The tent goes up in Invercargill!

The bus shook and rattled as an over zelous crew member rapped on the windows and doors of our sleeping quarters. it was ten to nine and our alarm had failed to wake us, the circus lot was already a flurry of activity, a buzz with little balls of warm wooly coats filled with humans readying themselves for the day. Luke managed to drag himself out of bed with relative ease, while I lay there for a moment with the morning sun on my face still in a sleepy daze of dream state. The next thing I recall was waking again with Luke standing over me smiling quietly and holding a coffee, time to start the day.

I exited the bus and wandered over to the collection of performers by the chuck wagon, people were finishing breakfast and coffees and they all seemed to have one thing in common.. They were all far more awake than I. A moment later Damo walked away from the group, stopped by the side of the tent and belted out the fist instruction for the team, being a man of few words this instruction was simple "WINCHES!" Luke bounded up followed by the other winch handlers and within a tenth of a second, Les and I were the only two left by the food caravan. Lucky for me, today was a marketing day, so I have a few more minutes to wake my brain up.

There is something magic about watching the tent get lifted, even in my half asleep state I got a sparkle of excitement from seeing it go up, one minute there is a large stripey canvas lying in the grass, and the next it looks like the circus is in town. Every stand is so different, let's see what Invercargill audiences are like.

Quaking in our circus boots

 Two photos of Cathedral square - the first during the spring festival, (where I was stilt walking in delightfully high winds!) The second is the cathedral after the quake hit on Feb 22nd.



It was March 2nd. We had landed in the far southern town of Invercargill, NZ. High winds were slowing the tent up process but Damo was determined to at least get the king poles up, he was up at 7 in the morning pacing the lot and scowling at the sky.

It had been a wee while since my last entry. The previous stand was a solemn one. On the Tuesday an epic earthquake hit Christchurch city at a depth of 5 km, it was over a six on the Richter scale and had flattened the city. 155 people were confirmed to have died and even the old circo houses were under water from liquefaction. The circus had taken on a couple of Circo refugees as there was now no school and people were homeless. From what I understood things there were going to get busy as we were due to take on more and more visitors.

The shows were quiet. It was eerie. The audience just sat and stared at us through the show. We all wore black arm bands for the performances to honour the victims, and mourn the loss of the city. Everyone had connections to Christchurch, we all went to uni there, we had all lived there, and some have family there. I still had two friends that I could not make contact with, and I had no idea if they were even still alive.

A car full of our performers headed off as soon as the tent was up to go and find family. I remained behind, but all of our hearts were in the shaky city that day.

Briar and I went ahead to our next stop to go marketing, we were heading back through gore, our last stop, to Dunedin. I hadn't been to Dunedin for nearly 2 years, it was to be a big day.