Or, in layman’s terms, a Pirate Treasure Hunt in Civic.

At 10.30am Saturday morning this intrepid CityNews reporter was not camped outside GG’s house waiting for Julia Gillard PM to arrive and announce the inevitable election. No no, none of that high flung fancy Federal stuff.

No, I was dressed like a pirate and hanging out in Glebe Park with my scurvy crew, waiting for my first clue. And yes we may have been the only grown-ups sans children present.

In a hybrid scavenger hunt/orienteering event Kirschbaum and her sister, also called Julia, had pasted treasure maps and hints all over the city, leading us to scoop gold dabloons out of the Assembly fountain, ride on the Carosel, terrorise the stall holders at Gorman House and build a ship out of a cardboard box.

But for me the highlight was a chance meeting with ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries and candidate for the seat of Canberra, Guilia Jones.

Moments before the Prime Minister called the election – August 21 FYI – Guilia snapped a picture of Gary, myself and ACT Wonk Drinks benevolent leader Tess Kerr outside the Canberra Centre in full pirate regalia (aka what I wear to work plus a hat). Hilarious.

There was also a sausage sizzle and oranges for the scurvy crew at the end.

Two more Pirate Hunts will be held in 2010, on Saturday 25th September and Friday 19th November. Email Elena tix.event@gmail.com or check out the Facebook group for more details.

I cannot recommend the Pirate Hunt enough – YAARRRR!!

Somewhere between a gig at The Front in Lynham back in March where my friend Kishore played in his band Kid Sam and about ten minutes ago when I decided I want to live in Vermont, it seemed like everything the last few months has happened underwater.

I’ve seen Kid Sam play a million times before, but it was different this time because I wasn’t battling mobs of hipsters in some back alley bar in Melbourne… I peacefully downed my Coopers Pale Ale in a crowd of 50 odd and made fun of Kish when he wouldn’t sign a CD for a star struck teenager.

We talked about the upcoming release of their video clip for the song “I’m mostly made of water”, the filming of which I was present at sometime in September 2009. I think it turned out pretty well, but the cross over moment wasn’t quite what I anticipated:

Kishore wasn’t drinking because he had to be at Centrelink in Melbourne for a 9am dole appointment. Hello rock stardom. Hope things are looking better for him a couple of months down the track, I heard his other band Otouto got a grant to tour America last week.

Now I’m all about junkets, although I’ve never been on one, and I love my press passes, however it must be said that for a young reporter in a new city with a lot of free time on my hands, being handed a free ticket to something you’ve never done before is pretty awesome.

In our nation’s capital I’ve managed to get my greasy little hands on musical theatre tickets, comedy tickets, a fancy smart people’s lecture pass and two different rides in fast cars – not to mention a plethora of quasi-political events that I would just classify under “free food“.

This weekend was big on free entertainment for me, starting with a politics breakfast crack of dawn Friday morning to celebrate Canberra’s birthday (hello free chocolate croissant) – which I was unfortunately actually required to report on. I would go into more detail about how hilarious and silly this event was, but I’ve written something for my job – that thing I have at that place I go to where I write stuff about stuff. To be honest, I mostly went along hoping I could wrangle myself a ride in a hot air balloon – this being my new aim in life, to be a pirate of the sky.

Later in the evening my lovely new friend Mr Johnny Barrington of Triple J took me to see Clare Bowditch at the National Gallery for this performance thingy they had to promote the Paris Masters Exhibition. The band gave Johnny the free tickets because he interviewed them for some reason. Here is a picture he took that I have stolen from Twitter:

Photo by Mr Johnny Barrington

I’ve had a bit of a lady crush on Clare since I was an undergraduate student at Melbourne University and she signed some albums I bought and told me she liked my hair, so I was rather happy to stand up the front (annoying all the nanas who had mysteriously come along) and sing loudly along with some of her tunes from the early 00′s.

I particularly enjoyed the part of the adventure where we hung around and ate cheese in the tent with the band, although it is terribly amusing how we’re all supposed to pretend we’re totally cool and blase and not like ZOMG! I’m hanging out with groovy indi muso famous types! Oh journalists are strange folk.

Anyhoo, bright and early Saturday morning I was dragged out to a pine plantation to get in yet another fast car. The CityNews lifestyle editor has written a story about a lady rally car navigator and so both she and snapper Silas were actually on site in a legitimate capacity. I just came along for the ride.

Newsflash: ILOVERALLYCARS!!! While the Hilux Heroes were totally rad, I must confess that being a passenger in an extremely fast rally car that is barreling at 160km per hour down a dirt track, taking all kinds of jumps and crazy turns was better. Just a little.

I may have found my true vocation.

UPDATE:

Photo by Silas

Photo by Silas

While I am willing to heed the tales of those who braved the great Meredith cyclone of 2008, I would like to stress that festivals in the rain are not that much fun, wind or no wind.

Photo by Bridget Stephens

The Cruel Sea, Tame Impala and Pavement were great. Nashville Pussy were hilarious. Dirty Projectors were delightful. The rest of it I can either not recall or was not impressed with.

Mostly I will remember caving in to my inner child, who was cold, wet and hungry, and giving the Midnight Juggernauts a miss, trekking back to my tent in the darkness to pajamas and sleeping bag goodness.

Things I saw at Golden Plains include my friend Emily hitting a brightly coloured horse shape pinata strung to a tree with an old fashioned black umbrella, wearing a hot pink ball dress; my friend Kas dressed as a lime green dinosaur hugging a stuffed plush animal of the same colour someone handed him; naked men mud-wrestling in the amphitheatre; lots of blow up sex dolls and a inflatable jumping castle; a crowd surfing Israeli in his underpants performing for a crowd of thousands; Alice in Wonderland and painted face masks.

Here are some quotes to convey the stupidity of the weekend:

“Pavement is how I feel about you”

“You look like a Jesus jellyfish.”

“It’s okay, I used to be a panda.”

“You are a pack of cards” (response) “That is beautiful.”

I told a boy I was offered that I didn’t want him because he was too wet. Because, you know, there were some dry people at that festival.

There is a recording of some crazy hipsters at a campsite ranting about bullshit during Dinosaur Jnr- who are in real life a librarian, another journalist and myself – but I can’t figure out how to upload the sound file… so that will have to wait.

How do I know this? Well, last week the Lifestyle editor asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a rally car. I had no idea what she was talking about so I said yes.

I was given the mobile phone number of a man named Jason who I was to meet at the Royal Canberra Show on Saturday at 5.15pm at the Toyota Hilux Heros stand. Media passes for the show were organised and dutifully, if not a little hung over, I presented myself at the front gates and was lost in about five seconds.

I called Jason, he found me and led me across the main arena to a row of V6 4-wheel drives:

He stuck a helmet on my head, made me sign my life away and introduced me to my driver – John Boston – a lovely bloke who told me that I didn’t look like I’d pee my pants. I was chuffed to think I appeared tough to a crazy grease head who spent his whole life racing cars, doing tricks and testing vehicles for Top Gear Magazine. But on reflection I just looked like a bit of a tool.

John filled me on what we were going to do kind of – I mean he said stuff about formations and whatnot, but I didn’t know what he was talking about, I just smiled and nodded.

Then we drove around the dusty track and spun around in circles, went backwards really fast and did jumps and things. There were five utes, four doing all these insane tricks around each other and one driven by some dude called Lawrence that spent THE ENTIRE TIME ON TWO WHEELS!! I particularly enjoyed going really fast and turning around back the other way and weaving between the other cars. I wasn’t afraid that we were going to crash and die at any time, but man it was close.

So I unleashed my inner speed freak AND I LOVED IT!  It was amazing. It was wild. I laughed and squealed like a girl and I was on an adrenaline high for hours after. Totes recommend it. Here are some videos:

Hilux Heros jump from Eleri Mai Harris on Vimeo.

V6 hijinx from Eleri Mai Harris on Vimeo.

Anyway, I found out I can learn how to do drive like these people. All I need is $400… anyone feel like sponsoring me?

]]> http://zombiepiratejournalism.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/ill-trade-in-my-ship-for-a-4-wheel-drive/feed/ 0 elerimai 4-wheelers Eleri in a 4-wheel drive http://zombiepiratejournalism.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/circumnavigating-lake-burley-griffin-for-a-bloody-kidney/ http://zombiepiratejournalism.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/circumnavigating-lake-burley-griffin-for-a-bloody-kidney/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:05:00 +0000 elerimai http://zombiepiratejournalism.wordpress.com/?p=131 ]]> On Wednesday, February 24 2010, I, Captain Eleri Mai Harris, Zombie Pirate Journalist, of the good ship Canhole, circumnavigated Lake Burley Griffin with one worthy crew – Seaman Vivienne Nunis, on loan from the ABC – in the name of organ donation.

At the crack of dawn we joined a thousand strong fleet of school girls and politicians in a journey that began (and ended) at Regatta Point to raise awareness of the dwindling supplies of kidneys, hearts, livers and bone marrow in this great land. There were balloons, boom-boxes, bikes and (later) egg and bacon sandwiches.

To protect our dear leader Kevin Rudd, Nunis and I made sure we were only two metres ahead of the bodyguards and trigger happy paparazzi. His precious canine, Abigail, was nowhere to be seen, but I think she would have been frightened by the Grandmaster Flash soundtrack the school girls subjected us to anyway.

But when I rocked up at about nine there were less than 30 people milling around – and a group of dudes decided they wouldn’t all pay, instead two went in for the cover charge and the others sat at an outdoor table sipping drinks and enjoying the show through the windows.

More kids came along as the night progressed, but there was more than a little standing room at the teenie, tiny venue when the show climaxed around 11pm.

The Deep Sea Arcade have received considerable airplay on the national youth broadcaster Triple J of late and were able to back up the hype with a solid indi pop performance in the same vein as fellow Sydneysiders Philadelphia Grand Jury, while keeping their stylized Beatles-surfer-sixties schtick alive.

Deep Sea Arcade – Lonely In Your Arms (Official Video) from Deep Sea Arcade on Vimeo.

Singer Nic McKenzie is a bit of a show-pony-come-dandy, but who cares, he can deliver tunes with consistency and personality.

Electronic pop four piece support Shady Lane had already killed it to a crowd of 25 with their smooth transitions and Jordy Lane’s beautiful voice, which I enjoyed from the comfort of an outdoor couch two metres away.

While they weren’t breaking musical frontiers, both the Deep Sea Arcade and Shady Lane are respectable performers and yet their show received very little promotion in the city aside from a mention in the BMA gig guide – the only reason I even knew they were playing was the handy delivery of a well-timed press release in the CityNews inbox.

Three days previously I asked the staff at The Front about the upcoming gig and was greeted with some paper shuffling to confirm that ummm, yeah, man, that’s who’s playing Saturday. Yep. There were no posters or chalk boards advertising the bands anywhere at the venue.

But that night, Wednesday February 17, The Front had been packed to the rafters with a showcase of three Canberra bands, Voss, Kasha and the Hoodlum Shouts.

These bands are all friends and possessed the power of shameless self promotion on a hyper-local we-went-to-ANU-together personal level with their peeps – the audience knew them and loved them.

I’ve been here only a couple of months, but I’ve heard enough whinging about the live music scene in Canberra to get the idea that the skinny-jeaned. vintaged-dressed, red-lipstick mouthed, Coopers Pale-swigging hipsters of our nation’s capital would like to see a few more bands visiting them.
But without advertising and support I fail to see how or why any band would return to Canberra.

I clearly cannot judge how much The Front would have raked in for the band in ticket or CD sales, but I can say this, while I did really like the up-close-and-personal vibe at this awesomely cool little venue, I can’t help but wonder if the bands came even close to breaking even for the costs of coming here.

Turned out me and regional commercial television were not a match made in heaven – who would have guessed? And our union only lasted a few brief weeks, it was terribly sad and grief ridden, but the worst thing was the blog I started for it.

Worst because it was probably the singularly most successful thing I’ve ever achieved on the internet – totally by accident – and it had such a short life. It was called “Prime of my Life” and with only three posts and a couple of retweets it achieved something I have never managed to before… 2000 hits in 4 days. Who those people are I don’t know, but what I do know is the blog was briefly re-published on Mumbrella.

And I totally freaked out.

While the blog was, I will admit, utterly hilarious – yes I am a comedy genius when handed the reins of a regional news website… I am more proud of that story about the Gundagai Dog on the Tuckerbox than anything else I have written… the fear that I would lose my job prompted me to delete the damn thing.

Of course I went and quit within a week, but that’s neither here nor there.

I got myself a job at the Canberra City News as a political reporter in the Territory Assembly where I can happily while my time away making notes in Question Time and marveling at the insanity of the inner workings of the Australian Capital Territory.

The only really problem I can foresee is the ability for me to continue my life as a zombie pirate journalist in a land locked city on the shores of a lake beset by blue green algae.