Ironfest 2016

I’ve been going to this local event for a few years now and it always rewards attendance – there’s always something spectacular happening, something kooky, or something very cool. In this regard, this year’s offering – themed “The Holy Grail” – didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, there were other reasons for my chagrin.

From the first time I wandered through this community of creativity, I’ve always thought that it would be fun to be a participant instead of just an onlooker, and this year I made definite steps towards achieving that goal. Accordingly, I convinced my boss to join forces with other bookshops up here in the ‘Mountains and stick our toes in the water in no uncertain terms. The reasons for teaming up were manifold and included many sub-headings including access to equipment and adequate insurance; but the main reason was to test the saleability of the widest range of goods, from new and commercial to secondhand and antiquarian. It turned out that stock wasn’t an issue.

We haggled to get a spot inside the pavilion, beating off an attempt to place all the booksellers into a “book ghetto” alongside the showground – our merchandise ranged from the relatively inexpensive to the wildly unaffordable, and we weren’t interested in exposing any of it to the elements. Being inside was our best option: the only other bookseller who shows up to the event sources his wares from the local charity shops and, in past years when it’s rained, I’ve seen him just shrug his shoulders as the damp penetrated his tent and turned his stock to papier maché. Of course, well-thumbed books aren’t the only things that he sells and so he prioritises the books very lowly.

The event covered three days (or rather, two-and-a-half) from Friday through to Sunday, so we figured, what with the changeable nature of Autumn in these parts, we might have days when the weather kept the punters outdoors and days when the weather drove them inside – the experiment demanded that we cover all eventualities. As it turned out we saw the results of a range of meteorology. Myself being the only driver in our crowd, I spent much of the weekend in the car driving to and from Lithgow, hauling stock about the landscape. There were early mornings (where the only coffee options were of the McDonald’s variety – shudder!) and late evenings and I’m still working off my sleep debt.

There was only one thing which we hadn’t counted on – greed.

In past years, I’ve noticed the slow incremental climb of the admission charge imposed by the organisers – last year’s entry fee almost had me baulking, but I’d dragged friends from Sydney so backing out wasn’t an option. This year my admission was free as part of our stallholder’s levy, but as the event unfolded, I soon heard much grumbling from the attendees. As it transpired, the gate charge had jumped again and there was also a surprise $5 parking fee for anyone who’d had the temerity to drive to the event. The family entry price had become regulated – no more would it cover a handful of adults with a bunch of kids in tow; now it only applied if you were two adults with two kids: dads taking their sons out for the day to see the tanks were in for a rude shock. Essentially, if you took your family to Ironfest this year, getting in the front door would be an outlay of at least $100. And that’s before you start to think about food and drinks or the petrol you spent getting there.

I talked to many people across the three days: stallholders, punters, re-enactors and event staff. Numbers were up: more people came through the gate than had ever attended previously; no-one however, was buying anything. I shifted gears into “hard-sell mode” and practically drove people into our stall to examine the books; at the end of the weekend, we covered our stall fees and very little else with a pitiful number of sales. Once every potential purchaser had had their wallet hoovered at the front gate, there was very little reason for anyone to try and sell them their merchandise.

It was crazy. I had people sighing over books I was offering for sale at prices no-one would think twice about paying and putting them back down. No-one could afford to cough up $10 for a 1910 copy of Wells’s The Invisible Man, let alone $1,000 for a limited edition luxury printing of Le Morte d’Arthur, illustrated and decorated by Aubrey Beardsley. In past years I’d seen people drop $2,500 on a whim for a suit of metal armour; nothing doing this year.

I should have predicted this: in the weeks leading up to the event I sounded out random people I encountered, checking their ideas about Ironfest and what they expected from it. The first thing I noticed was that no-one realised it was on, and – truth be told – there was very little going on in the way of advertising in the local community: a few handmade cardboard signs tacked up alongside the Great Western Highway cannot seriously be called “advertising”. More professional signs and brochures materialised in the last few days before the weekend but it all seemed to be a case of too little, too late. Some few folks I spoke to seemed keen to check it out; mostly, the response I got was “Ironfest? That’s very expensive, isn’t it?”

I assume the organisers of Ironfest live large off the annual earnings of the event and see the yearly gate charge as simply being in line with the CPI or some other theoretical economic construct. If so, then more strength to them: Lithgow is by no means an affluent part of the world and the paltry sums that they spent on advertising in the lead-up to this year’s event show just how little they’re prepared to relinquish of their hard-earned. However, they appear to have reached, and surpassed, a tipping-point beyond which things will start to go backwards for them. I’m willing to bet that next year’s numbers will be well down on this year’s.

As for our experiment, all the stores involved will necessarily look upon this as a misuse of resources and a waste of time and effort. We all agreed, going in, that it was a case of “suck it and see” but nothing we unearthed could impel us to repeat the exercise. At best, it was a weekend of free promotion, so there’s that.

On the morning of the second day, I left the pavilion before the gates opened to try and rustle up last minute coffees. I was about to take a photo of my fellow stallholders setting up when I noticed a small gathering of people on the lawn in front of me, engaged in a solemn moment. I decided not to snap them until I could work out what they were doing and I’m glad I did. It turned out that they were scattering the ashes of a friend who had found their spiritual raison d’être at Ironfest. I think it was at that point that I knew the event was doomed. I was saddened by the fact that the organisers had slaughtered their golden goose and that this community of believers - along with many others - was about to be cast into the wilderness for tawdry economic concerns. Several people mentioned that there were other “steampunk-themed artisanal events” opening up around the country in the wake of Ironfest’s success, particularly in Goulburn at an old Victorian-era water pumping station there; I assume that the recreationist community will be pushed to these ever more minute and far-flung happenings as the bigger events bog down in monetary concerns, as they always have in the past. Ironfest has become an indicator of what’s possible; mismanagement seems to have driven it right off the rails.