Hundreds of people line the main street of Mirboo North in regional Victoria at dusk armed with their phones to film the lantern parade.
After an Acknowledgement of Country and smoking ceremony, a giant powerful owl lantern puppet heads down the main street to lead the Mirboo North Winterfest parade.
It is followed by a bespoke mardi gras of colourful handmade lantern creations from local school children, scouts and community groups.
Set to the beat of African drumming, the occasion is part of a growing revival of re-imagined winter solstice events around Gippsland, designed to bring isolated locals out of hibernation during the cold, dark months.
“Everybody makes lanterns in the months leading up to this,” says Thomasin Bales, community project officer of the annual community event which was refashioned through the COVID pandemic.
“Times are tough and it’s nice to come out and know that you can do something without it costing you a fortune.”
After the parade, the crowd heads down to the park oval, where a sculpture of a giant banksia is lit into a bonfire as a symbol of community resilience after the town’s devastating February storm event which damaged and destroyed several homes.
The following day a “clootie tree” is paraded and burned in the park, baring leaves of fabric upon which people have inscribed anxieties that they want to release and messages of hope for the future.
“It’s been a hard few months for a lot of people, and people are still feeling the effects of the storm,” Ms Bales says.
“So when we were putting this together, we just wanted people to come out and relax and just enjoy what we have together.”
In the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, academic and event organiser Ros Derrett says similar scenes occur at the annual Lismore Lantern Parade, which has provided a safe, night-time family-friendly outing for the past 30 years.
“In Lismore, we had the terrible disaster here in 2022 of floods, so the Lantern Parade people decided to think about recovery and demonstrating resilience. How does a community get back on its feet?” Dr Derrett says.
With ongoing homelessness, depression, isolation and cost of living pain still affecting the community, she says that local authorities have realised that resilience is an ongoing process.
“During the festival people have their mood lifted, nobody is putting any pressure on them, they just need to turn up. They can participate or spectate,” Dr Derrett says.
Low-cost, pre-electric fun
Although the notion of “light and night” at festivals is nothing new, Dr Derrett says the re-emergence of old world, low-tech lantern parades and bonfire rituals, is indicative of broader off-screen, off-grid sustainable lifestyle trends.
“In other parts of people’s lives, particularly in the regional areas, people are actually going back to fundamentals in the food they eat, in the way they live in their houses, in the way they grow their crops, in the way that they communicate with one another,” she says.
“They’re concerned about face to face, the fact that they want to avoid using their phones but that doesn’t mean that they don’t take photos of everything that moves.”
Unlike the classic country agricultural shows of the 20th century, you won’t find screaming teenagers on high-stimulation carnival rides, showbags filled with plastic merchandise, or the culinary taboo of dagwood dogs and neon fairy floss at these events.
Gourmet food trucks serve exotic takeaway with biodegradable cutlery to the craft beer and hay bale set, while communal sit-down dining spaces are conducive to conversations with strangers.
Dr Derrett says these events are about lifting people’s spirits, creating pleasure for people in their patch, and forging an appreciation of a town’s natural environment and cultural identity.
She says such events are also an opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of emergency services, community groups and generous local businesses, particularly in response to the trauma of fires and floods.
But not every festival finds its feet in trauma recovery.
In contrast, the quirky Bruthen Medieval Winter Fire Festival facilitates a medieval costume ball with sword fighting, feasting, and peasant craft demonstrations, showing that in the “no-frills era”, country people can still embrace a sense of the sublime and the ridiculous.
Dr Derrett says it is important to keep reviewing the sort of experiences that people who come to events actually want to have, to maintain relevance, adding that events grow and bend over time to reflect the values, interests and aspirations of changing resident demographics.
“There are festivals that have a limited life cycle and can come about because of the energy that came from particular people who may have initiated it wears out — the novelty wears out,” she says.
Mid-winter wellbeing
Returning to East Gippsland to raise his young family, founder and co-director of the East Gippsland Winter Festival Adam Bloem initially set out to create a new event to bring energy to the region’s quieter months after the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020.
“We created the East Gippsland Winter Festival in the wake of the [Black Summer] bushfires, and then we went straight into COVID lockdowns, so particularly in the first year, there was that real need and desire for the community to come together and connect again,” he says.
With the agenda of showcasing the region’s artists, chefs, produce, restaurants against East Gippsland’s spectacular scenery, the first festival in 2021 attracted lockdown-weary Melbournian road trippers holidaying closer to home.
A holistic program of yoga and sound healing sessions, bush walks, rail trail experiences, sourdough-making workshops and solstice bathing events would soon align the festival with a growing market for mid-winter mind and body rejuvenation.
“The wellness part really came about quite organically, it wasn’t something we drove from the start,” Mr Bloem says.
Having recently celebrated its fourth year, the month-long festival now attracts thousands of locals and tourists to more than 100 free and ticketed events, spanning from the remote corners of the high country to Mallacoota and Paynesville.
With the aim of supporting tourism and local businesses, while being mindful of visitor impact on the environmental, Mr Bloem says the festival operated on a collaborative model that somewhat protected it from the ongoing challenge of finding sponsors.
With dozens of volunteer artists, local businesses organisations and community groups organising their unique boutique events under the marketing umbrella of the East Gippsland Winter Festival, he says the financial risk was effectively shared, making the festival brand sustainable in the long term.
With the free lantern parades such as the Lakes Lights, the most patronised of all the events, he says that people had the opportunity to participate and become part of the spectacle themselves at their leisure, while admiring the creations of others.
“The hands-on workshops, people just love to connect and come together and be creative and do something with their hands'”, Mr Bloem says acknowledging the need for healing and interaction after the COVID-era.
Lakes Entrance lights lantern maker, artist Amy Allender says the lantern making provided a fun, inclusive, all-ages community-building exercise for participants of all skill levels, and a rare opportunity to socialise outside the home without spending money.
“In a lot of places, there is not a huge community mindset in this day and age. It’s a thing that is lost a lot of the time,” Allender says.
“Having events where people can just come in hang out and do things and just make stuff, is what the Winter Festival is all about.”
