passing Tallygaroopna

Wake up to the sound of Greg frying eggs in the kitchen.

Lovely evening where Jacinda (Cindy) showed us a film she’d made at awakenings, one of those beautiful, funny, heartbreaking projects that makes Christy hold her chest and smile. The boys (Billy and Brady) got more and more hilarious as it got further and further past bed time.

Billy post-bedtime

I found myself saying ‘overtired’ in the exact tone my dad used to use just as things were getting really fun and then clicked and reigned myself in. Christy pulled out i-photo on her computer and set the boys up with the distorted faces. It pulled the whole family into the hilarity before bedtime.

This morning we follow Cindy in the van down to Marnoo where the ‘Navy Blue Supporters Group’ are presenting us at the Marnoo hall. The ‘Navy Blue Supporters’ started 27 years ago to fundraise for the Marnoo Blues. Ten years ago the Blues ran out of football players, but not supporters. So the group still goes on, now organising all kinds of local community events and fundraisers. It makes me so happy. The brilliance of the way this community has figured out to hang together.

We bump in and I set up our four PAR cans on tables and tall wooden plant stands and plug them in with Gregs so-far-from-tagged-and-tested extension leads. I run the sound out of Christy’s little busker’s amp and we’re away.

Cindy has said we may only have an audience of eight kids so be prepared. But we were on WIN tv last night after the show in Ballarat and the Navy Blue supporters are all talking about it as they chop fruit in the kitchen. We end up with a crowd of about 80 and the little hall feels full up. The show is cute and uneventful and there is lots of laughter. Particularly around the upside-down map gag – which it takes the kids a moment to cotton on to and then they jump into it hard.

Afterwards one boy says, “I never thought anything like this would ever come to Marnoo” and a little girl comes up to Christy and says, “When I grow up I want to be like you.” It’s like a cliché but in the most pure gold kind of way. It makes me think about all the theatre I ever saw as a child and I feel like my role models were all ballet-alikes or pantomime princesses. So happy that this girl has seen Christy carrying a boy around on her shoulders and it’s who she wants to be.

We bump out quickly as a sausage sizzle happens outside and then Christy brings all the kids back in for a workshop. They are totally up for focussing, 'freezing' and playing all the games. Christy takes a crew outside to hula hoop. Luke teaches hilarious acroballance for teeny-tinys and I wander around and take photos and keep time.

Then we drive to Yarrawonga.

The sun sets forever and we watch the light which is peachy in Shepparton, turn to twilight on the highway and by the time we pass Tallygaroopna and Katamatite it is a stunning deep orange against a black-blue sky. At one point a thousand tumbleweeds sit and roll gently on the road and Christy turns down the music so we can just look. Luke directs me and we delight in the placenames, the falling down pubs, the gorgeous houses amongst trees and the rusty trucks with their rounded wheel arches and grass growing on their trays.

We talk about Bubblewrap and little ways to tweak the show. They reminisce about touring Spilt Milk and what it’s taken to get this show on the road. How it’s so good to be about to take a show to somewhere as tiny as Marnoo. We watch the road and the sheep and the big sky and talk about making work and all the things that make it good, make it possible.

Yarrawonga by seven to check in at the motel and take ourselves out to dinner. Luke buys a whole sara lee pie for desert for himself, Christy finds a trashy magazine and I get blue cheese and crackers. We laugh about our own special ways of going on a bender and all sit around on their motel bed to consume.