This year I decided to volunteer at the Surry Hills Festival. The festival is the major fundraising event for the Surry Hills Neighbourhood Centre. The neighbourhood centre provides childcare, seniors & new immigrant’s activities, support, assistance and information for people who are underprivileged or marginalised in the local community. This, my friends is a good thing because not everyone has a mortgaged roof over their head, lots of friends to party with and their mental health.
So on Saturday morning (9:30am), Dave dropped me off at Prince Alfred Park and I made my way down to the Volunteer’s tent. My job was to be a spruiker and gold coin donation collector. I was given a megaphone and told to welcome people to the festival, ask for donations and tell people about the festival. I had done my homework before the event because I was taking the spruiker position seriously.
What I found interesting was that all the volunteers I met did not live in the Surry Hills area. Most of the volunteers were there because they “had to”, for example as part of their work experience for an event management course. I guess I’m disappointed that more people from the community didn’t make the effort to assist with the mammoth event that it was. Well at least they turned up in their thousands to enjoy the day. It seemed that there were a lot more volunteers earlier in the day, by lunchtime, there weren’t enough people to replace those who were on long shifts. I “worked” from 9:30am til 3:30pm and only got one break. So perhaps there needs to be an effort to encourage more helpers in the afternoon next year. The were more than a hundred volunteers doing all sorts of things like organising the dog show, setting up and bumping in as well as collecting donations. I only spoke to those collecting donations though.
As someone who has organised a few events myself, I could imagine what a freaking nightmare organising the Surry Hills Festival would have been. I was also informed that the festival was brought forward about 5 months due to the Council doing work on the park (which they later postponed, but it was too late to change the date). I really have to praise the organising team because unlike say: Big Day Out, Good Vibrations or V Festival, they aren’t doing this for their own profit. All the the money raised goes to the Neighbourhood Centre. I would say the 95% of people who turned up gave a donation of at least a dollar which is great. Though some people (who clearly didn’t look poor or underprivileged) tried to ignore the donation buckets being waved at them. It was a great day with beautiful weather, lots and lots of people and a good time was had by all (I hope).


Check out some pics here. They aren’t very good because I was busy volunteering and didn’t take my good camera.

I’ve slowly been adding to the Town Hall Steps group. I’ve found it a bit hard to find the time between having to have a SHORT lunch break due to too much work and keeping up with my exercise regime. Anyway – I thought this girl was interesting and she sounded like she’d had a BIG weekend. I’m pretty surprised by the amount of information some people will give me and up until yesterday, no-one had refused me. I even asked the guy if I could take a pic of his shoes if he didn’t want his face on the blog – but he was adamant that I should leave him alone.

So I finally created the Flickr group for Sydney Town Hall Steps. I’ve wanted to do some kind of photo-blog project about people waiting at Town Hall Steps for a long time. I used to wait there for friends as a teenager during school holidays or as a “young-adult-raver” before a big night out. I don’t hang out there anymore because I’m certainly not a teenager with nothing to do… but I do walk past it everyday on the way to work. When Dave & I lived in the burbs, we drove to the city and it became “inconvenient” to meet people there. Obviously for hundreds or Sydney-siders and visitors it is a very central and convenient place to meet.
Please stay tuned for photos on the Sydney Town Hall Steps Flickr group
Feel free to join the group and contribute.
Now, I just have to pluck up the courage to start asking strangers if I can take their photo. I seem to be able to do it at gigs for ITM. I wonder about all those different people waiting…waiting…waiting…

Last week was pretty quiet one. I went home sick from work twice, so was feeling rather crap the whole week. When I went to see the doctor (my normal medical centre but a new doctor in the house that day) something a bit odd happened. The doctor asked me “how my faith was”, then told me he was a minister. Then he asked if he could pray for me. I am not religious, so I found this quite weird but I said he could if he wanted to. So he did.
I had tickets to Caribou but didn’t go because I was sick, so Mr T went with Dave to the Beck’s Bar. On Saturday we had a nice lunch at Danks St Depot. We tried to go to Sopra but there was a 45 minute wait. What annoys me is that I want to “support” my local cafe/restaurants but “they are so trendy” that EVERYONE wants to go there. We still had to wait about 20 minutes for our table at DSD at 2pm-ish. Later that day, we attended Au Revoir Parapluie at the Sydney Theatre for Sydney Festival. It was a mixture of circus, mime, song and dance – quite abstract but fascinating to see what one can do with their body!

Well it was big night, shame about the drizzly rain but at least it didn’t pour. Plenty of people were out in the city to experience lots of great bands, singers and entertainment from the 2008 Sydney Festival Program. It kind of felt like NYE but better! We made our way to Martin Place to see Chromeo. We were not too far back, arriving about 40 minutes before they were meant to start (then they were 15 mins late). The DJ before hand played a big mix of hits and mashups which got the crowd jumping. As to be expected at these things, there was a fair amount pushing in and projectile throwing. The MC for this event looked like the same guy who MC’d at the HP Art in Motion Coldcut gig – he had got a caning on the ITM forums and it seems he heeded this info by getting some “trendy” sunglasses and wearing his cap sideways I know he’s just doing his job. This part of FFN was well organised with free water stands and first aid & toilets close by. When we left this area after Chromeo (who were really good, but we’re seeing them at the Beck’s Bar too), there was a mad crush to get through. We wandered around the various areas for a while, then decided to get food in Hyde Park. This was the crap part – you had to buy food voucher tickets to get your food. There appeared to be only one stand to buy these and the line had about 100 people in it. So we skipped that and went straight to the numerous ice-cream vans around the park. Next we went to check out Spank Rock in the Phillip Street area. It was very crowded here and the sound was too low (even for my liking – btw I have my new musicians earplugs – they’re awesome). It’s a concert for f’sake – maybe there was a technical hitch – because Fuzzy are very experienced in organising these kinds of events and they would know better right? Anyway, when Spank Rock came on it was kind of a let down because you couldn’t hear them properly and then someone threw a glass bottle and I said “let’s get the xxxx out of here”. So we went to Chinatown and had a nice big, fast, delicious late night dinner.

This year, I finally managed to get myself down to the Sydney Opera House forecourt for the finals show. Every year I sit glued to the TV, thinking how much fun it would be, to be there on Idol Grand Final night. So thanks to my bro (and his “connections”) I got a golden ticket. There was almost a chance to be a “seat filler” Kramer style, but it didn’t happen:( So there was a lot of screaming teenagers, big signs, big cameras and little ol me going “oh is that guy on Neighbours?” when the “celebrities” walked up the red carpet. I actually thought Matt would win by the amount of cheering/screaming and signage that appeared whenever his name was mentioned, but in the end good taste prevailed! The best part was finally seeing the Divinyls live (singing Boys in Town) twice (due to technical hitch with the live telecast) at the outside concert. It has also meant I won’t spend $84 seeing them at the Enmore for the sake of seeing them. By the way Chrissy Amphlett’s biography is awesome.