Tour Diary
Double Feature @ Mallanganee Memorial Hall
Scene 1 – May 20th, 2023
Interior. Night. Mallanganee Memorial Hall
Me: Ok, the lucky door prize for a bag of sugar goes to … Purple C 42
The audience check their tickets. Everyone looks around. No movement.
Judithe: I think that’s you Yvonne!
Yvonne remains motionless under her layers of knee rugs.
Bloke in crowd: She’s a diabetic! … Redraw!
In order to make some sense of this vignette from my current touring life, let me give you some back story. Since just prior to the pandemic in early 2020, I have toured to drought, flood & fire affected communities with NEMA (National Emergency Management Agency. The ‘What A Relief It’s Damian Callinan’ tour is augmented by Healthwise nurses doing heath checks, Regional Adversity Mental Health Program provide counselling, Rural Financial Counsellors Service dispense advice, and of course NEMA offer guidance and targeted financial hand-outs. Led by our inspiring leader Sandy McNaughton, we have visited around 40 communities over that time, and would have done twice that, but for Covid cancellations.
(Tour poster from May 2022 - Note the National Resilience & Recovery Agency has since changed its name to The National Emergency Management Agency. They change the name roughly every 3 months. In fact, I’ve just googled it and it changed it’s name this morning.)
( The new national disaster agency name as of June 9th, 2023)
One of the communities we visited was Mallanganee: a hamlet of 140 nestled into the slopes of the Richmond Range 40km west of Casino, the disputed Beef Capital of Australia.
(The author out of focus in Mallanganee in 2021)
The Relief tours are not only free, but also include a free meal for the audience. Ensuring there was a vegetarian meal for me has been a challenge wherever we go, so heading into the Beef Country of Mallanganee for the first time, we were brimming with uncertainty. To be honest, my confidence had never really recovered from an exchange with the Bonshaw CWA President on the very first tour.
Scene 2 - February 27th, 2020
Interior. Night. Bonshaw Hall
[Note – read Gwen’s voice as if you have smoked two packs of cigarettes a day since you were 12 years old]
Having just walked off stage, Damian enters the kitchen area
Gwen: (washing dishes) So! You’re a vegetarian are you?
Me: Ah, yes I am.
Gwen: There’s something over there under the tea towel for ya!
Gwen continues washing dishes as Damian lifts the tea towel to reveal a hollowed out cobb loaf. It has been refilled with french onion dip, laced with giant chunks of ham.
Me: Might have some later.
( After his visit to Bonshaw, the author achieved his life long goal of making the front page of the Macintyre Gazette. Here the catering at the event was described as ‘scrumdumptious’, which is an old Cornish word for ‘fuck off vegetarians’)
However, when we arrived in Mallanganee we discovered that they had gone to considerable effort to ensure my dietary needs were catered for. In fact, virtually every person we met told Sandy and I that they had gone to considerable effort to ensure that my dietary needs had been catered for. As the comments piled on, it became apparent, that the creation of this vegetarian meal, was the greatest team effort in the hall’s history, perhaps since the completion of the Bullock Tapestry on the rear stage wall in 1980
( The Mallanganee Memorial Hall Bullock Tapestry Team circa 1980.)
(The National Recovery & Resilience Agency Bullock Team circa 2020)
One of the other things that many hall committees can’t seem to get their head around, is that I don’t want my meal before the show. With the ‘Relief’ show in particular, where I am tailoring a slide show of my time in the community right up until the show starts, I simply don’t have time to eat. There has been many a night, I have had to disappoint a well-intentioned committee member thrusting a plate in my direction, impatient for feedback on the vegetarian rissoles they had been made especially.
The Mallanganee Committee were particularly determined to overturn my ‘no meal before the show’ policy, but Sandy managed to keep them at bay and had asked that a plate be put aside for me in the fridge.
After the show, as I mingled with the audience, Sandy cut a swathe through the squad of committee members in the kitchen, who were cleaning up with the zeal of an organised gang trying to remove evidence at a crime scene.
Scene 3 – April 15th, 2023
Interior. Night. Mallanganee Memorial Hall Kitchen
Sandy steps over around a mop bucket and opens the fridge door. She frowns
Sandy: There was plate of food for Damian on the bottom shelf. Does anyone know what happened to it?
The committee exchange glances
Committee Member 1: We threw that out.
Committee Member 2: We just thought it was a vegetarian meal that no-one wanted.
( A member of the Mallanganee Hall Committee prepares to clean up after a 21st birthday party)
Miraculously, Sandy managed to curate a plate of salads from what remained after the trauma cleaning. She brought it to me explaining what had happened to my original meal. I was still chatting with some locals, so I put it down on the adjacent table. When I turned to retrieve it, it was gone. The forensic sanitisation team had moved out of the kitchen into the hall proper and it had been thrown out … or possibly incinerated.
Determined that I should not leave the building without having eaten something, Sandy assembled a plate of cakes from the supper table that they had not yet been packed away. I took a bite out of a lemon slice, but was then asked to be in a photo. I put the plate down. You know what happened next.
(The author talks to audience members after the 2021 Mallanganee show, while his meal is being systematically disposed of)
Fast forward almost 2 years and, after negotiating significant hurdles, Judithe Lovick-Andrews from the Mallanganee Hall Committee, went above and beyond and organised a grant from the Kyogle Shire to have me back. Whether it stemmed from a desire to see me perform again or just to finally give me a feed, I may never know.
We managed to fit the show into the schedule of my Double Feature tour and, with the assistance of my mate Martin Hansford from Lismore, who supplied the gear and the tech management, I once more bumped in for a show at Mallanganee Memo Hall.
One thing has always struck about this particular community. If the census figures are correct on Wikipedia, there appear to be more hall committee members than residents. There were so many cars parked around the hall when we arrived, it looked the show had already started. Inside, the place was teaming with volunteers readying the old girl for tonight’s show, with the mops primed and ready for the industrial purging later in the evening.
Given the 1946 context of the show, with mum meeting dad soon after returning from service in the RAAF, the committee had decided to theme the night. This made sense as the Memorial Hall also features a brilliant museum commemorating those who served from the district. The walls of the war room, also my dressing room, are covered in the portraits of every local man and woman who have served in every conflict since Federation.
( The author preparing for the show in the war room in 2021)
However, I wasn’t quite prepared for the scale of their commitment to the theme.
Here is a brief photographic inventory of their work
· Exhibit 1 - Ration Books handed to each patron as they arrived by Caroline and Mavis from the Women’s Land Army
· Exhibit 2 - WW2 cookbooks on every table
( I’m told the Hard Tack Flap Jacks are rather good, but best to avoid the Bully Beef Stroganoff )
· Exhibit 3 - Black market preserves for sale
(The chilli choko chutney was the biggest mover on the black market on the night.)
· Exhibit 4 - Sentry outside the hall
(Private Greg Baker was later awarded a DSO for camouflage)
· Exhibit 5 - Raffle & lucky door prizes were prized consumables such as bags of flour, sugar, tomato sauce and aeroplane jelly
· Exhibit 6 - War themed menu including – meat pies, mushy peas, mashed potato, ANZAC biscuits and jam drops.
( True to form, a vegetarian option was provided for the author. To ensure it survived until after the show, Pte Greg Baker stood sentry)
· Exhibit 7 - WW2 themed dress up competition
(The first contestants arrive including members of the WRAAF, RAAF and AIF)
( These guys were wearing their actual uniforms from when they served in the Vietnam War)
(Lorraine was my support act playing songs from the 1930’s and 40’s. These guys did not drag themselves out of hospital: She and husband David, went for the wounded solider look.)
(A fashion parade was held after the show. Some notable mentions here. Pictured centre are Judy & Mark Beaman who came as capitalists reaping profits from the war. Next to Greg Baker the sentry on the far left, the chap with hanky on his head is John who came as a firefighter. At the rear are the Lawton sisters who cleverly came with a seam drawn on the back of their legs to give the illusion of wearing stockings, replicating the war time trend during the rationing of silk. Surrounding the author are Judithe, Sylvia, Nancy and Sandra who came as hobos.)
As a guest to the community, I took it as such a compliment that they went to such lengths to embrace the themes of my show and get the community involved.
Yes, the air raid black out in the middle of the show was detrimental to the flow of the show, and using live ordnance as table decorations had audience members a little on edge. Surprisingly though, the committee accommodating me in a POW cell in the Casino Military Museum turned out to be an inspired move: It was Beef Week in Casino and the extra security was a boon for a wayfaring vegetarian.
Mallanganee, I sincerely hope there’s a next time.
Scene 4 – May 20th, 2023
Interior. Night. Mallanganee Memorial Hall
Me: Ok, for the lucky door prize of a pound of butter … it’s another purple ticket - P17?
The audience check their tickets. Everyone looks around. No movement.
Same bloke in the crowd: That’s me! … I’ve got a dodgy heart … Redraw!!
Great read! Very, very good.