Festival season

Melbourne is full of festivals, particularly during summer. Many of these are not that impressive, but they are a good photo-op nonetheless.

The first festival I went to was the Ferrari Fest, A celebration of the 70th anniversary to the Italian luxury cars. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes politics in this festival that involves the record-low sales of last year's Grand Prix as well as some allegations of corruption against Melb's lord Mayor, John So. (Some of his opponents have even nicknamed him 'Chairman So', referring to his Chinese origin and poor English - A reminder of the skin-deep multiculturalism in AU).

Race and politics aside, this festival hosted more than the usual suspects of middle-aged men, blonde bimbos, red metallic tins, roaring engines and testosterone. In fact, Melbourne's officials always ensure that sport events are presented as a clean, family-oriented experience – this way, kids are raised to adore Formula 1 drivers because their parents took them to see all those clowns and funny bands at the Ferrari fest. So far, it seems to be working fine...

If somebody asked for my humble opinion, Ferrari should have stopped designing new models about 40 years ago - what could possibly top this one?

Here, even the drivers couldn't resist the temptaion of making a quick shot.

Moving on - these next few pictures are from the Brunswick music festival which, in a great festivals tradition, involved bits of free music, some street performances, light activism and heaps of food and shopping.

This one was some sort of a gaming machine. The bright colours, the background music and the spooky expressions of the clowns all seemed to be taken dircetly out of a cheap thriller. Surprisingly, kids were really enjoying this game and actually lined up to play.

Brunswick is a very grungy suburb of Melb, with lots of social and political activism going around. The entire event has been spotted with "Vote Out Howard" and "Bush the Terrorist" Tee's and Palestinian and Iraqi flags were hanging above Rock sets like this one. It was all a bit more amusing than actually provocative. This particular band really rocked.

This little Hippie was running around the place dirty, barefoot and full of joy. You could hardly feel the place was full of strangers or could pose any danger to him. It was impossible to get a good shot as he was moving so fast. We were worried he might have been lost, but soon realized that he was the leader of his younger siblings' gang. One of them took all his clothes off and ran naked around the place.