Page 24 - The Outdoor Showman January-March 2021

CIRCUS NEWS
Circuses up again...... Sort of!
If 2020 was circus’s Year from Hell, at least 2021 gets us back on the road. Sort of.
New Year holidays were.....JUST. Especially in Victoria. Three circuses were there in Covid19 lockdown, and had been for the best part of a year.
Housebound Victorian families were allowed travel up to 5 klms, in restricted hours.
Silvers opened in January, whenever Premier Andrews relaxed the rules. (Not often!) on the Mornington Peninsula.
Tony Maynard’s Eroni’s Circus were locked down in Geelong Showground.
Damien Syred’s Circus Royale and his Chinese Circus landed at Bayswater, Melbourne, late last year. And there they stayed until the (sort of) all-clear.
They opened, same site, on Wednesday, 10th February. On the Friday, Victoria declared a five-day lockdown for the whole State. All entertainments - even weddings and funerals.
Meanwhile, Damien and Keith Brown staged Jurassic Creatures at Robina, Gold Coast. Then they re-opened their massive two-tent show, with
31 animatronics dynasaurs, at Springfield, Ipswich. Blowout!
Now they’re off 2,000 kms, for bookings at Hobart’s Wrest Point Casino, and Launceston Casino.
Kevin Parker’s Bird Circus did charity shows around Western Victoria.
VSG and SGA members did a bit better. Stanthorpe was the first ag show on the Queensland audience.
Geoff and Cheryl Lennon’s 2021 opened on Southport Foreshore in January.
No animals; insurers Lloyd’s of London aren’t covering circuses with exotic animals, world-wide. No camels, monkeys - not even ponies!
Then a three-week layoff. Brisbane is now the way Melbourne was five years ago: a circus on every corner, and good sites disappearing. Lennon’s re- opened Strathpine February 18, with
plans for Loganholm, Gympie and Hervey Bay.
Robert Perry went to Blackall for Australia Day, when the Council officially opened a life-size model elephant in a rotunda specially-built
to honour the 1860s foundation of Perry Bros’ Circus.
Circus Rio played the January holidays at Hervey Bay, but they’re likely to show only on holidays this year, using performers only available then.
The Great Moscow Circus, with elements of Weber Bros’ Circus, did well in Toowoomba from mid-January. Then they upped stakes to show at Bundamba Racecourse (they gapped ‘em), then to Capalaba.
It was there that news came of four people elected into the Australian Circus Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement: Bekki Ashton Harrison (still the only Australian female to perform the triple somersault), Helene Embling, Antonella Caselli and Guang Rong Liu.
Shane and Nancy Lennon’s Hudson’s Circus plan to show around Brisbane for the Easter holidays. Then Queensland.
In NSW, Stardust Circus plans to open for Easter at Nowra, followed by Warrawong and Sydney. No lions, camels, goats, llamas, monkeys, pigs, liberty ponies or dogs - a completely changed show.
With nine children at local Hawkesbury primary schools for almost a year,
they set up the Big Top at Hawkesbury Racetrack for three weeks’ shakedown.
But with capricious border lockdown closings, no shows are game try Western or South Australia.
At least circuses are back on the road. Sort of.
Edgley
‘The Australian’ on January 4th reported that Michael Edgley was putting his several-million-dollar Gold Coast home, 2 Maryland Avenue, Carrara, on the market.
The paper noted several prestige properties the long-time Moscow Circus promoter had owned in recent decades.
They included houses on St Georges Road, Toorak, Melbourne, riverfront ‘Garden Reach’, Hunters Hill, Sydney (Sydney’s first single-storey house to fetch over a million dollars, last sold in 2001 for over $9-million), five homes on Hedges Avenue, the Gold Coast’s “millionaires’ row”, and Jutland Avenue, Dalkeith, Perth.
The Edgley-Weber Company presents the Great Moscow Circus Extreme, which opened its Queensland tour
in Toowoomba on January 8th, a partnership with the Weber Family (Bert, Josephine, and their four sons Harry, Rudi, Markus and Jeffery.)
Michael’s son, Mark, with Russian- born wife Tatsiana and daughter Maya, aged six, has been on-site promoter with the circus for the past eight years.
The company says it is on a permanent tour of Australia, lasting three years, returning to any site only every
three years.
Its glossy program counts it has costed $10-million to stage, with 25 trucks,
12 clown cars, 26 vans (most built by Webers at their Gold Coast factory), school, laundry, 120 costumes, 46 stage lights, and 8,000 metres of electrical cables.
Program includes 29 artistes, 24-person production team, globe and wheel of death, trapeze, several aerials, juggler with a nine-hoop and six-club pile-up routine, very artistic ballet-contortion-hand balancer, wall- facade trampoline number, solo clown with three audience-involvement numbers, and singing-dancing Ringmistress.
The company lists performers from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Colombia, Brazil, France, NZ and Australia.
Covid19 restrictions mean it can seat
22 THE OUTDOOR SHOWMAN