Coconut Palm on Townsville Beach (© Vilis Nams)
In mid-afternoon, armed with umbrellas to ward off the sun, Vilis and I strolled through Townsville’s Cultural Festival 2010, a five-day exhibition of North Queensland multiculturalism held in Strand Park and announced via signs bearing the slogan, “Celebrating Australia in Unity with Diversity.” That diversity was certainly in evidence in the form of vendors selling brightly-patterned clothing and hand-made jewellery, and in music and dancing rich with South Pacific sound and colour. We didn’t linger, discovering that, perhaps after hours immersed in the rainforest in search of cassowaries yesterday, the very human festival simply wasn’t our cup of tea. It was too busy, too loud, and girls too young were up on a stage belly-dancing, their flat chests adorned with skimpy, black bikini tops.
We retreated to the edge of the beach, sat beneath palm trees, and gazed out onto a green ocean tossed into wild disorder by wind that blew sand dust into the park and sent the fronds of coconut palms dancing with their own South Pacific rhythm. Vilis ate cotton candy, and we talked of life and Australia. Cultural diversity stood in clusters of young women beneath the palms, romped with boys throwing a football on the beach, and strolled behind us with people of all colours and ages entering or departing the festival celebrating it. Silver gulls rasped out their screeching calls – so at odds with their elegant appearance – and music spilled onto the beach from the festival, immersing us in more pleasant amplitudes of drums, singing voices, and didgeridoos.
The festival schedule had included everything from Bollywood dancing to Kung Fu demonstrations, from a Cultural Festival Idol Competition to an indigenous Reconciliation Concert, a portion of which we heard. In a strange way, I appreciated the festival more from a distance than when we were immersed in it, the less charitable part of me thinking of it as a jumble trying too hard. While I write this, though, two images pop into my mind, indicating the festival had an impact on me. One is of the little belly dancers, their young innocence at odds with their suggestive costumes and hip-shaking movements. The other is of shy children who stood on a stage and shared prayers for Townsville and its peoples. The latter children’s voices were small, almost inaudible, in the midst of the festival noise and commotion.
