Nothing Is Simple Around Here (Mostly Photos) - 3/4/2014 - 17/4/2014

Confest Motto

Outside the workers kitchen with the team

"The party hasn't even begun yet, man"
-Emmanuel Marshall, my father

DISCLAIMER
ANY MENTION OF 
PERSONS 
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO ME)
 PERFORMING 
ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES ARE
FICTIONAL!
OKAY!?
K THNKS

I rose early from the Dasha; I'd had a great sleep after chilling out with Sage the night before, who was still asleep, and there was no sign of dad anywhere. I remembered he mentioned the gate would be marked, and yet had seen no marking. I rolled a fire barrel to the edge of the gate, and started walking back to the site.
"HOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Dad was right behind me.

J's for breakfast

Sage woke up and we chatted a while over breakfast, and then Sage and I got to work while dad took a breather from his travels (not being lazy or anything...).

The Dasha

The Kitchen where the previous night's events had taken place

"Perfectly functioning" site vehicles

Peter and Boris, the suave storage crates

The ticket booth

Sage and I chatted while we put up fence posts and tape around restricted indigenous land. She said that we would be the only three for a day or so, and then people would gradually turn up to help set up the place. Surely enough they did.

The next day I met Simon and the tastiest dried dates I've ever eaten.
Simon is a man with a philosophy:

Simon

"You should eat something"

Whenever things got frustrating and difficult, it was time for lunch according to Simon. 

Simon was right. 

Dad and Sage managed to get a brown 4WD running that day, so doing the posts was going to be quick work. It would also be slightly entertaining when i realized what the white paint on the van had been applied with.

Hehehe

Being happy with the passenger seat

Another day passed, and things were pretty easy. Sage and I finished up working and we headed back to the kitchen to rest.

That was when the confusion began.

Meet Jonah

Here was the situation; Jonah is roughly six-three, has dreadlocks, plays guitar and sings

My name is Jonah, I am roughly six-three, I have dreadlocks, I play guitar and I sing. HA!

Time to confuse the shit out of people!

(And we are both extremely sexy)

Jonah and I got on great! We mirrored each-other in many ways, and differed in many more - he was even left handed, so if we looked at each other with out guitars it was perfect. Jonah lives on a property owned by the local community, almost completely off the grid. He has no power, no land line, no internet or plumbing, yet he and his friends who also live there are frequently picking each other's brains to try and find solutions to these dilemmas (solutions I'm sure power companies frown upon). Jonah doesn't work either unless it's random jobs for the locals. Their food comes from the ground, and their water comes from the freshwater waterfall by their homes

To say the least I was impressed by this.

That night we smoked and jammed hard with my father, and chatted until it was very late.

Dad with all the class

Everyone continued working very hard, mostly with odd jobs here and there. I helped build a tool that would fix a gate,

Like some sort of badass

and I also helped Jonah set up the Vibes Tent in the Arts Village.

But you might be wondering to yourself: "What the hell is a Vibes Tent in the Arts Village?

Well, let me explain:

You get the idea

The arts village is where it all happens. It's where everyone jams, does body painting, gets covered in mud, and deprives each-other of sleep. Naturally, having no tent, I had to build a home there.

The foundations and early stages

(Insert montage and motivational music here)

The real deal, baby

Safe to say, I didn't have to listen to this guy snore anymore

More and more volunteers arrived, and now work was getting serious - we had to earn our cheaper volunteer's ticks. Jonah and I were on plumbing duty, and believe me that is harder than it sounds.

Essentially the water ran from the river, but due to it being undrinkable (I found out the hard way by drinking from the wrong tap), it had to run through a couple of filters first. Our job was to lay:

- 6km of 2 inch pipe across the whole site

- A line of 1 inch to each of the villages which include

    - Arts Village

    - Bliss

    - Tranquility Village

    - Tantra Village

    - Gypsy Kitchen

    - Market

- A line of half inch pipe from the 1 inch for each required location at each village, including toilets around the sites and also random drinking taps here and there on the path

We also then had to check for leaks and execute them with extreme prejudice.

Jonah sorting out the 1 inch pipe

To put it simply, our job was pretty important - possibly one of the top three most important jobs to prepare for Confest. In fact, we were volunteer superstars. We were THE JONAHS!!!

Inside Jonah's car with his growing artwork: "CD's Suck And Most Of Mine Are Broken"

Lunch and Confest stories with Peter, the legend behind the Arts Village

Peter's place

Guitar Tuna - I'm so clever

In the Moulamein library blogging with dad

Jonah's homegrown "chop-chop" tobacco

Doing my usual thing with some bolt cutters in a stinky, old on-site caravan

"Dr Who" in the evenings with Jonah. We also watched "The Mighty Boosh" and "Blackbooks"

Hard at work in our new van

In the evenings we jammed

Is he? Well, Cosmos Magazine studies show...

Confest transport to assist the Dreadful Journeyer

Wrapping my beard with Jo, who arrived at Confest a week after me from Pete's farm

Sheries; a new addition to the team. We also had assistance from Neville and Shift (Cheers guys!)

Hard at work merely hours before the festival start

Final touches to the Arts Village by Sheries & Jonah (Jon & Sas)

Finally, two weeks had passed; thousands of cars, vans, utes, campers, hitchhikers, gypsies, hippies, skinheads, metalheads - EVERYONE was piled up at the gates to get inside and begin partying. The vibe was immediately changing and Confest was coming to life.

I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up to date as much as I have previously, but I can tell you I am currently in Thailand, experiencing the culture, lady-boys and shifty hotel rooms. I miss you all, and it's great to see that my audience isn't just in Australia; I have views from all over the world and my blog has been read over 1000 times, something I never expected. WTF!?

When I started out, I intended to write to keep my friends and family up to date on exactly what I was doing and where I had been, so thank you strangers who have found me somehow and please keep reading, and please share, and please leave feedback, and PLEASE go out there and see the world for yourself! It will change you for the best, as I feel it is still doing for me.

Thank you!

To be continued...