back in. So life's been a bit crazy. Yeah, AfrikaBurn.

I went to, what did I go to? I went to Underland last year. I met you there.

Yeah, I was hoping maybe to go to Burning Man as well, but I can't maybe really see that happening because I've got to be in America two months later. So, yeah. So, you know, it's can't do everything, right?

[Hippathy] (1:49:01 - 1:49:02)

Go on, just clone yourself.

[Shelley] (1:49:04 - 1:49:07)

I did that. I did that at birth. It didn't work out.

[Kym] (1:49:13 - 1:50:10)

For me, I think I have plans to run a theme camp next year at one of the other festivals that I volunteer at. We got a bit of a thing going in the public group chat beforehand. It's turned into a bit of a cult, and I got voluntold that I was now the leader of said cult.

So shout out to all the mats from the mat cult. And I think we'll be arriving on Paddock next year as a brand new theme camp with about 30 people. So that should be really exciting.

But it's been really cool to watch them all get interested in the festival space and the burning space. They're not going to know what's hit them. I think mothering 30 dirty virgins through a vernal bee, a good challenge after building a temple.

But yeah, I also want to contribute some sort of art. Everybody's telling me that I should take a break this year, but it's not in my nature. So that.

[Shelley] (1:50:11 - 1:50:14)

Is your camp going to be called It's a Bug's Life?

[Kym] (1:50:15 - 1:50:43)

No, probably just be the mat cult, actually. We had stickers and temporary tattoos and things made up for this other festival.

It's already got a life of its own. We've all got variations of the mat name. So I'm Mothu, due to the large bug tattoo on my chest.

So it will be, it will definitely have bug theme. Yeah, should be really good.

[Stevan] (1:50:43 - 1:50:48)

All right. This is this episode is going to go straight to the pool room.

Thank you very much, guys. Thank you, Shelley. Thank you, Kym.

[Kym] (1:50:49 - 1:50:49)

Thank you.

[Shelley] (1:50:50 - 1:50:51)

Thanks for having us.

[Kym] (1:50:51 - 1:50:53)

Yeah. Thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure.

[Stevan] (1:50:53 - 1:50:55)

See you at the paddock soon. All right. Thank you.

[Hippathy] (1:50:55 - 1:50:57)

We'll see you soon. Thanks, guys.

[Kym] (1:50:57 - 1:50:58)

See you.

[Shelley] (1:50:58 - 1:50:59)

Thanks, team.

[Kym] (1:51:05 - 2:00:46)

The name of this year's temple is Heart and Home.

And it really is a place of work of heart. Hey, everyone, this is Kym, and I am the temple lead for 2026. I'm not going to pretend that this project isn't absolutely terrifying.

I have been to one burn, and this is my second year on paddock, but zero to 100 real quick. That's kind of how we do things around here. And I'm very thankful to have an experienced crew of people guiding me and helping me out along the way.

I know that this year has been incredibly difficult for a lot of people and a lot of different ways. For me, this temple is a huge part of my own personal journey and healing, as I hope it will be for many of you. The best way to describe what I want to represent in this temple, on a personal note, is that after a horrific year, which started with the murder of my friend over Easter, I was brought into the community and embraced by the people in it.

It was an incredible feeling of acceptance and love at a time where I thought that I was too upset and down to attend parties and bring the mood down, quote unquote. And I'm so grateful for the support that I received over that time that I wanted to do something huge to give back and to show everybody how appreciated that was. This year's temple design is simple.

It's a single level construction, and that was purposeful. I understand that a lot of people are tired this year. Everybody's got a lot on their plates.

And for me, this temple is about heart and not ego. It's not about creating the biggest, fanciest temple that the paddock's ever seen. And it's very much about representing the community and the volunteers and everybody that contributes.

The center structure of our temple is a huge heart-shaped room. It will provide a really beautiful, quiet space to sit and reflect in, with a wishing well in the center to drop your tokens. You'll be able to climb up inside of this and sit.

Around the outside of this are 10 paper doll cutouts. If you think about the pieces of paper that you used to concertina up when you were a child and cut out the daisy chain of people, all holding hands with an archway for the entrance. And these people represent each of the 10 principles.

I really want to encourage you to walk around these principles and see how each one resonates with you. I think a few of us get stuck in representing one or two really strongly and forget to participate in the others, or at least aren't aware of our participation with the others. One of the really important parts of our temple burn is recognizing people in the community.

As I was saying, this is a very heart-centered build and we wanted to acknowledge some of those people by giving them the option to participate in our lighting ceremony. The people of this community makes it what it is, which is why the central focal point of this is the heart. It also includes a couple of little surprises, which we will keep until the day.

And there is some audio accompanying some of temple this year as well, which should be a nice touch. It was important to me to provide an opening and a closure for the burn, rather than having it just be a kind of freeform ending where people drift away. There's been so many really cool synchronicities along this journey that I've been really grateful for that have shown me that this is the right thing for this year.

Firstly, there was the image on the kiwi burn principles page, which really reflects the structure that we've built with the principles around the outside and a central hub in the center. There's been the amazing poster created by Izzy, which was beautiful in its design and also very similar to what we intended to build. There was the black rock temple for Burning Man this year, which incorporated a lot of the same design elements that ended up in ours, with the jewel shaped centerpiece on a plinth.

There was another really neat moment as well. We're at the inflammatory fundraiser. One of the pieces of audio that we intend to put with the temple this year was actually played by Fox Club.

It's just been incredible to have these little road markers be shown to us that we're on the right track and that this is what's supposed to be happening this year. Our main cost at the moment is the nitty-gritties of the build. We haven't got a huge budget this year.

It's considerably smaller than some other years and the majority of our costs is going towards boring things like plywood. Plywood is incredibly expensive, but it's important in the context of the build. There wasn't really a way to avoid it with the design that we have, so that is taking up a huge chunk of resources and we've actually had to pull from other areas of our budget to make sure that we have the funds to make that happen.

We don't currently have a swag budget for our volunteers, which breaks my heart because I can see how much time and energy and dedication is already being put into this, even in tasks like CAD modeling and just hours and hours spent picking through the problems and not even to mention the physical time in the shed building the thing. We aren't trying to build it in the two weeks prior. We have use of a shed and are allowing ourselves a lot of extra time to get things done, but that means extra travel for our volunteers and things like that as well, and we'd love to be able to help them with some of their costs getting backwards and forwards to actually just be there to help us build.

I am exceptionally fortunate to have a lot of experienced people around me. I would not have been able to do this without the wonderful help of the amazing David Yates, who is an admin whiz and also very conveniently our fire and safety guy. It's been the perfect combination of skill sets really, as I'm more than happy to build relationships and nurture the team and take care of the larger artistic vision, while Dave is brilliant at the nitty-gritty detail-oriented side of stuff.

I'm also really lucky to have Pete Lumos, which many of you will know as another brilliant fire guy. He's helping prepare one of the surprises for this temple. There are so many amazing people that have stepped into some huge roles in our team and been there for support.

Tara, our construction lead, just for the wealth of information and knowledge on how to actually build things and put them together. Sal, our CAD legend, who has our planning down to a fine art. Nico, Jessie and Lou, build gurus of the years gone by, who have been on the roster to help me put all of the little pieces together in my head and navigate the whole thing.

Raf, for offering us an amazing build location and being so generous with his home and his resources. Trace, from admin, for finding me all the tiny details and the people and the connections that I need to make this happen. Zanby, from MPW, for the gear and the advice and just navigating the actual paddock itself.

And of course, Cherie and Blaise, for kicking my ass into doing this project in the first place. I would not have had the confidence to do it without the boot. So thank you for giving me that kick over the line to say, hey, go make the thing.

We are in desperate need of more volunteers. Like I said, obviously, taking on a project of this scale is terrifying for a new burner and a new build lead. Any donations that we receive would be hugely, hugely, hugely appreciated.

If you would like to contribute your time, that would be absolutely amazing. We still have several roles that we need to fill in terms of experienced electricians and things along those lines. So please, please, please reach out if you can think of anything that you would be willing to contribute.

We couldn't do any of this without you. The name of this year's temple is Heart and Home and it really will be a work of heart.

Transcripts transcribed by TurboScribe.ai