The White Night plan.
After the success of last year’s White Night Festival, the Fairlie Entourage was looking forward to the 2014 one. I’d done a bit of research this time, and I had A PLAN. Famous last words.
This year’s festival brought a crowd of over 550,000 to the streets of the CBD. It was, shall we say, a little crowded. In fact, it reminded me of what it was like on the streets of Saigon on New Year’s Eve 2012, except minus the motorcycles and the fear for our lives.
(Has anyone noticed this photo is reversed? It was the only way to photograph the White Night illuminated words without masses of crowds in front of it.)
So anyway, this year we headed into the city late afternoon as part of a group of 11 extended family, hailing from the UK, the USA, Perth and good ol’ Melbourne. I had used the White Night app/website in the days leading up to the night to work out what we wanted to see/do, and when it would be on. So I thought we were set. We had booked rooms at a city hotel to use as our base and the intention was we could head back there around 11.30pm-ish for a snooze and then hit the streets again in the early hours of the morning.
What we actually did, was to roam the CBD from one extremity to the other, battling the intense crush of crowds to see some pretty cool stuff and when we’d walked our feet off (I estimated about it was about 12 kms) we dragged ourselves back to the hotel and crashed. White Night over.
I’m already working on a new strategy for next year, which may entail an early snooze, then hit the streets about 2am and go right through to the end (7am), as I figure the crowds *must* tail off at those hours? Surely?
We didn’t queue to walk in the purple rain (above) as it looked like about a 90 min wait…but we were happy to view others doing it. It was water…purple light…and a clear umbrella. It looks fabulous, but I’m sorry, I’m not queuing 90 mins for that. Disappointingly, however, the queue for the synchronised swimming was just as long when we got there at 1am…so we had to give that one a miss too.
Anyway, despite the crowds, it was still a magic night. The NGV International was fabulous as always…and the Midden in Birrarung Marr Park was all kinds of creepy (changing light and a sound that went right through your body).
So we’ll definitely do it again next year. With a new plan.
