Festivals bring life to winter in the South
Melinda Anderson is excited about all the happenings about to hit Tasmania
A MASSIVE bonfire in Salamanca Place, with thousands of people singing, led by some of Australia’s best choristers.
It is called the Big Sing, one of the centrepieces of the annual Festival of Voices.
People dressed in masks and carrying torches, a pagan theme — the Huon Midwinter Festival, now heading for its third, record-breaking year.
And this year, a winter cruise ship berthed in Hobart for Dark MoFo — a staggering 66 individual performances and events, let alone the Winter Feast, now extended to seven nights of fabulous Tasmanian food and wine.
Winter in southern Tasmania has been transformed by our festivals, which run from June through to mid-July.
To use the teenage vernacular, do you remember “back in the day” when Hobart and the South were perceived to have shut down for winter?
All these festivals play such important roles in our broader community in 2017.
They bring the community together and allow us to see huge diversity of artistic endeavour and talent. And along the way, we get to enjoy a glass of Tasmanian wine, cider, beer, non-alcoholic beverage, and the huge variety of the state’s extraordinary breadth of food.
At Destination Southern Tasmania, what we love about the festivals is their ability to attract people to this end of the state and encourage them explore beyond Hobart.
The first Midwinter Festival drew 7000 people to the Huon Valley, last year more than 14,000 came, this year the goal is for 18,000.
And with the amazing program this year, I reckon it will achieve that.
But even more importantly, there are growing numbers of interstate and international visitors coming down to the Huon and exploring southern Tasmania during their stay.
The Midwinter Festival will feature eight major musical acts, including Frank Yamma, a traditional Pitjantjatjara man from Australia’s central desert, and Ramshackle Army, a band which draws on a vast array of influences including the punk they grew up on, the Celtic traditions of their family history and Australian colonial heritage.
And that is before the festival stages its annual Wassailing, the largest wassail in the Southern Hemisphere. Wassailing has a very ancient history, but it is really about bringing the community together as well as the drinking of the “wassail bowl” and lots of singing.
We already know the drawing power of Dark MoFo and the way the people of Tasmania have embraced Winter Feast.
I encourage people to look at the vast range of events and musical performances that comprise the Dark MoFo program.
To focus on just two: DEATH MASK, where we will look at Tasmania’s convict history through the death masks of executed criminals created according to the 19th century pseudoscience of phrenology, deciphering personalities through the shape of the skull. DEVIL IN THE STREETS, where a wild forest is unfurled in the urban sprawl of a 30mlong interactive street art mural created by artists and people seeking employment.
And then there is the now traditional Dark MoFo showstopper, which captivates the entire city: Siren Song, a siren that will sound at sunrise and sunset each day through 550 loud speakers positioned across Hobart’s waterfront.
In the lead-up to, and during, Dark MoFo, businesses will participate in Paint the Town Red, adding to the celebration of winter and the vibrancy Dark MoFo brings to the Hobart and beyond experience.
The Festival of Voices’ program grows each year.
In 2017 there are 69 performances, without the two Choir Packages.
In so many ways, the Festival of Voices and Dark MoFo complement and compete with one another in terms of the breadth of talent they bring to Tasmania.
As spectators and listeners, we are blessed.
I am very, very proud of how these festivals showcase our state’s culture and bring the community and visitors together.
All three winter festivals deliver a vibrant celebration of our state that is shared by Tasmanians and the visitors who come in their tens of thousands.