Boomerang Festival 2013

Final Program

Music & Dance

Visitors to the Festival will be treated to some 133 performances and experiences from music to workshops, fire gatherings, dance participations and conversations with some unexpected surprises.
No other Australian event quite matches the number of Indigenous performers including some 70 clans group represented from across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia
With its diverse list of talent now announced, Boomerang Festival at Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm in Byron Bay is the place to be on the October long weekend.

Boomerang Festival 2013 Line Up Already Announced:

Gurrumul

 Wantok:SING SING performing WanSolwaraPipel feat Frank Yamma, 
Djakapurra, George Telek

Vika & Linda Bull (Tonga), Airileke, Albert David, Patriq Kas Futialo, Tieni Ruapene

 Archie Roach with Lou Bennett, Emma Donovan & Deline Briscoe and a Ten-Piece Ensemble

The Chooky Dancers, Quique Neira, Moana and the Tribe , Busby Marou (QLD)

 Casey Donovan (NSW) Ernie Dingo – Shellie Morris
Thelma Plum – The Medics
Jack Charles(VIC) Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM (NT)
Rako Dancers Sean Choolburra’s 50 Shades of Black

 Tammy Anderson’s I Don’t Wanna Play House – Larissa Behrendt
Film Screening of Butcher Paper, Texta, Blackboard and Chalk, Jeff McMullen – Arakwal Dancers

Boomerang Festival program launch announcement includes:
Breabach (Scotland)
Digging Roots (Canada)
Nga Tae (NZ)
Dubmarine (QLD)

OKA (QLD)

Ray Beadle (NSW/NZ)
Jerome Kavanagh: TE HAA AIO (NZ)
Pacific Curls (NZ)
TsuuT’ina & Anishnaabe (Canada)
Gary Foley (VIC)
Real Injun (Canada)
Other music performances include:
Slip On Stereo (QLD) Bow and Arrow (NSW) Getano Bann (QLD)
Supafresh (NSW) Blakboi (NSW)

Dance Grounds:
Move it Mob Style (NSW)
Malu Kiai Mura Buia (TSI)
Vou (Fiji)
Jannawi Dancers Koomurri Dancers Bunggul Dancers

Speakers Program:
George Negus(NSW) , Melissa Lucashenko (QLD) Romaine Morton (NSW) Richard Frankland (VIC)

The Boomerang International Indigenous Film Festival (BIIFF) will be launched featuring shorts, documentary and feature films including the award winning Reel Injun featuring Clint Eastwood and Adam Beach.

Boomerang Festival aims to be accessible. With early bird offers we feature an array of music, dance, theatre, comedy, film and visual arts, along with cultural knowledge exchanges and thought provoking conversations.

I'll be there for one, maybe two days.
I wish I could afford all three days, but I'm lucky to be going at all with my dwindling finances.

I'm looking forward to it.

Australiens

Another Alien

Marti from Just Outside the Box has added another cartoon character to her growing stable of toons. 
I ran the idea of an Australian type of alien called "Australien" past her a few weeks ago, after stumbling across her site while I was looking for images of dung beetles for a post about my UK blogging buddy King Uke and his recent obsession with dung beetles.

Just Outside the Box Cartoon

The Ballad of Tokyo Zombie

 

The Gold-Bug (1843)

It's funny, because it was the King and I's disagreement on a cult Japanese comic that brought our worlds together.

Tokyo Zombie 

(2008)

A cartoon Marti re-edited especially at my request. Thanks Marti.

Maybe when the little Australien gets mad, or in a fighting mood, red boxing gloves could magically appear on his hands? 
But I guess that would be 
"Just Outside of the Box(ing Ring)" then.
But it does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
The Boxing Australien?
Now there is a whole new field of merchandising possibilities when you bring flags into the picture?-)

Peter Carey liked the idea of the name Australien when I asked him to sign my copy of his book Bliss at the Byron Bay Writers Festival this year.
I'm surprised he never thought of saying he was an Australien before, since he tells everyone he is a Martian because he comes from Bacchus Marsh in Victoria.

My old t-shirt design I made at REMO years ago.

The Rainbow Region/Mt.Warning/Wollumbin

Mt.Warning/Wollumbin

The Rainbow Region
If you had two weeks and sturdy shoes, you could walk the entire rim of the southern hemisphere’s largest ancient volcano. 
This is the “Northern Rivers” region of Australia, including the southeast of Queensland and the northeast of New South Wales. 
With some careful observation, you would also move through deep earth time and even get glimpses of the future.
Dominating this landscape is Mt. Wollumbin, named ‘Wild Turkey’ by some, the ‘Cloud Catcher’ by others, sacred to the aboriginal tribes of the area. 
That peak, often lost in weather, is the plug for the volcano. It rose up 23 million years ago (mya). 
This volcano was active on and off for about three million years before its walls collapsed. 
It had come up through Brisbane siltstones laid down between 500-250 mya. 
It poured over Mesozoic sediments, which had been set down earlier (210-135 mya). 
Finally the area gave over to the power of water: erosion by rain, by new rivers, the silts of flooding and the sea level changes of the Quaternary years. So now - these valleys, ravines, waterfalls, coastal plains.
In places the soil, product of untold years of erosion, is said to be 12 metres deep.
In other places, the ancient Brisbane rock is visible. 
And along the coast is white sand, itself an erosion product of eons.
Looking up to Wollumbin, you can see eons unreeling. 
Looking over the caldera, there are 366,507 hectares of Gondwana Rain Forests. 
Their heritage goes back some 200 million years when continents now separated were one land. Half of today’s unique Australian plants and a third of its mammals and birds are here, scattered over 50 World Heritage listed national parks and rainforests.
From some 40,000 years ago, there are tales by the first people here, who marked some of their social divisions with the land: the women’s business to the seaside lakes, the men’s to the Wollumbin mountain. From several hundred years ago, there are Captain Cook’s tales and his new name for the plug. 
As it marked a treacherous coastline, he called it Mt. Warning.
Colloquially, the present day inhabitants know the area as

the ”Rainbow Region”. 
In the ever-changing weather, the colours arch, marking bridges and promises. 
These are expressed in vivid arts, active citizenship and environmental innovations. 
There, did you see that? 
That local something? 
It’s the first appearance of what we will soon know as “tomorrow”.
Mary Gardner, writer & biologist, Byron Bay

http://www.rainbowdreaming.org/rainbow_region.html

The track re-opened Sept 24th (the day after my birthday;-)

" The popular Mt Warning summit walking track at Wollumbin National Park near Murwillumbah has been re-opened after eight months out of action.
The four-and-a-half kilometre track used by around 100,000 visitors every year was severely damaged by ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald last January, which forced its closure due to fallen trees and landslips.
Its closure affected local tourism and businesses in both Murwillumbah and the nearby village of Uki which also suffered another blow afterwards when its historic pub burnt to the ground and is yet to be rebuilt.

Mt.Warning Erupts on the 23rd

The NSW government committed $200,000 to rebuild the track, which was completed around three months ahead of schedule with a recent spate of fine weather helping.
Yesterday, environment minister Robyn Parker and Lismore MP Thomas George visited the park to thank National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) staff for their hard work in getting the project completed. just in time for the school holidays which started this week.
They also acknowledged the local community and businesses for their patience while the track and car park were being cleared of debris.
The work included repairs to the summit lookout platforms which provide the panoramic views of the Tweed Valley and surrounding ranges.
Mr George said more than 10 tonnes of debris was cleared from the car park alone, which was wood-chipped and used as mulch in nearby nature reserves, including Marshalls Creek, Cudgen and Wooyung.
‘The Australia Day weekend storm caused significant damage to the mountain, including extensive blow-downs of ancient forest trees and three landslips on the eastern face,’ he said.
‘The summit path has been re-routed in four separate locations due to the massive root-balls of the felled trees blocking the path.’
NPWS regional manager Mark Johnston said the clearing on Wollumbin was especially difficult for the crews.
‘Normally mountain tracks are cleared from the summit down, but because the 4.4km path was steep and blocked the clean-up began at the ground and worked up,’ Mr Johnston said.
‘This made the job more challenging and dangerous as discarded debris could not be rolled down the mountain.’
Re-construction facts: 
·  The NPWS engaged specialist arborists who abseiled between the top of trees with a chainsaw to remove dangerous overhanging limbs.
·  50 tonnes of gravel was airlifted into the park by a helicopter and dropped at various points along the summit track.
·  A team of NPWS ground staff has been working in the park since April 30.
· All of the contractors, with the exception of one, came from the Northern Rivers.
·  Mt Trails, Tasmanian experts in building walking tracks in Australian national parks, worked on the track, and employed local indigenous workers."

Mt Warning track re-opened

Climb Every Mountain?  
Funny also how the track opens from 
Cyclone Oswald's damage and then I read this -
 Alice Oswald has become the first poet to win the £25,000 Warwick Prize for Writing.
 Her winning work, Memorial, is a reworking of Homer's Iliad.
"I'm very surprised and grateful, both to the judges and to Homer," Oswald said, when her win was announced on Tuesday night 
(Sept 24th).
Alice Oswald becomes first poet to win Warwick Prize

As I tried to upload photos on this post, 
Blogger kept giving me the "ignore warning" message, 
and what is the name of this mountain again?-)

Midnight Sun: An Exploration of the UFO & Alien Abduction Phenomenon

I watched this video this morning and just having read

Graham Hancock's book Supernatural, I would have to say that these are great companions and I would recommend  both of these brilliant works on these almost explainable experiences of the inner and outer worlds.

 

Supernatural by Graham Hancock - book review

Rainbow Dreaming Invocation

“Peace Will Come”, Byron Bay, 18th July, 2006
Image: © Hisashi Isogai

Invocation
We call upon the spirit of evolution, the miraculous force that inspires rocks and dust to weave themselves into biology - do not forsake us now. 
Empower and awaken us to creativity.
You that can turn scales into feathers, seawater to blood, caterpillars to butterflies, metamorphose our species; awaken in us the powers that we need to survive the present crisis and evolve into more aeons of our solar journey. 
Awaken in us a sense of who we truly are: tiny ephemeral blossoms on the Tree of Life. 
Make the purposes and destiny of that tree our own purpose and destiny.
Fill each of us with love for our own true self, which includes all of the creatures and plants and landscapes of the Earth. 
May the inner passion that comes from knowing this spread through these leaden times.
We call upon the power which sustains the planets in their orbits, that wheels our milky way in its 200 million year spiral, to fill our personalities and relationships with endurance, harmony and joy.
Fill us with a sense of immense time so that our brief, flickering lives may truly reflect the work of vast ages past and also millions of years of evolution whose potential lies in our trembling hands.
O stars, lend us your burning passion.
O silence give weight to our voice.

John Seed, international rainforest activist, Bodhi Farm

http://www.rainbowdreaming.org/RD_intro.html

Christmasland: A Psychedelic State?

"NOS4A2 (pronounced Nosferatu) is a 2013 novel by American author Joe Hill and is his third novel. 
The book was published on April 30, 2013 through  
William Morrow and Company and focuses on a woman trying to save her son from a vicious killer who has set his sights on him." 
NOS4A2 
Joseph Hillstrom King (born June 4, 1972), better known by the  
pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer and the son of  (the) Stephen King.

Joseph Hillstrom King (AKA Joe Hill)

 I couldn't help thinking of a dark kind of   

The Catcher in the Rye as I watched the video clip above of what NOS4A2 was about.

King even uses a covered bridge much like the bridge that you had 
to cross to get to Salinger's country estate, oddly enough.

CHRISTMAS-LAND?

I also like the head tripping angle of the origins of Christmas icons like Santa, his elves and reindeer.

Joe's inspiration, I wonder?

Reading Graham Hancock's book Supernatural also rammed home the mushroom/shamanic connections of Christmas and Christmas imagery to me.

DMT visions

Christmas wreath on a door

Pineal glands and owls?

As a side note here, I finished reading Douglas Noel Adams (DNA) book, The Salmon of Doubt  the other day and he is famous for giving us the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything, being the number 42 and Hill uses a 4&2 on the number-plate on the front cover of his book, while Graham Hancock's book number ends in a 42 

(1932857842).

Another Joe ... Joe Rogan on Christmas, Santa Claus, and Mushrooms in the video above ... and if you know Joe he uses the F word quite a lot, so if you get offended by that word

(Father Christmas? No.) then please don't listen to it.

Wonderland Playlist

ATTENTION: Spoilers galore if you haven't read the book.
"The book takes place over several time periods, with the book opening in a hospital in 2008. Charles Talent Manx, known for abducting children with his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, briefly wakes out of a coma in order to threaten a nurse that was caring for him. 
Her fellow coworkers don't believe her claims, saying that he was incapable of waking or talking.
The book then shifts to 1986, where Victoria "Vic" McQueen discovers that she can find things by riding her

Raleigh Tuff Burner bicycle 
through a bridge called the "Shorter Way Bridge",  
previously thought to have been destroyed. 
Once on the other side, she is always where she needs to be to find whatever it is that she was looking for. 
The process takes a large toll on Vic mentally and physically, especially as she has to lie about how she finds things. 
She eventually travels to an Iowa library where she meets Maggie, a librarian that can use Scrabble tiles to find out where to look for missing items or information. 
The process also takes a large toll on her, causing a severe stutter. 
She warns Vic against Manx, whom she can only refer to as "the Wraith" due to her being unable to divine his given name. 
Vic then begins to travel home, but loses her bike in the process and develops a terrible fever. During this time Manx enlists chemical plant worker Bing in order to gain access to a  
gingerbread-flavored sevoflurane that the factory produces. 
Believing that Manx is taking the children to a place called "Christmasland" where nothing bad happens, Bing willingly goes along with Manx's plans and uses the sevoflurane to capture children."

Shorter Way Bridge?

"Years pass and Vic once again uses the Shorter Way after she has a fight with her mother. 
She tries call her demolitionist father to stay with him, but is rebuffed. 
In retaliation Vic uses the bridge to travel to Manx's house, thinking that her abduction would hurt her mother. 
Once there she begins to experience inexplicable events such as seeing a child with rows of sharp brown teeth and cold air coming from his nose despite it not being cold enough. 
Vic barely manages to get away from Manx, especially after his house catches on fire. 
In her hurry to escape she runs into Louis "Lou" Carmody, who takes her to a gas station to call the police. 
While the police are being called Manx drives up to fill the gas tank and is captured, but only after he sets fire to a man trying to capture him.
Years pass and Vic begins a relationship with Lou and becomes pregnant with a son, Wayne. Unhappy and still scarred over her experiences with Manx, she begins painting motorcycles and later develops a successful series of children's books as a way of dealing with the memories. 
During this time she's also tormented by phone calls from unknown children who verbally torment her for getting Manx arrested. 
Her relationship with Lou suffers and ends as a result, with the two remaining relatively amicable. 
She eventually goes clean, but is confronted with the reality that Manx is still out there when Maggie appears on her doorstep. 
Unwilling to believe that he still exists, she sends Maggie away and accuses her of lying.
Meanwhile Manx has escaped, reunited with Bing, and has killed Vic's neighbors, taking residence in their house. 
The two bide their time as Vic and Wayne fix up an old motorcycle they discovered. 
It's only when Vic takes the bike out for a test drive 
(during which time she once again encounters the Shorter Way) 
that the two move in and kidnap Wayne, beating Vic fairly severely in the process. 
Wayne manages to call Lou, telling him that Manx has captured him. 
Vic calls the police to report Wayne's abduction, giving them an altered version of events that doesn't include her seeing the bridge. 
Her story isn't believed because Manx died within the hospital and was autopsied. 
FBI psychologist Tabitha Hutter is brought on to the case but still doesn't quite believe Vic, not even after a traced iPhone call from Wayne shows that he is traveling inbetween the worlds."

"Vic decides to go after Manx and Wayne using the Shorter Way. 

She first goes to the "House of Sleep" in the hopes of getting her son back, only to find that it is Bing's house. 

He attacks Vic but she manages to kill him in self-defense. 

After reporting back to Lou 

(who then has chest pains due to undetected carotid stenosis) 

 about her intent to further pursue Manx, Vic takes the Shorter Way to Maggie's library where the two women search for answers using Maggie's Scrabble tiles. 

Vic discovers that the way to destroy Manx is to destroy his Wraith, but Maggie is killed when Manx arrives at the library while Vic is sleeping. 

Narrowly missing capture by local police, Vic leaves to go to her father's house in search of some ANFO to destroy the Wraith. 

She successfully gains the explosives, meets back up with Lou, and emotionally reconnects with her father. 

Vic and Lou are forced to flee after Tabitha and the police show up, believing that Vic was responsible for the deaths of both Bing and Maggie. 

They end up outside of Manx's home, where she leaves Lou behind before setting out to Christmasland. 

There she's threatened by Manx's children after she reveals that she brought explosive with her. 

Vic fails to destroy the Wraith using the explosives, only to then see the car and Manx die in the Shorter Way bridge as it collapses in on itself."

Tommy, can you hear me?

"The book then cuts forward to October, where it is revealed that Vic died shortly after she and Wayne returned to reality, having escaped Christmasland and Manx. 
Lou has lost a lot of weight and has begun seeing Tabitha. 
However Wayne still has nightmares where he sees the remnants of Christmasland and its inhabitants, where he is one of them and participates in gruesome games. 
During his waking hours he finds that he's still losing his humanity and that his transformation into one of Manx's creatures is still ongoing. 
Realizing that the now-dead Manx is still influencing his child, Lou takes Tabitha and Wayne out to the remains of Manx's home and smashes various ornaments that are hanging around the property. 
As the ornaments are destroyed various children that Manx had kidnapped and transformed appear, completely human. 
Lou smashes the ornament that stood for Wayne, reversing the transformation.
In the epilogue, Manx's "True Children" 
(including his biological daughter Millie) 
manage to keep their ornaments and escape from Christmasland in their demonic state."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOS4A2

Have yourself a trippy little Christmas,
but try to avoid those bad trips to Christmasland;-)

Fairies, Aliens, DMT, Psychics and Shamans

Where dreams come to life...

I've been reading Graham Hancock's book Supernatural and he comperes the similarity between alien experiences, accounts of fairies, DMT/ayahuasca journeys and other states of consciousness in a way I find quite thought provoking.

Reading this book is like bringing a number of supposedly unrelated subjects together into a finely woven tapestry.
I highly recommend reading this book with an open mind and then making your own judgments afterwards.
To be honest, if you had have asked me to consider the experience of the fairy world having a basis in reality a few months ago I would have thought you were pushing your luck with me on that one, but Graham has at least sat me on the fence with his arguments on this phenomena having some basis in our own reality.
Sounds nuts, I know, but read the book first and it may make a little more sense to you.

When Scott brought up the subject of fairies in his book on shamanism I have to say that he almost made me regret buying the book.
But reading Graham's book put fairy stories into a bit of a different light for me, not that I'm totally fine with it yet, but at least I'm willing to take a more fresh approach to a subject I thought I could never take seriously at all.

When I bought Julie McKenzie's book Dancing with Spirit through her website, I was offered her children's book about fairies for an extra $5, and at the last minute thought why not?

I have to say that after reading Graham's research on fairies, aliens and altered states of consciousness, some of the illustrations in this book become very interesting indeed.

Note also the hallucinogenic mushrooms that are never far away in the fairy illustrations.

Graham also says in a DMT experience Ferris wheels and carousels are often reported (see top picture).

Chinese style dragons are also something else reported in

DMT experiences.

Now, the thing with DMT is that you have it occurring naturally in the body, so you don't necessarily have to take it as a drug to trip out. 

There are other ways to go into trance without taking drugs and some people (something like 2%) have a naturally high DMT level in their brain and could get into an altered state quite easily  

(psychics maybe?).

Something to think about, I think when looking into these subjects.

http://www.starrfineart.com/paintings.html

DMTrmx