Peacebus captain Graeme Dunstan AEM was invited to attend the Woodford Festival as a guest of the management, specifically Jon Sullivan, the Site Manager. This was the good fruit of good karma for the work Graeme had done designing and installing street lighting when the Festival first moved onto the green field site 12 years ago.
The avenues of concertinas of yellow cloth printed with a red sun setting over Bunya pine silhouettes created a sense of enchantment by night and became a visual signature of the Festival.
The not-for-profit Woodford Folk Festival has gone from success to success and is now recognised as a major cultural treasure by politicians, cultural planners, musicians, performance artists of all kinds and festival devotees alike.
It's a big Festival now - some 30,000 camp over for the 5 days of the Festival, more come as day visitors 75,000 all up.
For many attendance has become an annual family rite, and this is particularly true amongst the volunteer workers of which there are many. Woodford gathers an extended family where the progress generational change is a satisfying witness to the old ones like Graeme. As they grow grey and they have the joy of noticing children grow in these seasonal encounters, of seeing them become young adults and some now mothers of Woodford Festival children.
Graeme's annual Eureka commemorations work in Ballarat had kept in the south lands and he had not been to the Woodford since 1998 and he was welcomed at the workers camp as one of the old family. Big Bill Hauritz, the Festival boss, in particular gave Graeme a warm hug. "Welcome home," he said.
In 1998 Graeme had witnessed the start up of the Eureka Bar by a band of Viet vet bikies around Breaker and Dave and their mates who did the outdoor site work, the hot and sweaty stuff like fencing, bar building, street lighting, garbage, and so on. It served as workers' bar.
In that year Graeme, fresh from Eureka story telling in Ballarat for the first Eureka Dawn Lantern Walk, told the story and led the company in swearing the Eureka oath. Eureka story telling and oath swearing was to become a daily Festival ritual of the Eureka Bar.
Graeme departed promising Breaker and Dave that he would return with Eureka flags to decorate the Bar. Seven years later he did return bearing a big bunch of Eureka banners, but too late: the Eureka Bar had been shut down and the expanded Greenhouse, a venue for speakers on environmental issues, had taken its place.
Needless to say the loyal workers who had given so much effort to the Festival and Eureka Spirit were aggrieved and more so when they learned of the Festival management decision to open a new bar and call it The Empire.
Breaker groaned as he told Graeme the sad story. An interesting man is Breaker. A former major in the Australian Army he served in Vietnam and cleared villages. Now he lives in a provincial city Vietnam and, married to a Vietnamese widow (his second family), he is helping raise her two teenage daughters. On his right bicep he bears a regimental tattoo and under it another tattoo of a peace dove flying backwards and words that read in Vietnamese "I am sorry."
Graeme, fresh once more from Eureka rebel commemoration organising in Ballarat, suggested a Bakery Hill mass meeting and a march on The Empire. Hearing this fancy, the dejected Breaker transformed into a man with a mission and at once set about organising it, putting out the word to all the Eureka stalwarts on site.
Rebellion in the camp! Dear reader, learn from this: beware of inviting Eureka flag flying rebels as idle guests to a workers camp.
The Eureka March on The Empire took place 5 pm Tuesday 28 December, the first afternoon of the 2005 Woodford Festival. The event was a mix of conceptual humour, outrage, grief, flag art and sacred story telling
Graeme told the story in four parts as a Stations of the Southern Cross exercise, parading through the Festival streets with banners looking more like a religious procession than a protest, to The Empire Bar where a circle formed and everyone in it got to say what Eureka meant to them.
Heart moved words were heard, many affirming their commitment to standing truly by mates in the difficult times ahead.
And standing truly together we swore once again to fight to defend our rights and liberties, led in our Oath taking by the youngest present, an enthralled ten year old girl called Anastasia. Or so Graeme wished: for in truth he didn't learn her name, but rather in her rapt attention saw a resonance of spirit and fancied she was a young girl incarnation of Eureka heroine, Anastasia Hayes, discovering her destiny.
The following series of photographs were captured by Zev Ben-Avi who generously and promptly compiled them on a CD ROM and also printed them out as thumbnails, a gift for Graeme.
When Graeme was able to get a minute of Bill Hauritz's attention a couple of days later, he showed him Zev's prints and Bill responded with a grin saying: "We'll have to open the Eureka Bar again, so that we can close it again and get you to do that Eureka March again."
Bill was a happy man and Breaker too. Everyone standing up alive. In Eureka spirit!
