by John Connell
Over an extended period a very few businesses probably gained little from the festival, but every single one believed that it was invaluable. By 2015 three quarters of main street businesses decorated their stores, and more than a third had staff dressed in some Elvis theme. Those who didn’t were either in out-of-the-way locations, or branches of national chains. One of these at least would have liked to get into the spirit but ‘Our services are controlled by head office and we are not allowed to deviate from that’.
Several businesses went further, producing Elvis-themed food, such as ‘Love Me Tender lamb chops’ and ‘Flaming Star fish,’ or brought in special stocks of Elvis products, including gospel CDs at the Christian book store, where sales were flourishing. Such small gestures were appreciated by visitors, who wanted an overwhelming Elvis presence. Those who enjoyed the festival most were those who felt that Parkes had embraced the spirit of the event, and those who expressed disappointment wanted more local involvement, colour and Elvis action. Shops increasingly sought to play their part.
No Heartbreak Hotel
Parkes has 15 hotels and motels (including a renovated Hotel Gracelands) with about 1000 bed spaces. Until 2002, arriving in Parkes for the Saturday morning parade and booking a motel room for the night was possible, since hotels and motels still had spare capacity. That quickly ended, and by 2006 Parkes had reached its accommodation limits, even as new hotels opened. Nearby towns such as Forbes and Peak Hill, some 50 kilometres away, were also full. By 2008 only two thirds of all festival-goers actually stayed in Parkes itself. Forbes took a fifth of them. Dubbo, fully 120 kilometres away, was almost booked out by the end of the decade. Orange and Bathurst also benefited. By 2015 more people were staying overnight in motels and hotels in surrounding towns than in Parkes itself. The visitor ‘overspill’ had become a torrent. As visitors also ate, drank and purchased goods in other towns, the festival’s wider regional impact was becoming impressive.
Festival-goers were also staying longer, and so spending more. In 2006 visitors were averaging only two nights in Parkes. By 2008, as the festival grew larger, that had increased to three nights and in 2016 a small sample of hotels reported an average of four nights. At the end of each festival, signs routinely go up outside every hotel and motel, advising that Parkes is already booked for the following year, a good indication of the popularity of return visits. A story has long circulated that one woman has booked the same motel room until she dies. Almost certainly both apocryphal and wishful thinking, it suggests how tight accommodation is at Festival time, and how enthusiastic some Elvis fanatics can be. Booking ahead is complicated, since actual Festival dates vary, but early in 2016, when we tried to book into four different hotels for the 2019 Festival, we were offered only a place on lengthy waiting lists, in case any regulars pulled out or, more probably, died. None were optimistic about our chances.
As formal accommodation gradually filled up, new strategies were needed. In 2004 Parkes established a ‘tent city’, Gracelands on the Green, where visitors could hire tents, park caravans and access basic facilities. That was modelled on what had worked at the Gympie Muster in Queensland and the Tamworth Country Music Festival, as their festivals boomed, and festivals learned from each other. The same company that established the Tamworth tent city developed Gracelands on the Green, and collected most of the income. However, the rugby league club, the Parkes Spacemen, soon seized on the opportunity to manage the facilities over the festival period, netting an average $10 000 a year, so keeping the club afloat. Local linkages were enthusiastically seized upon.
Gracelands on the Green and its caravan park quickly became full. Once again the festival had to think laterally, and again there was a model to transplant. In 2006 Parkes established a home hosting scheme modelled on similar schemes in the New South Wales towns of Gunnedah and Bathurst, for the agricultural show and the motor races respectively. Rather better than the tent city, it sought to ensure that accommodation revenue remained in Parkes, and that the homes would provide a friendly, homely ‘country’ experience for urban visitors. Visitors paid $66 a night, of which $50 went to the host and $10 to the Festival Committee, with the remainder covering the expenses of the program coordinator, who ran her own bed and breakfast establishment. Certain minimal standards were demanded. Guests were expected not to smoke or drink indoors, or bring in additional people. Homes had to have air conditioning, basic privacy for guests, no hazards or objections to guests arriving home late and a welcome and farewell at the train station. Homes that were relatively close to the town centre and the Hound Dog bus route had preference. Parkes sought to exude country hospitality, though it had to be reciprocated.
Home hosting had its own multiplier effects. Continental breakfasts had to be sourced and homes brought up to scratch. As one furniture store told us: ‘People have to get extra goods to rent out their house; bar fridges and wide TV screens have been going well; towels and sheets, too’. Others renovated their curtains. Even before the festival, some seemingly unlikely local businesses were doing well.
It worked superbly. Hosts and guests were enthusiastic and, as friendships were forged, many visitors returned to the same host in subsequent years. Most income went directly into the hands and pockets of the hosts – all Parkes residents – or to the festival itself, so income remained in town. That increased interest in hosting and widened local support for the festival. In 2006, the first year, just four homes and 15 visitors were involved but numbers increased dramatically. By 2010, there were 125 homes and 547 guests and home hosting provided a third of the formal beds in Parkes, and generated about $100 000. By 2015 it had become such a massive program that the demands of management were transferred to the local real estate agents. It was too good for the private sector not to be involved. By 2016 a few houses had converted to Airbnb (‘Elvis festival-goers more than welcome! Short walk or drive to the main action. We look forward to seeing you’). The ‘middle man’ – the festival – was being cut out.
Motivations for home hosting varied. We talked to more than a dozen hosts, most claiming to be participating because it would help the town. None claimed to be fans of Elvis, but they had warmed to him over the years, another measure of how Parkes had changed. Some now did their extra bit by dressing as Elvis to welcome their guests. One couple were ‘in it for the money’, one host ‘enjoyed meeting new people’, and another offered a classically altruistic reason: ‘to be a good citizen and help the town’. As one phrased it: ‘The community has helped me and I am putting something back’. ‘If it’s good for Parkes, we’ll do it’ was repeated over and over again – a community working together for the common good, in whatever way was possible. Ultimately the most convincing was the middle-aged woman who explained:
I hated the festival when it first started. It was ridiculous and stupid and wasn’t the image that was at all appropriate to our town. But over the years I watched and could see that it was making money and wasn’t so bad. Last year I took in homestays and had six more visitors this year – lovely people – and I made over $600.
Some hosts left their houses to make way for visitors (with consequent greater financial returns), but most stayed to share their homes, and be part of the fun, as gregarious and convivial hosts.
Disasters could occur. One host had experienced a problem with what she called a ‘27-year-old slut’ who brought a man home, and was subsequently ejected. Another had asked a guest to leave for being ‘disrespectful’. Attitudes and perceptions had to be flexible. One visiting couple ‘had tattoos’, but still ‘turned out to be nice people’. On balance, as one host put it: ‘I loved the company with home hosting and can’t wait to do it again next year’. Visitors usually felt the same.
A third of those in home hosting were return visitors, often repeatedly so. In 2016 Shirley was welcoming back an ‘Elvis nutter’ returning to her house for the sixth time. For the return visitors, home hosting was a delightful part of the festival: ‘Not only were we made
welcome in the home but our host was so fantastic … It was like we’d known each other for years! It’s much more personal than a motel’. Home hosting gradually became its own reason for return. One couple, on their sixth successive experience of being hosted: ‘I love catching up with the people we stay with because they’re our friends now. And, you know, we’re sort of friends with their friends’. The extended contact with hosts, not possible in motels, was a big bonus. City visitors often had only vague notions of country people, but warmed to their new social worlds. Some had to negotiate reduced privacy and shared bathrooms, but it proved ‘such good fun’ with ‘such nice people’. Beyond human relations, ‘the house was so comfortable and such good value for money’. But then, the more friendly and outgoing local people were those who were most likely to be involved in home hosting, and the more sociable visitors were the ones who were most interested in it. An initial problem – a shortage of accommodation – had been transformed into a significant social and economic gain.
While plenty of home hosts had been initially doubtful, some having to be cajoled into participating, they were swayed by recognition of what the festival had done for the town. Home hosting played a valuable part in winning over local people, contributing to the success of the festival, and literally embedding it into the town.
Just as Parkes gained from the previous experiences of Gunnedah and Bathurst, other small New South Wales towns subsequently learned from Parkes. The Australian Celtic Festival in Glen Innes, Dungog Film Festival and the Scone and Upper Hunter Horse Festival all took up home hosting. In 2011 Cowra too began home hosting, for ‘peak periods’, one of which was the Elvis Festival. Some 100 kilometres away, Cowra was not merely benefiting from observation of the Parkes experience but was actively sharing in it. Home hosting was also extending geographically in other ways: ‘I home hosted last year and the German girl who stayed said this is the best Elvis festival she’s been to out of all the ones she’s been to overseas’. Home hosting had taken on international dimensions.
‘Only fools rush in’: Cooke Park Markets
In the earliest years there was minimal commercial presence at the festival. Even in 2002 just a dozen stalls were doing desultory business selling a few local goods. Six years later the number of market stalls had passed 100 and Cooke Park was so crowded that numbers had to be cut back to 70 in the following year, to allow crowd circulation. Cooke Park was the centre of Festival action. Visitors passed the stalls over and over again, the mood was right and purchasing became irresistible:
I bought the car thing, dancing Elvis, and we bought a pen with Elvis, bought a couple of pens. What else did we get souvenir-wise? Stubby holders. A couple of stubby holders with Elvis.
The heat excused stubby holders. Fridge magnets, coasters, tea towels and keyrings: people had to have at least something. Frivolity and impulse buying could descend like a mist, partly excused by there being others to think about: ‘We’ve been looking for the knicky-knacky things that you can just say, you know, oh I’ll take the grandkids home one each of these’. Some things could only be bought in Parkes. A Canberra couple on their ninth visit to the festival said:
I reckon we spend about $250 between us on shows. But this year we’re a bit broke, so … maybe not quite so much … we’re trying to do the cheaper, freer stuff. And then probably about the same amount on clothes. This is the main place for rockabilly stuff for the year. It’s the best place to come and get shoes and shirts and skirts and petticoats and ... you actually get to look at them and try them on. Otherwise you have to buy them online.
The Bee Bop Boutique was doing well. Specialising in ‘fashion inspired from the 1940s, 1950s & 1960s’, it had its own circuit and was next on its way to the Valley Hot Rodders and then Super Chevy Sunday in South Australia. Kool Dudes (‘Dance Shoes and Accessories’) found the going tougher. Nifty 50s (selling memorabilia from the fifties and the rockabilly scene, and ‘Hot Rod Art by renowned Hot Rod Pencil Artist Ian Jones’) were also en route to the Valley Hot Rodders. Vintage Vixen (‘The lady is a vamp’) brought her wares just once.
A few stalls sold local rural products – honey, jams, soaps, lavender bouquets and handicrafts – though most stallholders were from distant places, as part of national circuits. Local businesses – the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, schools, the fire brigade and the rest – had their own stalls, raffles and barbecues that did good business. The Salvos had created a Mexican Canteena. The local Cancer Assistance Network branch was delighted to have made $300 in a single day on ‘little old ladies’ goods – embroidery, soap and doilies. Some sold nothing at all. The Wagga Wagga Sydney Swans Supporters Club came once but never reappeared.
Most things sold well. Much of it had nothing much to do with music, let alone Elvis: tools, kitchen equipment, clothes, bags, trinkets and garden furnishings. Itinerant stallholders sold everything from national football club merchandise to Harley-Davidson gear, woven rugs, local goat cheese and hand cream.
In 2009 one woman had come from Dubbo to sell her carefully collected items, framed pictures, embroidered pillows, Elvis mirrors and her many records. ‘I’m getting on. I can’t store it any longer. My kids won’t want it so I might as well sell it all’. More Elvis memorabilia stalls existed at earlier Festivals, but most of their goods had been sold, treasured and hoarded. What took their place was nothing even vaguely authentic:
But the Elvis pictures they’ve actually got, some of them weren’t really a true likeness and so being a fan that is something that you’re able to pick up on, a true likeness. And I won’t just go and buy something Elvis because Elvis is on it. It’s got to … look like Elvis.
But in festivals what authentic meant, whether applied to Elvis or lemonade, was ever uncertain. As one visitor perceptively observed:
You’ve got Elvis wine, Elvis beer, Elvis toothbrushes, there’s heaps of stuff – it’s really tacky … Louisiana mud … the tackier it is, the better it is ... I mean people are buying 45-foot Elvis rugs ... which is just classic … classic behaviour at a festival that is focused on one thing … the details are irrelevant. People consume all this memorabilia because people are in the spirit of it and that’s what a festival does, it changes your behaviour.
But, of course, there was never enough Elvis for some.
The more distant market vendors, the eternal carnies, probably did best. Their huge vehicles and food trailers travelled a circuit that took them to festivals and other events the length and breadth of the eastern seaboard. They rested and travelled only mid-week: a life on the road. Maori vendors came from Sydney. Some came from as far as Far North Queensland and Western Australia. Smaller local vendors did less well; in the January heat, schools are closed and the public service is less visible. Unused school buses could be diverted to become busy Hound Dog shuttles, but Gooloogong Public School – a tiny 15-student school, from a township 60 kilometres away – was struggling to find teachers to volunteer for their stall and was contemplating giving up. A year later they had gone. Not every local institution makes money from the festival. Even outsiders worried about the cost for the locals of having a stall in Cooke Park: ‘Take the bloke that’s selling just a few trinkets – he can’t pay two hundred bucks to have a stall. Or the lemonade stall. They just can’t keep up ... if you want the festival to stay good, you’ve got to have all those little people to make it better’. In 2010 Country Mystique were there for their first and only time, mainly selling local products. By midday on Sunday, as things were winding down, they had yet to bring in the $200 stall fee, let alone cover petrol and other costs.
Food stalls were the most successful and every kind of food existed: the perennial ice-creams, fairy floss, donuts, hot dogs and ‘exotic filled licorice’, alongside Turkish pizzas and pancakes, Lebanese shish kebabs and Italian pizzas. Korean food entered the fray in 2016, while the Mexican Canteena was doing its best to blend in by offering a ‘Brekkie Burrito’. Said one festival-goer, ‘We’ve got carnival food
… it’s great. I just had a Dagwood Dog. I just loved it. I don’t want another one now for ten years, but I’ve just had it and it was lovely’. The Dagwood Dog, otherwise known as the Pluto Pup, a hotdog sausage on a stick, dipped in batter, deep-fried, and finally coated in tomato sauce, makes elegant consumption quite impossible – the very essence of the festival experience.
From Dagwood Dogs to garden gnomes, from toys to lavender, almost anything was available. The House of Oils vied with Miss Gypsy Whitemoon (‘Traditional Gypsy Fortune Telling’) for custom. There was Chinese massage; people sat for charcoal portraits. Taste and style were ignored. T-shirts covered multiple possibilities (‘I don’t need Wikipedia. My wife knows it all’ or ‘I used to think drinking was bad for me but then I stopped thinking’). Wraparound Elvis-style sunglasses had never sold so well. There were Elvis guitar wall clocks overhanging Elvis coffee tables, busts of Elvis, inflatable Elvises, each more tacky than the next. They might, but probably did not, suggest a sense of playful irony that post-modernists might have smiled at. ‘I love those little kitschy things … For something like this, the kitschier the better, I think’.
The oddest thing about the market was that it rarely offered Elvis music: no cassettes, no vinyl records and no CDs. Perhaps they would melt in the heat; perhaps the aficionados had almost all of them. It was unlikely that they had converted to downloaded MP3 Elvis.
I’m Counting on You: the unpaid Elvis economy
After more than two decades the festival often seemed to be running on no more than the smell of a well-oiled rag. Its Elvis Revival Inc. Committee members are all volunteers. Each has their own distinct portfolio – buskers, publicity, volunteers, Miss Priscilla and so on – but for the Parkes Shire Council the festival is just part of regular business, however important it may be. Councillors are allocated to the Elvis Committee just as they are to the Waste or Traffic Committees. Although the staff of the Tourism Office spend a large part of their time dealing with matters Elvis, they cannot provide a workforce.