Day 99 - Little Faries and Little Baskets, Short Films and Short Skirts

 

 

These mystical creatures sweetened many children's day at Esplanade Park around lunch time. They were part of the Freo Festival's Fairy Picnic where I (for a change) felt a little too old among all those pre-school (mostly) girls. It seemed like I misunderstood something in the brochure description, because I certainly did not expect workshops for creating your own glittering magic wand... Some fairies even had big tattoos, but it was cute to see anyway how the children (and probably also the fairies) enjoyed this event.

 

In the afternoon, my father accompanied me to a so called Bush Sculpture workshop. I wasn't sure whether I would get a place to join the crafting, because you should have received a notification after signing up, which I didn't get. However, I thought maybe someone doesn't show up, which was the case in the end. The first 45 minutes of the workshop were an introduction to the living utensils of the Noongar people, the indigenous tribe that once lived in the Perth area.

 

The Noongar man demonstrated us (15 persons...) how different everyday objects like containers, wooden shields, or arrows were made and used. He also demonstrated which plants and animal products (turtle eggs, duck eggs) they ate, what to do with a kangaroo fur (and tail!), how to cure injuries with plant products, and how to produce bush glue (see picture below). It was quite interesting, though, but I don't remember all things now, because the man spoke very slurred and with quite an accent. Not too good conditions for a non-native English speaker... The woman was better to understand, though she didn't say too much. She was going to instruct us for the hands-on part of the workshop.

 

With that reddish stuff in the white box on the table you can create things like this so-called Wardandi knife (the knife part is the sharp stone that is moulded with the reddish dirt to a stick). Where to get the reddish stuff? Just mix (a) charcoal with (b) balga resin (sap from the grass tree) and (c) kangaroo poo, put it on a stick and heat it up, until you have the wished amount of mould mass to form your device.

Of course you cannot only create knives, axes and other weapons, but also small sculptures like these wonderful cute emus, made of the detoxed nuts (head), dried banksia blossoms (body), and other things you find in the garden. Great and innovative!

 

This is my tiny outcome of this afternoon:
a very tight little basket which should have
gotten bigger - but we ran out of time. Made of
dried but wetted grass and sticks, winded
with freshly split palm leaf strings to keep
the structure and form.

Yes, we love Freo, and we love the Freo Food Truck Festival, too! All around Kings Square food trucks lined up, some more, some less fancy. In the end we grabbed a "mutant sandwich" from the Brazilian truck, and a Haloumi sandwich from the Greek one. Other food trucks were quite innovative, fancy, old fashioned or creative, selling cool stuff like home made hot donuts, or "Eat No Evil" food. And how the sellers fit to their truck is amazing ;-)

 



 

 

We spontaneously decided to buy some tickets for the "Over The Fence" comedy short film festival. Strange short films with subtitles is certainly a nerdy thing to do. In two hours, we saw 14 films from different countries, all intended to be very funny. Some even succeeded in making us laugh. We had a good audience, a girl was laughing almost all the time which was funny too ;-)

 

Evening out, selfie on a selfie couch, walking home along the Cappuccino Strip. I have never seen SO many short skirts at once. The girls or women that came with her boyfriends where clothed normally, but the singles, gosh. One tiny air blast and everyone could watch the big reveal ;-) and our evening was funnily concluded by a totally drunk man, not getting anything anymore, just hobbling and falling.