‘Do you want to go to ConFest over Easter?’
The question hung in the air as I pondered my response. I
didn’t really know what ConFest was, though I felt the ‘fest’ fulfilled the
criteria of the good time I was looking for. I did know that it had been months
since I had escaped the smoggy urban fullness of Melbourne, since I’d seen a
moon without an orange ring circling it. It’d been months of being surrounded
by other people, a bustling populous of order, time, deadlines and ticket
inspectors. A five-day adventure beyond the metropolitan postcode area that
cost $80 for a ticket sounded like exactly what I wanted to do.
ConFest stayed simmering on the backburner until a few days
before the midsemester break. Were we going? Attempts at research were met with
a website that appeared not to have been updated since 1994 and a Facebook page
where people with names like ‘Phoebe –Lou Raincloud Desiree’ argued about
whether the recent floods and the increased mosquito population were going to
ruin their time. Where exactly did this ‘event’, that claimed to be non-commercial,
family-friendly and host to about 3000 people, take place? A map and directions
highlighted a space 13 kilometres west of the NSW town of Deniliquin.
Apparently it ran for anywhere between 4-6 days , where alcohol, drug and
sexual abuse were not tolerated but since there was no actual security or paid
work personnel, issues of this nature tended to be ‘negotiated.’ After I
finished reading the spiel about the workshops (commonly yoga, meditation, or
discussion groups centred on topics of earthly well-being and sustainability),
the drum circles, the fire twirling and the fact it was a ‘clothing optional’
event, my cynic’s highbrow was raised so far it had disappeared into my hair.
Despite my scepticism, we visited Coles on Thursday night and bought cans of
lentils and baked beans. There were cooking facilities there, so at least we were
saving cash. We went to the bottle-o and bought a slab of tinnies, red and
white casks of wine so if the actual river that was said to be a part of the
idyllic bush setting turned out to be crap we could be sustained by a river of
goon. We drove for seven hours under the
Good Friday sun, boot packed to bursting with mosquito repellent, Doritos,
deckchairs, lanterns and 500 tealight candles (there turned out to be a total
fire ban and we had 3 torches between 17 people).
We arrived and were greeted by a naked man who grinned at us
and handed us our tickets and a booklet. There were testimonials inside one in
which a woman claimed that she had lost hope in life before attending ConFest.
We wound up the windows against the dust and navigated our convoy through the
tent settlements while people stood in front of the cars hugging and children
rode bikes with no shoes or helmets. We pitched camp in the rapidly fading
light next to the river while the wind whipped through the gum trees and the
nudist couple in the caravan next to us looked on with smiles. There was no
phone reception and we drank punch made in a 10-litre cooking pot. We danced in
our underwear at the silent disco and tentatively moved our bodies to the beats
of the drums in the marketplace.
In the morning we woke with the sun and the birds songs’.
Less than half an hour elapsed before we picked our way through the burrs
lining the river banks and slid down the muddy sides into the water. Maybe
there was actually something in the river I can attribute to my ensuing
feelings. I ducked my head under, letting my cynical and grime-covered self be
soothed by the current.
If someone had told me of the sheer happiness I would feel
over the next few days and why, I wouldn’t have believed them. Climbing naked
into a pit of liquid grey mud with 15 strangers? Washing off said mud in the
river shallows before traipsing past barrel fires into the slightly-eucalypt,
mostly-feet smelling steam room, before drying off and adorning myself with body
paint in the presence of other strangers and mirrors? Lying in the litter of the bush floor with my eyes closed,
listening to warbles of an incomprehensible ancient tongue whilst wind chimes
flutter next to my ear and ants crawl into my underwear, and this is meant to
be giving me insight into some kind of journey? I sit in my lounge room listening to the cars
drive past and remember letting
myself be washed downstream by the river current before making my way through
the silent trees, bark crunching beneath my feet. Sitting in circles of friends,
forgetting where I ended and they began, humming ditties to a guitar’s tune while
the moon rose behind the trees and the whole Milky Way filled the sky. I
remember the unbridled joy that filled the faces of the people who danced in
front of the fire, the beating of the drums that filled the air for what seemed
like always. This was human emotion in its purest form, untouched and untainted
by daily routine, societal life, having things to do and places to be.
On the last afternoon when our spirits were beginning to
waver thanks to the relentless wind and dust eroding our faces, we participated
in a spontaneous choir that swelled from 10 people to 150 in the thick of the
ConFest village. After leading us through an array of activities that included
speaking jibberish and yapping like small dogs, the conductor arranged us into
two lines facing each other. One by one we were led through the procession
holding onto the shoulders of the person in front. Each person we passed would
say ‘I love you’ into our ear. Even with my newly found optimism and acceptance
for the diversity of human behaviour, I was unsure. I doubted the sincerity of
being told I was loved by someone I had never met. As the procession had passed
me by, I repeated ‘I love you’ over and over. I was even more sceptical. The
words felt like they had no meaning and were forming a lumpy one-sound phrase I
was having to push out of my mouth. I took my turn in the line: I had come this
far, need I back down now? I couldn’t recognise any of the voices – they could
have belonged to anyone. My friends were dispersed amongst the crowd but I couldn’t
pick their docile tones from any of the other whispered confessions of
adoration. Whilst I had felt as though each ‘I love you’ I had uttered, became
less and less convincing, it wasn’t the case as I took my turn. Even after someone whispered in my ear ‘I
want to lock you up in my dungeon’, I was expelled at the end of the parade with my
eyes half closed and my face swimming with drunken bliss. My heart was calm and
my soul mended. I was dropping out of uni and moving to Nimbin. Fuck society, I
was home.
Now that I am home, I can say that I enjoy eating my
breakfast from a bowl that isn’t caked with last night’s pasta remains, and I
haven’t had too much trouble swapping river baths for showers involving soap. With
that said, ConFest rekindled a fire that was dwindling to cooling embers inside
me. Believing in love and believing in the goodness of the world and in other
people doesn’t seem like ideas that are so farfetched anymore, or ones reserved
for hippies who take too much acid. The spirit that filled the air in the
bushland somewhere between Moulamein and Deniliquin, that filled me as I sat in
a spa chatting to a 50 year old man named Grant about grammar at an unknown
hour of the morning, that filled all of us as we arched our necks back and
howled to the moon, can still exist here, in the urban practicality of
Melbourne we call home.
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