20. 06. 2016
Life is Short and Long – Now & the beginning
The picture is of me at the Wirrabara farmers markets, a rightly proud event in the calander of the town, run by the local progress society. The Life is Short and Long team were there to have a presence, tell some stories, hear some stories, and generally field all comments, questions and ideas on Wirrabara, crisis and change.
The a-frame sign we had attempts to explain it all: “Hello, we are making a theatre show about Wirrabara, Barcelona & Port Adelaide. We have objects from each of these places that tell a story. Come, look & listen over a cuppa.”
Most people walked by and laughed. Barcelona? And Wirrabara? AND Spain? What the heck do they have in common? The first woman I told the day before on our guided tour of the hall, who was cooking pizza’s to sell at the markets, laughed out loud and said “Really? Really? But why? Hang on, hang on, I’ve got to find a song about this…”, she said, reaching for her ipod. We never got to the song, distracted by conversation, but it was this comment that repeated itself.
As I write the above, I’ll pause for a moment to talk about my connection with Wirrabara. 3 years ago, I wanted to go on a holiday. A SA holiday. For a month. In the mid north. No real reasons other than to have a look at inexpensive property’s and have very little to do. I looked on line, saw a town that had a craft shop with a place for rent upstairs, contacted the agent, and off I went. It was in Wirrabara, and I’d never really heard of the town. As I rolled through the mainstreet in my car, most of the shops closed and reinvented as residential homes, not all well loved, a faded mural, a good looking pub and flowers down he mediam strip, I wondered what on earth I would actually do here. After two days of being there, I had an invitation for tea at a local house down the road. Two weeks later I was so busy with things to do, people to meet and walks to walk that my life felt as full as ever. Except the glorious still ness and cold ness of the night times. But the town hadn’t changed, of course, just my relationship with it and the people.
And it made me think how this town reminds me of so many other towns, with so much more than meets the eye, but also clinging to life, which is where Barcelona, Spain comes in. But that’s another story to come.
Emma Beech
