Chapter Two: The First Leg
8th May 2001

Wednesday dawned and I woke tired-eyed from a short sleep after a late night's final preparations. As anticipated (despite five days preparation), I raced around grabbing things I had forgotten to pack, and dubbed off last minute masters of new material. I made it to the bus only 15 minutes later than planned, ready to pack everything in.

Although Zahir the magic bus (as it is affectionately known) is a 10 metre long bedford, and its unnecessary accessories had been removed to make space, getting all of our equipment in was a challenge. There's definitely space, but everything must be stowed so it doesn't slide around and get damaged (or worse, damage someone) during the ride, since Zahir tends to sway quite a bit! Packing is a bit like playing tetris - packing things that fit properly together to prevent slipping and movement.

At last, we were off! Our first destination: Canberra. On the way down I thought about the tour ahead, and my hopes to develop some coordinated video/audio sequences, which would involve persuading the others to try some new things. As you know, the yak show involves three audio acts and one video act, with each audio act playing for around an hour, and us tesseractians playing for the duration. The video imagery will predominantly be improvised to the audio. But I'm very keen on taking live video performance to another level through collaboration and synchronised performance, and challenging the audio acts to improvise to the video for a change. And maybe that's just going to be too hard in amongst the rigours of travel - so I will try to keep my expectations realistic.

After six and a half hours we arrive in Canberra since Zahir's top speed is about 90 kph. We're staying with Bre's relatives on the first two nights, Zahir parked on the front lawn to the consternation of suburban neighbours.

The Canberra show, at the Australian National University Bar in Acton, was the first show in which all yak members are present, including the tesseract boy, my partner in video lerv. The venue manager gave us a bottle of champagne, and was very excited about our show, having heard Meem and DeepChild on JJJ. As we began setting up, I heard a voice call my name - it was Nick, a backpacker from Germany who travelled down to Canberra especially to catch our show! We were joined by Canberra locals including Stalker who played a funky atmospheric set that had me out on the dance floor instead of behind the video rig (well, what's the point in working all night and not enjoying the party, huh?). We were informed by one of our punters that our yak was an ancient pagan symbol of witchcraft, which was certainly news to the designer. Perhaps we can incorporate some rituals into our set.

We left Canberra on Friday morning for Wagga Wagga, arriving just two hours before our first show to be held in the Basement. This small venue underneath the Community Theatre holds about 150 people, and I wish we had something like this in Sydney! The community theatre crew and members of DancePlant (who were our supporters for the Wagga shows) were very helpful, assisting us to set up our rig in record time for this first, all-ages Wagga show. We really enjoyed ourselves here, it was a wonderful intimate space and the young audience gave us great feedback. The non-alcohol nature of the venue led to intermittent attendance ;). That night we slept on the dancefloor after our first all star jam session. Deepchild even made a love nest out of roadcases.

On Saturday afternoon we had a barbecue at Wagga Beach. Yes, Wagga is at least 300 kilometres from the coast in any direction, but the Murrimbidgee river flows through the town and has a beautiful sandy beach that becomes a mecca in summertime. We ate tofu burgers and the sausage from my sandwich was stolen by a Magpie. I couldn't resist shooting video of the signage "Welcome to Wagga Beach, patrolled by surf lifesavers, please swim between the flags". We can only assume that dangerous carp must drag hapless swimmers underwater in their frenzied feeding season.

Telemtry Orchestra Steve gets it cookin'

tesseractian cin can't resist shooting meem's bbq tofu - yum!

TO Charlotte looks forward to the mouthwatering feast

watch out for the magpies - they steal sausages!

Our second Wagga Wagga show is at the Palladium - 80's decor at its most ultra-violent neon - rumours are that the electric blue pure silk suit hanging backstage used to belong to Robert Palmer. It has a commercial kitchen where Meem prepared industrial quantities of broccoli for a huge vegetarian risotto. Our show here involved local acts Scott Howie / Dark Star (hardcore ambient, with abstract visuals of faces and text) and the Nostril Rockets (ambient hardcore, with blobby saturated video feedback). During the show, I mixed images of the Wagga beach, with video of bathers at Bondi, because I can't resist the opportunity to introduce humour into live visuals. The punters were very supportive - one person bought every single different CD we had on offer (there's about 10 to choose from) and also tried to buy one of our banners! And another person, it turned out, had been to every tour show - he'd been to the Canberra gig, and then he'd followed us down to Wagga to come to both our shows there. That was impressive!

We want to thank our friends at Clint's Crazy Bargains for supporting our tour with a donation of several kilograms of mixed nuts and sweets barely past their expiry date, which they thoughtfully left in a superbin outside the venue. These were discovered by Deepchild when he was searching for cigar butts. (His cigar habit has been severely curtailed by the impoverished touring conditions.)

Our last night in Wagga Wagga was spent at a local farm, with a great view over the valley. The marvellous people we stayed with made us cinnamon porridge for breakfast, and sent us on our way with home-made pickles and a gallon of honey.

the yak gang enjoys the fresh air and sunshine

a mystical yak light that appeared on the rainwater tower: our grail?

TO Steve and Justin climb the tower to admire the view...

the view one way: meem eating brekky

the other direction - the shot doesn't do it justice!

TO Steve with Zahir in the background.

There's so much more to tell you about our travels, foodage and accommodation, but we'll save that for the next mail.

From Sunny Melbourne.... end transmission... Cin & Team Yak

© 2001 cindi drennan & team yak