Why Firelight Festival is the perfect answer to a wintery Melbourne weekend
Words by Matthew Toohey
Firelight Festival will arrive at Docklands from Wednesday July 21 until Sunday July 25.
Firelight Festival is returning to Docklands in 2021, cranking up the heat for another year of entertainment on the waterfront.
Located at New Quay Promenade and Victoria Harbour Promenade, the festival spans five fiery nights from Wednesday July 21 until Sunday July 25, lighting up the night with a dazzling array of fire and light installations.
Rather than your typical offering though, Firelight Festival hints at something beyond your usual fare. Providing carnivalesque delights laced with cabaret-style performance, think Dark Mofo’s Dark Park but less mind-bending.
Archer’s project,
In the Land where the Crow flies backwards: The songs of western NSW, has as its centre point the songs of the infamous troubadour, Mr Dougie Young, but also looks at lesser-known characters from that era of the fifties and sixties and earlier, as well as up until today. The project focuses mainly on Indigenous songwriters, telling their stories through songs and poems, and of course the song of the red-tailed black cockatoo.
Archer is a folk singer, and self-proclaimed ill-fated explorer of the interior recesses of the embattled brain-box and beyond . Best described as an old-style travelling singer/poet, for the better part of the last 20 years, Archer has humped his bluey through every state in Australia, walking, hitchhiking, and catching trains, sleeping on the riverbanks and in the parks, singing in the streets, to performing in music halls of some renown. Searching for songs, old songs, forgotten songs and songs of his own making. Archer s genuine love