Here we are in August, our Tropic Winter, and our region is ready to celebrate as a community. It’s Festival Cairns! From the 21st August to the 6th of September and I’m trying to make a plan – where do I begin? We will be celebrating our community’s creativity in all its forms; visual art, dance film, written and spoken word – we will even be Spraying our Stories by aerosol artists. Or there’s the Tropical Writers Lunch, a long lazy Sunday Lunch with a good author – that’s my pick!
Then there’s the, I Love Cairns Speech Festival at the new speakers corner – is this parochial pride unhinged?. Do we get to bring along bags of mushy tomatoes in case we don’t approve of the subject matter? No! There’s Farmers Market so no mushy anything; it’s all fresh and frisky.
What about Reggaetown with headliners like Blue King Brown and dread locks by Nashka! I think I’ll skip that – remember having an Afro once and frightening my children near to death.
Families will be out in force on the esplanade. They may be busy with a public construction extravaganza called ‘We Built This City’ using nothing but thousands of cardboard boxes and oodles of energy and ingenuity – under supervision of course, by performing construction workers! Can they build an entire city in two days? Would I want to live in it? Would I be able to move out in time before the de-construction workers stomp all over it like sandcastles!
Jazz under the stars, Grace Knight, James Blundell, Stomp the Nard, Miss Saigon or the Illumination White Party – is there any sleep to be had! And it’s happening everywhere throughout the city and the beaches – I’m not going to be able to get away from it! I’m beginning to wonder if I should be having a survival plan!
I might have to retreat to my favourite art form – nature and unwind on a bird walk at Thala Beach Lodge! Check out times at festivalcairns.com.au.