Page 22 - The Outdoor Showman July-September 2020

CIRCUS NEWS
Covid19 and insurance:
Circuses learn to cope
Life goes on, (ob-la-di, on-la-da), but the 2020 tsunami of circus horror hits Is still cascading over Australian shows.
Drought, then bushfires, credit squeeze, Covid-19 lockdowns, regulated paralysis, and now insurance paralysis.
Don’t ask what else could happen, or it will, old-timers say.
What have the circuses done to deserve this? And how to cope during months off the road?
Mostly they’ve done maintenance and training, and tried to find other income - ANY other income.
At Yarramundi on the Hawkesbury River, west of Sydney, 33 members of the Lennon-West tribe, including 17 of Jan Lennon’s grandchildren, plus staff and families, are bunkered down, feeding animals and training.
Each morning, school-aged ones are ferried by car up the Blue Mountains foothills to Winmalee School. Younger ones, including Yelena Dorfliger-West’s triplets, go to kindy.
Older ones left behind start practice: lower-level trapeze and acrobatics at the site’s lower levels (animals all fed by then), and more-advanced performers on the flying rig, inside the 240-by-90- foot (80-by-30-metre) Big Top-shed.
They’re all probably there until New Year, with 29 on JobKeeper allowances.
It was so dry at the start, the 120,000-litre water tank ran out. Lindsay Lennon had three 14,000-litre semi-trailers of water delivered. Three days later, rain set it.
The huge shed roof would have filled the tanks, three times over.
Too late!
Ronnie Lennon, now 83, is working through a list of 40 major projects, paint and mechanical, on trucks, generators, trailers and vans.
He couldn’t take vehicles to re-register in Victoria. Borders were closed. So, like many shows, he has to re-register in NSW. If they re-open.
Insurance
For most circuses and show families, the really bad news is: Lloyd’s of London, the leading insurers around the world, say they won’t renew insurance.
For some, their policies haven’t run out yet. They’ll have the same problem re- insuring that the others face already.
It’s mostly to do with bad experiences
with larger outdoor venues in other parts of the world. But Oz shows, mostly in
the hands of the same families for over a century, have been tarred with the same brush.
Larger rides (above category 3) are inspected by government engineers up to eight times a year. Some, every time they put up. Overseas, it could be as little as once every two years.)
But that hasn’t helped. According to Lloyd’s, one size fits all. And regulators insist:’Insure it, or don’t operate.’
VSG and SGA are approaching the many diverse regulators for relief, but the cavalry hasn’t arrived yet.
And, as one showman said, ‘Even if we can get insurance, the companies are going to be very choosy.’
Outlook grim
Outside Brisbane, Cheryl Lennon has her hands full, trying to be back performing by Christmas, but the outlook’s grim.
She has engineering plans to isolate Lennon Bros Circus (born 1893) audiences down to 306, but having trouble getting regulators’ approval. Maybe they’ll be out, just for the September-October holidays.
Even then, can circuses make a profit with only the half-size audiences they’re allowed. Worse, some health regulators reckon this could just keep going.
Meantime, Cheryl’s looking after up to 20 performers and families, some of them from overseas, while they do maintenance and practice.
The Brazilian group are in a real pickle: even if there were any flights, and even if they could be cleared to go back, Brazil’s in a worse virus situation than Victoria, and none of their circuses are on the road anyway. There’s nothing to go back to.
Worse, because they’re not Australians, they’re not eligible for government support. Lennon’s are doing what they can.
Things will probably get worse in Brazil, one of the world’s hotspots. So it looks as though they’ll stay; they’d be happy to become Australians, further down the track.
Warren Lennon has finished tarting up his dodgem track; it looks a treat, and he hopes to place it on jobs around Brisbane some time soon. He hears two carnivals are working roadside around Brisbane.
Meanwhile, animals have to be fed, Council and vehicle rego fees go on, and
maintenance and practice are about the only things anyone can do. If authorities let them, they’ll be on the road around Brisbane, either at or soon after Christmas.
Meanwhile, in former sugar-cane paddocks and sheds at Gilberton, near the mouth of the Albert River, near Beenleigh, Weber’s and The Great Moscow Circus are building and painting new trailers, vans and props, while staff and performers practice their acts.
Rudi, Natalie and Marcus Weber man the phones, doing the business, but it doesn’t look like action much before New Year.
Uncle Ernie, formerly of Melbourne Zoo, is also on site; he’s the one who trained that adorable mini-pony liberty act that’s been such a success for the past decade.
At Bayswater, Melbourne, Damien Syred, of Circus Royale and The Chinese Circus, is at sixes and sevens. He’s stuck there.
Victoria, Australia’s Covid19 hotspot, is in rigorous lockdown. New South Wales won’t let anyone from Victoria cross the Murray River. Nor will South Australia; it’s a long river.
And Western Australia, Damien’s home State, is Fighting Clive Palmer, up in the High Court, not letting anyone cross the 2,000-kilometre Nullarbor Plain into it.
So Damien has troupes of Chinese and South American performers cooped up in Melbourne, unable to fly home, unable to perform, and not eligible for JobKeeper.
The way things are, he’d love to be back on the road before Christmas, but it looks iffy.
Shane and Nancy Lennon we’re lucky. Just before the effluent hit the fan in February, they settled on an eight-acre property, just down the road from Plainland Plaza Shopping Centre, on the Warrego Highway between Ipswich and Toowoomba, Queensland.
So they put up the red-and-yellow four-poler chapiteau, parked the show up, and staff and families from Hudson’s Circus are busy painting, building, training and surviving there.
To keep body and soul together, Shane took a contract to drive his semi, loaded with army catering equipment, to Townsville and Darwin army bases. Took a fortnight, and he’d rather be home.
So he’s bought a quad-axle tipper trailer, driving it himself on jobs around SE Queensland. But he’s home each night.
John Lawson
Kastle King,
passes
26 March 1935- 12 July 2020 The man who brought big
20 THE OUTDOOR SHOWMAN