When Things Go Wrong

Every year around Easter, I head for the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, and Rowany Festival.

It's a 6 day event chock full of my target audience: kids in general, and adults heavily into Fantasy, History and handmade craftwork. As such, most years I walk away with a fairly decent profit, even after the cost of attending and hiring a tent that someone else gets to transport, set up and pack down for me.

This year, the person I normally hire a tent from couldn't make it, and the alternative tent hire company started at $700 for a 3m x 3m. Festval is a profitable event for me, but not that profitable that I'm willing to sink most of my projected profit into a tent. Perhaps if I'm sharing with another merchant who can go halves, but that person had a health flare and also couldn't make it.

Perhaps I should have taken that as a warning...

To be fair, no one was expecting the 70 km/h wind gusts that sprung up in the ungodly early hours of Friday morning and continued until Sunday evening.

Everyone was scrambling around campsites with extra pegs and ropes, tying down everything they could and moving what could be moved. I was mid-way through a volunteer shift on the Gate when a call came over the radio that my tent was at risk of flying away, but people were busy tying it down. Sprinting in a laced-up Venetian Court Gown is not easy, but I managed.

We dropped my pop-up as low as possible, rigged a rope to try and stop the tent walls acting like sails, and I sat there with one hand clutching the main beam every time the wind picked up. I called my Dad, who was on an entirely different continent, to panic over the phone while I tried to work out if I should pack up entirely.

One campsite had their kitchen tent go through two other tents and the center pole of a fourth tent snap under the strain. I had no doubt that more would soon follow. My dad is an experienced pilot, and suggested that things were likely to get worse before they got better. He suggested moving anything that could blow away and reassessing later on.

A friend who had been an army engineer came to check on me and made some suggestions that would stop my tent from actually lifting off the ground but seconded getting all the stock under shelter. Thankfully, the cabin I was in had an empty bunk where everything could be temporarily dumped.

The prospect of packing down and not being able to set up again already had me in a state of high stress, creating the perfect circumstances for executive dysfunction and to kick in and paralyze me. I managed one trip before I had to ask for a hug, and wound up bawling on my friend's shoulder while the wind howled around us.

My friend is an experienced father of two Neuro-spicy kids, and practically my brother, so he let me have my meltdown, then recruited some extra people to help trek from the Village Green to my cabin with the bulky but lightweight things that were most at risk, while I hauled the books and other containers.

When my tent failed to survive the winds overnight, another friend (who had also lost two tents of her own) knew a guy who thought he'd be able to fix them with a weld and some spare parts. A third friend had planned to just do Saturday Market Day, and had extra space for me to set up my non-book products that he was happy to share, especially since I'd been getting up early to make him (and the rest of our camp) campfire bacon and eggs* for breakfast.

As Small Wins go, I had quite a few.

I had friends who rallied around me to calm me down and get my stock secured before it blew away.

I had people who checked in on me and made sure I was ok.

I had people who offered help almost before I could ask, because I had previously helped them.

I got to be a merchant for at least half of the event, and didn't walk away with a total loss, like I'd feared I would.

The selling point of "help me fund a new tent" on Market Day got me a few laughs and people digging through my $5 box to find something they liked in the name of the cause.

I had an exciting story to tell my co-workers at my day job. (I swear half of them wonder how I'm alive at this point...)

By the time everyone was packed up to go home on Monday, I'd calmed down, and had a few days to just enjoy myself, instead of being professional the entire time. I'd received the news that my tent was fixable, and several recommendations for affordable replacements if it hadn't been.

All in all, not my favourite Rowany Festival ever, but at least no one got flooded and it didn't rain. I got a good reminder of how incredibly awesome and supportive my friends are, and returned home safely.

In the end there could have been far worse outcomes.

*The hallmark of campfire bacon and eggs is that you will never get the pan to sit level, and even heat is a fantasy, so you'd better enjoy your bacon crispy, and the egg white will be spread out over half the pan unless you manage to oil-poach it where the oil and grease have gathered in the lower edge.

I've been back from Festival for a few days, and had another bookstall scheduled for the following weekend. If you're interested in checking out my books but don't live in Australia, you can find them at the link above.