Page 28 - The Outdoor Showman APR-JUN 2020

CIRCUS NEWS
Suddenly, no more shows
Early February, everyone in the business was looking at a steady recovery. The worst was over, after four months of bushfires that made world headlines, the worst drought in living memory, much
of the bush broke, then floods, then a mediocre Christmas-New Year.
Suddenly, that was all over.
All of Australia went into lockdown: Covid19 virus. Worst health event in 101 years. The economy followed. Federal Treasury says it’ll take years to recover, just like it did after the 1930s Depression.
Circuses and Showmen all over the country had to go into lockdown. Not allowed to travel. State borders closed. Not allowed to show to more than ten people, each two metres apart from the next. No country shows. No festivals. No big tent rentals. No social outlets. No going to the bistro after the show. No visitors. No way round it, and no indication of when it’ll end.
As the border blockades closed, Weber’s Circus beat a quick retreat, 500kms from Coffs Harbour, NSW, to the Weber property near Jacob’s Well, Queensland. Reluctantly they had to let a few staff go.
Stardust Circus aborted a year’s expensive site bookings around Sydney, sent overseas performers back to South
America and Europe, and ferried their huge show, plus 30-odd members of the Lennon-West families, back to their riverside Yarramundi property.
Lions, monkeys, camels, goats, ponies and all.
They just fitted in the massive new shed that the Council had allowed them to complete, just in time. Then they started rehearsing, as Ringmaster Adam St James began hitting governments and councils to let them re-open. No luck.
In Victoria, Silvers Circus packed up
its big Sesame Street production, big costume characters and all, and holed up at the Anton and Anna Gasser property near Gisborne. Some recent staff, mainly dancers, went back to Melbourne. Tours to SA and WA had to be cancelled.
Up in Queensland, Geoff Weber and Mark Edgley packed up The Great Moscow Circus Xtreme, and double- tripped back to Weber properties around Woongoolba, Northern Gold Coast.
Above: Silvers Circus Below: Weber’s Circus
Some overseas performers went back to Russia, Eastern Europe, South-Central America and New Zealand. As many as could, stayed, practicing.
Queensland is starting to look like a circus parking lot - five shows camped up.
Shane and Nancy Lennon trucked Hudson’s Circus from Brisbane Suburbs to acreage they’d bought near Plainland, between Bris Vegas and Toowoomba.
They put up the Big Top, so everyone could practice. And locked the gate, as instructed.
Then Nancy took the fifth-wheeler back to their house at Green Mountain; their three kids love going to Greenbank School.
Shane meanwhile scored some work for the two biggest prime movers, and for some of the pantechs, taking the signs off the side and doing much of the driving himself.
For Shane, it was history repeating.
As a kid in the 1970s, when circuses weren’t doing so well, he’d sat in the cabin with father Lindsay, Grandfather Mick, and uncles Phillip and Ronnie, all long-distance carting caravans from the Viscount Factory, Liverpool, NSW, to the then rail-heads at Peterborough and Port Augusta, SA.
26 THE OUTDOOR SHOWMAN