Sunday, July 24, 2011

Guest Post: Fringe Serendipity in Adelaide, Australia

Summer Guest Blog Series: Favorite Travel Memories
Certainly some of my best travel memories stem from little twists of fate and/or chance encounters. Here, Caroline shares how a blast from her past comes up to meet her in Australia and the incredible travel memory that results!

The South Australian capital wasn’t even on the itinerary and after my boyfriend’s car flooded in Melbourne, it was doubtful we would make it back to Sydney, let alone to Adelaide, 451 miles (726 km) to the west. But when our luck turned around, we ventured down the Great Ocean Road and decided to keep going.

When we drove through town, it seemed like a smaller version of Melbourne, complete with tramlines. But it has one thing Melbourne doesn’t: the internationally acclaimed Adelaide Fringe Festival.


Actors, comedians, artists and performers of all varieties get together for two weeks of displaying their craft. I had heard of the festival because of its connection to Charleston’s Piccolo Fringe Festival, which I had written about for the Charleston City Paper back in college.


When we checked into our hostel, Annie’s Place, I noticed tickets on the bulletin board for a show called Wanderlust going on for the Fringe Festival. I was surprised to realize we had randomly arrived during the yearly festival and the show sounded familiar, but I eventually forgot about it.

The next morning at breakfast, I noticed a mid-30s guy tinkering on his laptop in the common area. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Later, I heard him talking to someone in the kitchen about how he was here in Adelaide to perform his one-man show. Then it clicked. “What’s your name?” I interrupted. “Martin Dockery.” I did know him from somewhere. I had interviewed him via email for the newspaper’s annual Spoleto Festival preview issue about his performance of Wanderlust there 8 months prior. Now here we both were on the other side of the world, meeting in person.

I never got to see his show in Charleston because I had already left for Croatia, but I was given a second chance when Martin offered us tickets. That night we arrived at the venue, called the Garden of Unearthly Delights, which had a sort of carnival freak-show vibe.


Wanderlust is the story about Martin’s decision to leave his temping job to go to West Africa in search of an epiphany. Sound familiar? His philosophy was right up my alley and his humor is over-the-top in the style of vintage Jim Carrey. If you get the chance to see one of his performances, I definitely recommend it.


I couldn’t believe that a newspaper interview I had almost forgotten about gave me the chance to experience Adelaide in a way I otherwise never would have.

Caroline Eubanks is a freelance writer, travel blogger and bartender from Atlanta, Georgia currently spending the year traveling around Australia. Read her blog at www.carolineinthecityblog.com.

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© Connie Hum 2011

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like fun! I love happy coincidences.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Truly is a small world - becoming even smaller every day :-)

    ReplyDelete

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