General News
10 March, 2023
Top hats and twisted tales
Over four days of fun, frivolity and fantastic feasting in 19th-century Dimboola, this year’s Wimmera Steampunk Festival is forecast to draw some 5000 people to a reimagined incarnation of the town next month. A theatrical celebration of whimsy...
Over four days of fun, frivolity and fantastic feasting in 19th-century Dimboola, this year’s Wimmera Steampunk Festival is forecast to draw some 5000 people to a reimagined incarnation of the town next month.
A theatrical celebration of whimsy with a time-travelling twist, Steampunk last year attracted 2500 visitors for its inauguration.
Wimmera Steampunk creator-director Chan Uoy and his team are working to elevate this year’s madcap surrealistic soiree to an entirely new dimension.
“Our first Steampunk – which was to have been held in September 2021 – was postponed due to lockdown, which turned out to be a blessing because the weather that weekend was cold and wet,” Mr Uoy said.
“We went into last year’s festival viewing it as a type of social experiment, not knowing how it would be received.
“We had no visuals, nothing to use to show people what we had in mind.
“What we wanted was to transform Dimboola into a town where people wore top hats again – and it worked.
“With Steampunk, our participants found that by dressing up they actually became the event.
“That’s the beauty of this concept: for one night you can be someone else and you can be somewhere else."
Mr Uoy’s vision for the “totally immersive” 2023 festival draws together icons from disparate centuries: Lady Gaga, HG Wells, Sherlock Holmes and Queen Victoria, with a dash of Jules Verne, Harry Potter and Edgar Allan Poe thrown in for good measure.
The four-day celebration will kick off on Thursday April 20 with the first two of six stagings of a one-act play by Horsham’s Smart Artz Theatre.
On the Friday evening, the Victorian Railway Institute will be the setting for a gin degustation.
The Saturday night street party will be the weekend’s spectacular centrepiece as a live band accompanies a parade of children carrying lanterns to the tune of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face, and multicultural dancers lead the public through a communal performance of The Rocky Horror Show’s Time Warp, all against a backdrop of rainbow-lit trees and laser projections.
Guest judge, Sydney stage milliner Neil Grigg, will be on the lookout for the weekend’s most other-worldly costumes, topped off of course by exquisite feather masks.
The second annual Wimmera Steampunk Festival will take place on April 20-23 and is supported by the Dimboola Town Committee and Hindmarsh Shire Council.