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Melbourne Art Fair

04/08/2010 (All day) - 08/08/2010 (All day)

contemporary art. Featuring more than 80 selected galleries from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, China, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, Melbourne Art Fair is the leading trade fair and public exposition of contemporary visual art in the region. Other highlights include national and international collector programs, programs for curators, a line-up of free public forums, project rooms for emerging artists, art publications, a private lounge, guided tours and travel and accommodation packages. Established in 1988, the Melbourne Art Fair is held at the World Heritage listed Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne. Photography by David Marks

Darwin Beer Can Regatta

08/08/2010 (All day)

A regatta like no other, with boats primarily built entirely from aluminum beer cans. This annual family event is rapidly becoming a spectacle for all who line Mindil Beach and cheer on the home-made boats of cans and cartons, as they flounder and sink in the shallows. The Darwin Beer Can Regatta started as an unusual by-product of the devastation caused to Darwin by Cyclone Tracy in 1974. A Darwin citizen, Lutz Frankenfeld, suggested a boat race with all the craft fabricated from beer cans in order to clear up the empties, and at the same time have a day of fun. The inaugural beer can race in 1975 was an instant success, and has developed into a major event with boat entries ranging from 1 to 12 metres and some even with secret weaponry. Entry is by donation, with proceeds going to projects of the combined Lions Clubs of Darwin.

Alice Springs Rodeo

14/08/2010 (All day)

See the amazing skills of the country’s top professional cowboys. As part of the Australian Professional Rough-riders Association official circuit, the Alice Springs Rodeo kicks off early Saturday evening. Watch the bareback bull riders hold on tight-fisted for the required eight seconds. Watch man and beast face-off in the steer wresting competition. Other events include calf roping, team roping, breakaway roping and the ladies’ barrel race. There are junior barrel races and the ever-reliable comedy clown. Full catering is available and buses will be running every half hour from the Post Office to Blatherskite Park and back, starting from 5pm.

Newcastle Jazz Festival

27/08/2010 (All day) - 29/08/2010 (All day)

Come and enjoy a wonderful weekend of great jazz and take an opportunity to catch up with the Australia wide Jazz family. This year the Newcastle Jazz Festival is celebrating its twenty-second anniversary and has continued to grow each year. The Festival features some of Australia’s best Jazz and Blues performers. This year performers will be heard in five different rooms within the City Hall at various times over the weekend. Highlights include a Jazz breakfast, gala dance on Saturday night and a Jazz Gospel on Sunday morning. Full details including registration form, program and details of the artists appearing can be obtained from the Newcastle Jazz Club website.

Reading Music Festival

28/08/2010 (All day) - 31/08/2010 (All day)

Every year the Reading Festival grows a little older and with this musically wiser. The festival has been going, in one shape or another since it’s conception as a Jazz event in 1961, a time when audio was in its ‘rock n roll infancy’; before the invention of music as we know it today and the time when the festival laid down its roots as the UK’s premier indie festival. From the early Jazz ramblings of Chris Barber (one of the co-founders of the original Reading Festival), Johnny Dankworth and Humphrey Littleton, in the different location of Richmond, to Windsor, then Sunbury and eventually Reading, the festival has always been at the top of its game. Attracting thousands of music fans, critical of the bands performances and really there just to enjoy the best that the festival has to offer, the Reading Festival has been a stalwart in the world of outdoor music. From the late 1960’s bands started to appear that are still revered as legends today; The Who, The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Small Faces, T Rex, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, all great bands, but all cast from the same ‘rock mould’. It took the near destruction of the festival in 1988, a poor line up, poor weather and poorly attended, to see the Mean Fiddler organisation take the reins and steer the festival to the pinnacle of outdoor music that it is today, with its mix of indie/rock/punk/dance and every genre in between. Looking back over the line-ups on the posters, who can forget the last UK appearance of Nirvana at the festival 1992, the onstage melt down of the Stone Roses (their last show together) in 1996 or the first triumphant appearance of Metallica in 1997? All landmark events at a festival which is chock full of memories, mostly good, but some pretty bad. Who remembers the shocking ‘braining’ of Brendan Urie of Panic At The Disco in 2006 or 50 Cent getting everything thrown at him including a deck chair? Some shocking moments, but all part of the history of a festival which has been raised on rock, from classic to indie, Reading has it all. Reading Festival has and always will, lead the way in UK outdoor events of a similar ilk. Reading is a music festival designed by music fans, for music fans. When the line-up was released this year there were complaints that the ‘Sunday Rock Day’ had been ditched, but if you now look at the mainstage on Friday and the Radio One tent on Sunday, there are probably more rock & metal bands than any other year. The organisers listen to the fans and obviously take note of their comments, which is why the festival is probably the first one that most people attend and always will. Music for the people...... With this years festival having the debut headline appearances by Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, I’m sure we will have some more classic performances to go down in the archives, for history sections of the future.

Mount Royal Mountain Bike Ride

29/08/2010 (All day)

The Mount Royal Mountain Bike Ride is a challenging 30 kilometre loop mountain bike ride on a quiet public gravel road through World Heritage forests of Mount Royal National Park, 50kilometres north of Singleton in the Hunter Valley. Alternatively, ride the shorter, easier forest route. The free ride starts from Callicoma Hill Eco-cabins, where accommodation and camping is available over the weekend. Bookings are appreciated. Bring your own bike, food and drinks. The bike ride is unsuitable for younger children. No support vehicles please.

Calendar

Hadaka Matsuri

Type

  • Parade

When

26/02/2010 - 3:00pm - 6:00pm

Where

  • ,

Details

During Hadaka Matsuri bare-bottomed men ensure their good luck by crowding the streets of Inazawa City in the hope of touching a naked man! Since 767 BC the Naked Man, aka Shin-otokoa, has walked this gauntlet to reach the Kounomiya Shrine.

Shinto tradition believes that the Naked Man absorbs all bad luck and evil deeds from the men who touch him - no-one is sure, but the ritual may commemorate the end of a plague, as the Naked Man takes on the ills of the community and is then expelled from it.

It is a great honour to be chosen as the Shin-otokoa. It needs to be - first he must undergo elaborate purification rites by shaving off all the hair on his body.
He then sets off through the streets, besieged by up to 9000 men, all desperate to touch him. He is pummelled, chased, pulled over; he faints, is bruised and must spend an entire day in the thick of a heaving mass of loinclothed bodies while completely naked.
When he finally arrives at his destination, the crowd jostle to grab any available part of his body for an hour or more before he can pay his respects to the Shinto deity of the shrine.
Once he is dressed he is then shooed out of town to rid the town of all evil.

Only the men dressed in loincloths and sandals are allowed to touch the Naked Man and special bodyguards line the route to splash freezing water over them as the Naked Man draws near.
This has the dual purpose of restraining the wild impulses of the loinclothed ones while creating an aura of mystery around the steaming man.

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