Dear Macca,
Thank you for coming to Mungindi last Friday, I just wanted to fill you in on the rest of the weekend. You had a taste of it on the first evening but by Sunday the place had exploded.
The beautiful young Con students were crying and didn't want to leave, Don Burrows was telling us how wonderful it had been. "Brother" was saying it was up there with the best, if not the best Festival they'd been to( they do Festivals all over the world). Mark Walton, who has done everything musical there is to do, was saying it was one of the most amazing things he'd ever done.
I heard locals seriously discussing which instrument they were going to learn because they just had to be in it next time; most of whom would never have touched a musical instrument.I saw our small Mungindi children perform with the best.
I wished you'd been there, not for the broadcast or any of that, but just because you love music, and the bush. Hope what follows captures just a touch of what occurred.
The festival.
On Sunday night in Mungindi, Don Burrows played 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' beneath a sheet of stars on the banks of the Barwon River. A huge red river gum was his only backdrop. It seemed unnecessary to breathe.Those of us that were there will never be the same.
Two years ago it was only a dream that we have a Music Festival, some would say an odd sort of dream for a town like ours. We're a town of farmers and shop keepers, solid and decent people, but not dreamers. Relentless droughts and record floods have taught us, that dreams are dangerous for people like us.
Then someone kind, someone called Mark Walton, said "Would some music help?" We didn't know. We didn't know about him.We didn't know about music. But yes, it might help. It seemed rude to refuse this offfer of his. So we started to plan and began to think, that maybe this could happen in a little town called Mungindi. Then gradually over the months it became our passion and our reason to be.
A choir and a little clarinet band formed. They sang and squeaked and just hoped they wouldn't embarrass themselves because now Don Burrows was coming and there was no going back.Then others wanted to come and soon there were 300 musicians, some of Australia's best. Where will we put them? What will they eat? How can we do this when there's nothing here?
You see, we nearly forgot that there was something here. There was us and the sky, and the most magnificent fields of wheat in the world . There were beautiful old sheds and a river as well. So when I heard the sound of the Sydney Symphonic Winds floating over the heads of wheat at "Yarrawa", and later when the didge, drums and bagpipes of 'Brother" made the magnificent old shearing shed at "Cleveland" buzz with life, I knew that no theatre in the world could compare with this.Then Don played by the river and I sat in awe and I thought it's really quite possible I'll never feel like this again.I felt so absolutely and totally alive.
Then I wondered,can magic be bottled and kept on a shelf? When music touches you deep inside, can it be seen by the world if it bothered to look? When glorious sound floats over the plains, is it caught by the trees to give to the birds? Can rivers catch notes and stream to the sea? The answer is yes, it's amazingly YES!
In the future, when you go to other little places like ours, tell them not to give up when things are bad. Tell them that you once went to a little town called Mungindi where they decided for one whole weekend they would have music. Music that was a gift from those who had more talent than seemed possible The weather, free trade and governtment policy are nothing, just nothing at all.
All the important things, they already have.
Marg Harrison
President Mungindi Music Festival