the only road to minto

Last Thursday I was having a bad day and texted my friend Katie to see if she wanted to hang out.  She did, and suggested checking to see if there were any free events on for the Sydney Festival.

Dutifully I checked and decided that the only one that looked interesting was Minto Live, which I read on the website "takes audiences through the streets of Minto to experience contemporary theatre, dance, film, music and song, before culminating in a pyrotechnic-based performance."  Pyrotechnics are really my cup of tea, so I figured we couldn't go wrong.

Ha, ha, ha.

Anyway, neither of knew how to get to Minto so I started asking around my staffroom if anyone had heard of Minto or had a clue where it was.  Of those who did, they weren't exactly jumping out of their skins in jealousy of my upcoming adventure.

"Minto?  Why do you want to go to Minto?" they asked.

"It's part of the Sydney Festival," I said.  "And there are pyrotechnics."

They looked skeptical.

"So how far is it?" I asked.  "Is it pretty close or a bit of a hike?"

Evidently it was a bit of a hike.

"When does it start?" they asked about 4:15 pm.

"Six," I said.

"Hmmm," they said.

"Well, I suppose I should run then," I said.  "See you tomorrow!"

"We'll come looking if you're not back in time for work," they said.

I stopped for an emergency Nutella crepe (it was a bad day, if you recall) on the way and met Katie in Glebe, where she'd been buying a telescope for her father's birthday.  We pulled over and examined the map.

Minto, it seemed, was not exactly next to Sydney.  It was far, far down and over on the other page of the map to the southwest.

"It can't take more than an hour!" we said, and off we went.

Getting to Minto in rush hour traffic is not exactly the quickest, but it appeared to be our only option.  We persevered.  Fortunately, I had plenty of time to tell Katie about my day.

In the midst of conversation, we got a wee bit lost.  But not for long!  In a miraculous feat of surprise masculinity I managed to navigate us -- using the sun!! -- southwest to the proper path to Minto.  I was very proud of myself, and Katie was very relieved, seeing as she'd been driving and I'd been going "there!  there!  take that road NOW! To the -- there's the sun! -- left!" for about five minutes straight.  We'd have stopped for a break to compose ourselves if we hadn't been in such a rush.

As we tore madly across the Australian bushland (okay, suburbs) I began to consult with the map regarding how precisely to get from the Green Road to Minto.  It was a wayward little dot, you see, just sort of off on its own.

I turned to the precise page of the map Minto was on and discovered that there was only one option:  a road called Ben Lomond.  Minto, it seemed, was surrounded by Scotish landmarks, but we hardly had time to ponder them.  Finding Ben Lomond was our primary objective, though it wasn't nearly as tall as you'd have thought.

Once we found it, we realized that the little town of Minto was not all that big and the next 30 seconds of our journey needed to be mapped very carefully immediately.  It's all a bit of a blur, but before long we ended up precisely where we needed to be in the Minto Mall parking lot (er, carpark).  It was 6:15 and we were ridiculously proud of ourselves.

By the time we'd gotten off the main highway (the Green Road) we'd developed a slight feeling?  premonition? that perhaps Minto Live wasn't quite the opera in the Domain.  Katie threw a blanket over the newly purchased telescope and we made sure all the doors were locked.

As we approached the far end of the parking lot, the festivities were just beginning to get underway.

Now, this is the part of the story that shows how very much more polite and tasteful Katie is than I.  I believe I rather embarrassed her a bit, but try as I might, after our hour-and-fifteen-minute trek to Minto, I watched the first act -- a senior citizen choir in the parking lot singing what was presumably something Aboriginal, but what sounded exactly like "chihuahua -- chihuahua -- chihuahua" -- and burst out laughing.

You'd laugh, too, if it happened to you.

Around this time, our ominous premonition became a reality and we read the program's description of the upcoming events a bit more literally.  When it said six families of "non-dancers" would perform, it wasn't kidding.  Neither was the invitation to their thresholds, as we had first imagined, metaphorical.

Indeed, following the chihuahua song, a huddled mass of about 200 traipsed through the streets of Minto and stopped at various houses to watch the inhabitants dance -- culturally, liturgically or otherwise -- in their front lawns, streets, or grassy knolls.

I tried not to giggle and Katie tried not to look like she knew me.

Our tour of Minto lasted quite awhile -- long enough to get us thoroughly lost regarding the whereabouts of the car at least, seeing as the sun had set -- and ultimately we ended up at a big park sort of area.  The residents very kindly provided tons of blankets for everyone to use to sit on and there was food for sale as we heard a few local trumpeters play before the final act of the evening.

The final act was actually quite good -- a thought-provoking bit of performance art billed as stand-up comedy, but that joke was on us.  There was a guy of Indian heritage who'd grown up in England along with two Minto residents who were from Pacific Islands but had grown up in New Zealand talking about what it was like to be of one culture but in another.  It was mostly the English guy talking about his search for identity through learning Indian music, which was incorporated quite significantly in the act.

It was getting late, though, so we left shortly before it was over -- having read in the truthful program that the pyrotechnic display was "breathtakingly short" and would last "only the length of one firecracker."

Thankfully we made it out to Ben Lomond before we cracked.