Rainbow Serpent Trance Festival 2007

or as Cartman says, "i think you've got hippies..."



We set out a little late, but the journey didn’t take long. Two hours and we were there. I ended up driving the precariously unstable and over-loaded jeep because Sean and Shner had whisky for breakfast.

Beaufort, the site of this year’s Rainbow Serpent, is a sleepy sleepy sleepy town north-west of Ballarat. On this particular morning, however, the amount of energy passing through, lining the sidewalks and spilling over onto the road, filling the bakeries and supermarkets and liquor stores, is enough to keep the locals laughing in their rocking chairs for a few more Australia Days.

On my way to buy gum I hear “gawd.. theresum funny lookin people ere, isn’t tha-riyt bob? I don’t think theys brush their hair, doesn’t lookliyk’it, isn’t tha-riyt?

The locals have come out to watch. Truth be told, so have I.

Another hour plus in a car queue to get through the entrance gate. People push their cars, sit on their cars, climb into other people’s cars, play guitar while driving their cars, abandon their cars, create drum circles next to their cars, and wave at the rather castrated-looking policemen riding up and down the shoulder.

It was late afternoon when we got to the car park. Unloading three cars jammed to the windows with people and camping gear and torn supermarket bags, we waded through the dust storm kicked up by thousands of rusty cars and painted vans and wildy colorful buses that look like they were abandoned 15 years ago, and probably were, but are now transporting de facto families of skirt-wearing men, endlessly layered women, and impossible to scare children across unmarked terrains in their borderless worlds.

Our scouts Dotan and Shner found a perfect camping spot, insulated from the wind by trees and a ditch, but flat enough for six tents in a circular formation, with chairs, tables and eskies in the middle. We were on the border of an open field that for the next three days would be used for kite running and spinning frisbees; a field full of outstretched hands. Through this field we walked to get to the water tank, to the eco-friendly waterless bathrooms (they make our communal excrement into compost and reuse it in the fields) and to the Market Stage where DJs played without pause for four days and nights.

I’ll get this out of the way. I was expecting better music. The trance was often heavy, industrial, repetitive, going nowhere. I had come for progressive, psychedelic, a journey through fairytales and science fiction. And I did get it sporadically, as I was always within earshot of one stage or another.

But mainly, I did get it from 3 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Sunday, the true night of Rainbow, the monster set on the Main Stage, thousands upon thousands of us, all the same by now, in pyjamas, with wings, in bear costumes offering hugs, trancing through hula hoops, trancing while juggling fire, wearing uggs, bare foot, trading sun glasses, defying gravity, all differences having merged throughout the preceding days, connected now by the dust, the rain, the dead girl on the first night, the chill out, the chai tent or the gypsy stalls or the shared drink, smoke, life story here, joke there. we danced for 13 hours, and welcomed every cold wind, every drop of rain, every burst of sun, every water bottle, every whisky and coke, every lip balm, every smile, every wandering eye, every beat, every track, every moment where we forgot everything else there is, was, or will be.

Then we crawled into billowing tents and slept for a few hours, each in our own time. Knowing that before sunrise we would all somehow meet again on the dancefloor, making the trip for the 30th time across that field, to the stage, left side speakers, see you there, whenever.

When we left on Monday afternoon, the music was getting good again, the stage was full again, people were high again. I considered staying. I wasn’t ready to leave. But one more night like that, I thought, and I might end up buying a long-abandoned bus, painting it with my fingers, installing decks and a cooker, and picking up every hitchhiker I see as I transport my hopes and my hunger across endless unmarked terrains, my husband wearing a skirt, my child eating dirt, and me at the wheel looking forever out into the distance of my new borderless world.

more photos here