Saturday, July 08, 2017

Sunshine State: Memories of the Virgin Noosa Long (10 days long) Weekend are Flooding Back 15 Years

Memories of the three years old Adventures Down Under in the royalest state in Australia...

OPINION: 27 reasons why Australia is the lucky country | We are the luckiest 1% of Luckiest 1% in the world's history  

How sweet: It's World Chocolate Day


Courtesy of Site Leadership Newsletter and Noosa News

In June 2002 AD MEdia Dragon was born and a month later Noosasiders discovered that other Antipodeans also want to taste the 10 days long weekends salted with drama and peppered with amazing culture and glorious food ... Bohemian characters such as Phil and Crick introduced us to Coolum and Mooloolaba beaches;  Rob and Megan showed us the Boonah landscapes - Chez O'Riodan and Chez Mitchell exposed us to the Grange, Wilson Hills and New Farms ....

Jazz singer Fem Belling will be at Broadway on the Beach in the Rococo Beach Club Marquee.


Jazz singer Fem Belling will be at Broadway on the Beach in the Rococo Beach Club Marquee


Noosa Long Weekend Festival 


NOOSA alive! 21-30 July 2017. The program is bursting at the seams and truly offers something for all tastes and ages, as we present the crème de la crème of local, national and international artists, together with a spectacular array of beach events celebrating our wonderful natural environment


Food, wine, surf and arts? David Williamson's crusade to transform ...

Now in its 15th year, the Noosa Alive festival has become a fixture on the Australian cultural calendar
The Australian Financial Long Weekend Review





Playwright David Williamson and his wife Kristin are long-time supporters of Noosa's festival.  
Playwright David Williamson and his wife Kristin are long-time supporters of Noosa's festival. Supplied
by Bryce Corbett
Now in its 15th year, the Noosa Alive festival has become a fixture on the Australian cultural calendar. And as founder, patron and playwright extraordinaire David Williamson explains, it continues to punch above its weight.
L&L: What's a nice playwright like you doing as the patron of a cultural festival in Noosa?  
DW: My wife Kristin and I came to live in Noosa in the late '90s. We still keep a flat in Sydney and split our time between the two locales, but we have long regarded Noosa as our primary base. We realised that paradise as it may be, you can be little more than a permanent tourist unless you give back to the community.
So in 2002, with a small number of other enthusiasts, we started what was then the Noosa Long Weekend, but has since been rebranded Noosa Alive. The title was a play on words. It has always been a 10-day festival – but 10 days is what passes for a long weekend in Noosa. We all threw in a couple of thousand bucks of our own money to get it started. Although the image of Noosa is sybaritic – food, sun and surf – we realised there was a large number of people here who are passionate about the arts. People who we thought would respond to an arts festival on the calendar. Kristin and I acted in one of my plays for the first festival and I distinguished myself by walking onstage and forgetting my own lines. My two NIDA graduate sons, in the audience, dubbed me Westinghouse as I froze onstage.
 

"Lucky Country"

'As Australia rocks' after battery deal: Musk 

 
Speed, and this
There's a feeling I get when I look to the sun
Love, it's so tough
Cause it raises your hopes and then it makes you run

We're all looking for a shorter day
We're all looking for an easy way
Even when the debts are dead and gone

Down, the stairs
And an eight mile drive waits for you to turn on
Hear, the time clocks sing
And the smoke in the distance reaches the eye line

We're all working on a shorter day...

No conversation as you go
There's so much space the heat moves you
Terracotta homes, backyard barbeque and eucalyptus smell
It's fine on the clothes line
It's fast food and slow life and red roof
My silence, comic interruptions
Surely there's some relief from atomic art
And the fragile state of world events
With clowns who love the kings and power and the mutant media babes
Wanking on dreams and fashions and toilet paper flowers
Don't talk to me in this backyard - it's clandestine, it's nuclear
Smell of space and now forever I wanna go
Straight down the exit eight mile attraction
U-turn is up and the time clock sings lets go

Lucky country
Where the geckos are paid to live in the sun
On and on there's a ribbon of road and a mile to spare
Lucky country
Lucky country