I’ve been to many, many Byron Writers Festivals, but this Sunday will be the first festival where I will actually manage to listen to some writers. Over twenty years ago, born from the vision of a local real estate agent (Chris Hanley), the festival sprouted on what was the former Byron Bay Beach Resort site. I, along with the other Byron Beach Resort staff worked my but off servicing this budding festival. We navigated the logistics, we accommodated the majority and we even provided all the food for the hordes. During one very wet festival, I remember spending hours on the phone trying to find someone in the local shire with enough hay bales to stem the flows of water threatening to drown the site. And at another festival, I remember sitting counting coins to the late hours. With no mobile EFTPOS in those early years, all purchases were made by cash and it was my job that festival to count it.
Fast forward twenty years and today I am incredibly keen to see everything “from the other side”. I haven’t visited here since I left the Beach Resort back in 2008 and driving along Bayshore Drive accompanied by a friend, the growth and improvements are obvious. Not including the magnificent new resort that stands here today, the seamless effort of parking is enough for me to realise that improvements have occurred. Twenty years ago, our limited Beach Resort staff struggled with parking so many attendees. Today, with what appears to be an army of volunteers at their disposal, we are directed towards aisle G which is an easy walking distance from the festivals main entry.
It’s only 8:20 a.m on this gorgeous winters morning and already the queues are forming. “Those who hold three day passes, stand to the right, please. Those with paper or e-tickets (that’s us), to the left.” Its well organised and not unpleasant and with the gates opening at 8:30, it’s not long before I am guzzling my first soy latte and salivating over my decadent florentine.
Whilst the festival runs for three days, I’ve taken advantage of the reasonable $80 one day ‘locals’ pass and thus are here on the final of its three days – Sunday. Whilst collecting my locals pass from the festival’s office in Jonson St, Byron Bay, I have also picked up this years program. The previous few evenings have been spent circling authors I would like to see. Organised in one hour sessions with a fifteen-minute break in-between and spread over six marquees it’s not hard to organise an agenda for the day.
I am pleased I put some thought into my timetable because it works effortlessly. Crime novelists Jane Harper and Mark Brandi, accompanied by the romance novelist Rachael Johns gently ease me into the day with their 9:00 a.m session A Break from the City: Rural Crime and Romance. Jane and Mark are extremely interesting but it’s the very funny Rachael who steals the discussion. My next session will be Picking up the Pieces. The aftermath of Trauma. Held in the same marquee I am currently sitting in, it means I don’t have to leave my rather well-located seat.
Having experienced trauma, I am looking forward to this session but I find myself exiting the marquee, sixty minutes later feeling strangely disconcerted. Expecting to hear about trauma from those who have experienced it, it’s disappointing that this does not appear to be the case with two of the authors Sarah Krasnostein and Kate Wild. Candice Fox, on the other hand, has obviously learnt how to deal with her own trauma – she has the audience in stitches every time she opens her mouth.
The next session is a popular one and its a bit of a struggle to obtain a close-up seat in the rapidly filling marquee. It’s Peter Greste, the Australian Al-Jazeera journalist jailed for fourteen months by Egyptian authorities. I thoroughly enjoyed his book Freeing Peter, and his conversation with Rosemarie Milsom is not only straightforward and insightful but leaves us all pondering the future of journalism in Australia.
With three of my five chosen sessions under my belt, its time for lunch and a quick detour to the food tent allows me to refuel on a delicious but sloppy butter chicken curry. Washed down with another soy latte and followed by a gluten-free chocolate brownie I’m ready to tackle the afternoon.
A glance at my agenda and I see that Liane Moriarty in conversation with Jane Hutcheon is next. Whilst I have yet to read all of her books and am one of the minority who has not watched Big Little Lies, I did thoroughly enjoy reading Three Wishes. Liane completely wins me over. She’s been in Byron for the past few days and in her own words is feeling “pretty relaxed.” As she sits chatting with Jane, this really likable Sydneyite whose books have sold over six million copies and who has been described as ‘the most successful Australian author you have never heard of’, comes across as funny, engaging and very self-deprecating.
One concluding look at my agenda and it appears as if today’s final session is going to be a memorable one, chaired as it is by local comedian Mandy Nolan. Mandy, in her own unique way, negotiates a conversation on Song Writing between Bernard Fanning (formerly Powderfinger) and Tim Rogers (hadn’t heard of him but he’s from You am I). Of course, it’s a fast flowing, hilarious discussion that wanders into unchartered territory and full of expletives, but it’s a discussion that very cleverly reveals what genuine guys Bernard and Tim are. Sitting alongside the other 400 plus attendees, the debate passes incredibly enjoyably and very quickly.
At 4:30 p.m, the still warm sun beginning to sink in the cloudless winter sky, its time to make my way home. There’s nothing else left on my agenda.
As I regain my car in aisle G and join the snaking queue exiting the festival site it’s not hard to convince myself that next year – ‘I’ll buy the three-day pass!”
