Burnie Shines
In 1998 I accompanied an emu and a girl in a bed to drive around the Burnie CBD.
My beloved theatre and literary studies teacher Amanda Muruste approached me in the nuclear-green-carpeted halls of Hellyer College. She was recruiting a ragtag bunch of go-getters to promote Burnie’s upcoming Burnie Shines spring festival armed with Curlz MT inscribed pamphlets spruiking wholesome activities gleaned from a fledgling Burnie.net website.
I accepted the challenge.
‘Anything you want, everything you need,’ I said, with my fearful eyes, sounding like a vocal from a Chemical Brothers song. Such is life as a reticent leader. It’s a figure eight leg-lock with the octopus of self-doubt as you dare to live up to your own passive-aggressive expectations.
Crucially, I would not be alone. Joining me in this psychedelic regional freak-out would be fellow theatre droog and alternative drama princess Elizabeth “Lizz” Smith. She was awarded the coveted role of ‘Girl In Bed.’ Artistically, she was our linchpin. The centrepiece to this whole charade.
The jig was her brass alarm clock would sporadically ring, engaging Lizz to spring from her slumber like a flannelette flower and declare the immortal words to the traffic-lit, K-martful heavens.
“RISE AND SHINE BURNIE!”
My role was … less clear.
The brief: Dress crazy.
Fortunately, this was a remit I was equal to as I had just helped facilitate a rather successful ‘crazy head day’ as president of the Student Representative Council at Hellyer College. I had invented my own ice cream bucket hat adorned in paper with a pen on string attached so people could sign it.
I was also in possession of my nan’s 1970s retro ski suit; a gridded, sky blue, flared onesie with flame red collar I snavelled from Nan & Pop’s spare room in Wynyard. It was ill-fitting, but gave me the instant appeal of being a novelty superhero. With the suit zipped up and ready to rock, all I needed was a superiorly matching hat (the autograph hat built for wow factor, not durability). Fellow Dream Burnie alumni and Hellyer art room ghost-fox Michaela Gleave emerged from her brown paper compound to bequeath me with a fuzzy, fawn, soft-rippled seventies beanie replete with thick chenille yarn and satin lining.
“It’ll look like you’re wearing your brain on the outside,” she said.
I’d heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve, but this felt … appropriate.
And so, Lizz and I made the thrilling segue out of normal class hours to exit stealthily out the back door and be chauffeured downtown in Amanda’s red Barina. In a makeshift ‘green room’ outside Illusions hairdresser, we were greeted with the lo-fi Christmas parade float infrastructure of a bed on wheels and a man in an emu costume. Any concerns I may have had about copping too much ‘heat’ in the attention stakes were dissipated - I would simply blend, oddly yet evenly into the background.
We joined the other vehicles trundling up Cattley Street.
The traffic, reasonable. The weather, kind. The shoppers, nonplussed.
I was somewhat embarrassed, I suppose; subtly questioning myself over my entirety of life decisions and penchant for the spotlight, despite perpetual possession of an inflamed nerve set.
It was a not dissimilar sub-skin reaction to the event of pulling up outside school in Mum’s yellow Volkswagen Super Beetle, capable of generating a hundred times its body weight in noise. Be that as it may, I focused on Lizz and her reliably consistent alarm clock rings and proclamations.
“Rise and shine Burnie, it’s time for the Burnie Shines Spring Festival!”
We reached the intersection of Cattley and Mount. (Eye Biz and Fitzgeralds.) It was there that time stood still. Our bedridden bohemian and her emboldened entourage had advanced its status to one of light articulated vehicle.
We had to stop at the lights.
The emu indicated.
On 11 October 1998, a pantomime troop made the longest right turn in Burnie CBD intersection history.
Outside Kmart we reached our crescendo. The emu strutted with exceptional fortitude and an uncanny likeness. Lizz gave her lines that little bit of extra pepper and fairy dust. I walked along, slightly less awkwardly. Together, we promoted the bananas out of one of the best spring festival the coast has ever seen.
Oh, how Burnie Shined!
Justin Heazlewood is the author of Dream Burnie.
