MOFO 2011

Today I planned to go to Seven Mile Beach, which is just over the water. Basically, if you haven't worked out what it is, it's a beach that's seven miles long. Makes sense. Sadly, it was raining this morning, so I waited a bit for the rain to go down (I had a Facebook chat with Emma - and as she so enjoyed her last namecheck here's another one!). Eventually the rain subsided enough for me to put on my shorts and flip flops (or thongs as they're called over here...) and walk down to the bus stop.

For those of you who're unfamiliar with the bus service of Hobart (I'm guessing most of you), there isn't a great deal of regularity to them. Unpredictable is a good word to describe it. I went down at around half two to the main bus terminal, and picked up a tourist information leaflet giving me all of the times of buses going to Seven Mile Beach. There had been 3 in the past 15 minutes, and now wasn't another one of 50 minutes. So I sat and waited. However, after a fairly brief wait (luckily it wasn't too long), I noticed that on my bus timetable, there were no return buses scheduled from SMB to Hobart for the rest of the day. So if I went to SMB, I wouldn't be able to get back. Lucky I checked!

This evening Hobart was really vibrant and packed - a new thing called MONA FOMA was opening. MONA FOMA (MOFO) is difficult to describe, it's kind of like a music and art and culture festival type thing that's happening in Hobart, and it's all free. So after having a fantastic dinner at Fish Frenzy (deep fried scallops are recommended) we (Colette, Rachel and I) headed off to the place where it was being held.

Writing about MONA FOMA is a challenge. It was kind of cool, but also kind of modern arty. The main attractions tonight (it changes every day for the 3 week run) were a giant beach ball thing that we were encouraged to keep up in the air, while some bloke sat on a stage pressing buttons on his laptop, (which made noises like Mr Blobby) everytime the crowd pushed the ball into the air. On the programme it said something about "the world is a globe, so our ball is a representation of the earth and its inhabitants, and how we can all make a musical instrument out of ourselves". Hmm...

As we walked into the indoor bit, was what looked like an odd shaped bouncy castle. Punters were meant to queue up to have a go inside, but instead of bouncing around, they had to put on zig-zag boiler suits, and pose inside the inflatable. This is apparently "art". While I fancied having a go just to see what it was about, the queue was massive, so I didn't bother. After walking past some ping-pong tables (no idea what they were doing there but whatever) we then went into the "main stage" room.

There were six percussion sets all around the room, and six percussionists moving seamlessly from drum to cymbal to another drum, back to the cymbal and then onto another drum (etc). This was really quite impressive and cool - they were all following music and keeping to the rhythm and beat all the way through. It wasn't a 'song', but it was just a solid piece of music which sort of ebbed and flowed. As I said, very impressive and very cool. However, they started at 8, and their one song went on until half 9. While I was tempted to shout "do you know anything by Phil Collins", it wasn't that sort of event.

Which brings me onto the people there. I don't want to generalise or stereotype, so I'll just call the people there 'kooky'. No offence to them, I'm sure they're all lovely people, but they're not my type of people. And MONA FOMA was sort of like that; interesting and intriguing, but not my sort of place. It's all free, and only a 10 minute walk away, so I might pop along to another day. But tomorrow there's a naked ballet, followed by hymns from Chinese monks. I don't know if it's my sort of thing.

Sadly this will be the last blog for a bit. Colette and Rachel have arranged to take me up north (of Tasmania), which is a 5 hour drive away. So we're spending the night up there and are going on a road trip, which leaves early tomorrow morning! So that's what we're up to this weekend. I've also booked to go on an 'East Coast Adventure' which leaves on Monday, which involves all kinds of cool stuff, and me spending a couple of nights away from my laptop. So I'll take loads of photos and you can expect a bumper blog when I get back to virtual reality!

Peace out, Will