Has Oz Lost the Wizard?

Trawling through the ‘What’s On" app for Sunday afternoon drive ideas, up popped Tamborine Mountain's annual Scarecrow Festival. This four day event, with colouring competitions, poetry comps and enough uniquely sculptured dummy dress-ups to literally “scare the crows”, has been going since 2008. What's more, if the write-ups are to be believed, this top event of the local area's social calendar gets better each year, with hundreds of crow-scaring (plus the odd people-scaring) entries at this attractive rural spot centred in the Gold Coast hinterland, high enough to be a few degrees cooler than the coastal plain beneath, and to attract the odd breeze.  

Just to set the scene, Tamborine Mountain is a mere half an hour's drive from where we live on Brisbane's east side, and is famous for its wineries (that should reel most of you readers in). It's also renowned for it's Gallery Walk main street with assortments of arts, crafts, gifts and clothing shops, and a goodly variety of cafes and restaurants, not to mention a Skywalk, glow worm caves, a small botanical gardens in the immediate surrounds, and more waterfalls and shady bush walks than you can poke a walking stick at.  

We're regular visitors to Tamborine Mountain, needless to say, and the kitchen at home is stacked with honey, cheese, tea, fudge, and other goodies from our frequent trips there, but we've usually given this crow-startling manikin display a miss in previous years.  The mean reason, if the truth be told, is because we usually find out about it after the event. It's usually held at the end of September, but this year it coincided with the Halloween Weekend and also featured in quite a few on-line newsletters, and so, the call of scarecrows, in combination with pumpkin lanterns and broomstick-flying witchypoos, was just too much to refuse.

Out first stop showed off the Halloween theme quite obviously.  He was wearing a bold expression on his face, but I could see right through him. As for his mate up on the left, I felt obligated to point him in the direction of one of the nearby restaurants, so he could put some meat back on those bones.

With so many scarecrows around, and being in the Land of Oz, I was disappointed not to see the heartless Tin Man, the cowardly Lion, and of course Dorothy and Toto, but we did see the Wicked Witch of the West, flying by on her topically chosen fully carbon neutrally fuelled mode of transport.

Sadly we encountered her again,  a short distance down the road, wrapped around a tree.  Those EVs sure pack a powerful punch, but no airbags.

There were heaps of more conventional scarecrows, but many of them looked as if they'd be happy to see, and even share, some seed with the odd corvid family member rather than chase it away.  This jovial chappy below even had a name strapped to his chest, presumably in case old mate, crow, raven, or magpie, decided they wanted to stop and chat.

We even had a couple of special visitors from Sweden.  I accidentally left the car radio on when I parked to take a few photos, and I'll swear blind that one of them whispered, "Thank you for the Music", in my ear.

The local constabulary must have also heard my car radio and decided to join in ‘the beat’, while posing as a ‘scarecrook’.

I guess we were lucky he didn't pull us over as we drove by.  It appears he was visiting from outside the region.  Perhaps it's a case of, “The Leith Police dismisseth us"?

The scarecrows continued to come in all shapes and sizes as we drove along the well marked trail.  We even encountered a healthy looking chook, no doubt intent on fending off the crows with a parasol, or had she been throwing those damaged looking eggs at them?  

We found out that she had earlier been accompanied by a ‘Little Red Rooster’, but he'd gone off to deliberate on whether or not it was “too late to crow today”?

Then, just as we thought we'd come to the end of the trail, we were turned off after turning down what turned out to be a ‘dead end’ and found this guy hanging around.

After a quick espresso (flat white, single shot, full cream dairy milk, one sugar) at one of the local cafes, it was time to head on home, but not before a short detour down Sesame Street.

Mount Tamborine should best be seen, 

When scarecrows come around, 

So many guises, shapes and sizes, 

You're sure to be spellbound … particularly if that Wicked Witch of the West ever gets set free from that head on tree collision.

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When not researching the weird or the wonderful, the comical or the cultured, the sinful or the serious, I chase my creative side, the results of which can be seen as selected photographs of my travels on my website at:

http://ken-boddie.squarespace.com">http://ken-boddie.squarespace.com

The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.