Old Man Time

In Peace Park, Nimbin, Australia, Old Man Millennium went out in a fierce and beautiful conflagration. Old Man Millennium, a 5 metre cardboard sculpture (3 days work), was inspired by a drawing by my defacto son-in-law, Darren.

The burning was part of a new year renewal ceremony designed by my teachers in celebratory art, John Fox and Sue Gill of the UK community arts group, Welfare International. They had been my guests in Nimbin at the end of 1978 and had produced a spectacular celebration of the new year.

The experience was life changing for me and there after, my vocation became making art that makes community. Sue and John were in Bathurst last October teaching celebratory art at a summer school conducted by Charles Sturt University. John asked about Nimbin and whether the form of the celebration had taken root. Then and there I decided to turn down offers of work elsewhere, do Old Man Time again and dedicate it to them and their inspirational teaching.

Getting the celebration together was a miracle of organisation, but then doing anything depending on volunteers in Nimbin always is! It's a totally laid back culture and those who can work, do and are either making money on new year's eve or taking a well earned rest with their families.

Confronted with so much to do and so little reliable help, I invoked Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles, waving incense above my little bronze statue: "Waves of light upon you Ganesh. I need a builder/carpenter, volunteers who are competent with tools and can make things."

Next day I noticed three young men in strange and dramatic costumes - black corduroy and leather suit with flared trousers, white shirt, vest with six big white buttons and black bowler hats) hanging about in Nimbin. I asked about and discovered they were German journeymen, two carpenters and a joiner.

They were Guild members and their costume and mission part of a 600 year old tradition that required them, having completed their apprenticeships, to travel and give service in exchange for sustenance, learning how to become useful in community practice. And here they were backpackers at the Nimbin Hotel, next door.

I approached them and asked for help with a "little" job which became three days of intense sweaty effort. You know how it is. The joiner, Kai, designed and made a manually operated digital clock, each digit 2.4 m high by 2 m wide. Beautiful precision.

They were the ones who got the 5 m high Old man Millennium upright and with only two minutes to spare before midnight! Which meant just two clicks on the digital clock (48 hours work) before burning!

Aquarian songman, Paul Joseph, was funeral director for the end of time and for a very local crowd of 300 or so. He was accompanied by a red sequined devil (Amanda Furze) collecting all the bad memories for the belly of the giant. The kids, wearing flat cardboard skull masks they had painted, rushed to be pall bearers. The two 4 metre high backpack skellies I made for the McCaffrey action in Sydney danced with the parade. Lantern light and the night was very quiet; many houses were dark and empty; no traffic. Very eiree.

Like Walpursignight, a lot of wild spirit beings, invoked and now wanting and not wanting the purification by fire, were whirring about us. Getting the burn together became an epic struggle. Carrying the backpack had physically exhausted me and I had to lay on the grass for 15 minutes just to summons energy to walk back to my studio. Where the energy to get the burning organised? And a shower of rain interrupted the fire work rigging. And I was glad of it and struggled back to the studio and joined a drinking/smoking circle while Inez' florescent Can-Can dancers performed on the pub's back verandah next door.

At 11.15 pm the rain had passed and we assembled to fuse and tie the firework fountains to the frame and get Old Man Millennium upright, propped and tied, the Germans swearing non-stop and me giving frantic orders. Manic again.

Paul Joseph worked the crowd out front. At 5 minutes to midnight I sprinted to get the flood lights of the Bowling Club doused (another task promised but not done), rushing in wild-eyed and manic to negotiate with florid middle age men with faces like granite. They co-operated despite their manifest loathing of me, and I sprinted back.

Three minutes to midnight and I asked 13 year old Serra Greenwood to get a sparkler to light the fuse at midnight. She brought back a lighted sparkler which I knew will burn out before midnight. The Clock ticked again. She danced off with the sparkler, I called her back to light the fuse but the sparkler died and she ran in the opposite direction. I struggled to light it with a bum lighter. Kai came and lit as the clock hits midnight. Sheee-wizz! the quick fuse zip-burned.

Going behind the build I realised I had no tinder box prepared to light the fire under the giant. So I grabbed the diesel drum and ran into the shower of golden sparks and threw what is left of the diesel up into the base which was raised 1.5 m. Exultation of fire! Surrounded by golden light and in my power as a fire magician.

The lightweight truss structure which supported the cardboard sculpture had a box cross section which was lined with cardboard. We had stuffed it with straw and cardboard scraps and six 2 litre bottles of diesel were taped inside. In the upright position it acted as a chimney, the draft of which created a fierce conflagration that consumed Old Man Millennium from behind, collapsing it back into the fire. The fireworks crackled and flashed on but Old Man Millennium was gone within two minutes of torching.

Paul sang Auld Lang Syne with the crowd out front and my drunken pyrotechnician friend and I, hugged and danced about behind the build. The digits of the clock had gone from 11.59 to 2000 before the burn, and then after the burn to LIFE which the Serra changed to LOVE.

My German friends were ecstatic with the burn. Never before had they worked so hard, in such chaos, to produce something so amazingly perfect. All magic and serendipity. I recorded bountiful blessings in each of their travel books which they keep as part of their journeyman tradition.

The Bay Welcoming Ceremony I organised for new millennium day in Nimbin was a sweet success too. In with the New. Because of the uncertain weather, we did it in the Hall which was still smelling of alcohol and tobacco smoke from the night before. Literally we had to wipe blood from the foyer floor before we could begin. Out with the Old!

Twenty babies, the Spirit present and all hearts open. Faye Sherf, 70 year old President of the Nimbin Older Women's Forum hosted the event and led the blessing.

We sat in a friendship circle in front of a small riser on which Faye had put a vase of flowers and a candle. The flowers, Faye explained, represented life in the blooming and dying and the candle the inner light that guides us.

First we introduced ourselves. Besides the babies, their mothers and fathers, there were other elders and spiritual leaders. Father Arthur from the Nimbin Catholic Church was there and so too was his neighbour, Mark Collins, pastor of the Nimbin Uniting Church. Also present was Robert, a Sai Baba devotee and spiritual leader of a 5 month old spiritual community at Blue Springs. He had brought ashes from the cremation fire of his guru as an offered blessing.

Paul Joseph, my Aquarian brother beside me again, sang a song to charge the space with sacred meaning. First the Mother song ("mother you're darkness, mother you're light ....) and then the Angel invocation song. Tears erupted as I remembered how beautiful it had been at my daughter Softly's naming ceremony at Tuntable Falls in 1974 (my first Baby Welcoming Ceremony) and how Paul had sung up the angels there too.

Faye welcomed the babies gathering the young mothers under her arms like a great Earth Grandmother and setting up the group for photos (an essential and appropriate part of the ritual!). Father Arthur and Mark Collins blessed us with warm and open hearts and then Robert sat cross legged on the riser dabbing ash on the foreheads of the seekers of Sai Baba's grace.
Afterwards when all the blessings were said, we shared cake and thanked each other, a sense of repleteness prevailing. Replete in community, babies and elders likewise blessed.

Faye is eager to do it again come 13 February when His Grace Phillip Huggins, Bishop of Grafton, a participant in the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival and my first meditation teacher, is available to participate.

All blessings upon her.

GRAEME