Beneath his homemade jumpsuit and the glinting black of his polyester Elvis Presley wig, Gnarnayarrahe Inmurry Waitairie sweats in the unforgiving Australian heat.
Guitar over one shoulder and his official busking pass on one lapel, he adjusts his sunglasses and tunes his strings as he prepares to shake, rattle and roll like his US idol.
“Aboriginals don’t have an Elvis, so I thought I’d come and be him. I’m Black Elvis,” Waitairie said. “Elvis can be anyone and call to anyone, because Elvis takes your heart away.”
PHOTO: AFP
Waitairie, an indigenous dancer originally from Western Australia’s Yindjibarndi country, has traded his didgeridoo and clapping sticks for polyester and rhinestones to be part of Australia’s biggest Elvis celebration.
As fans in Memphis marked what would have been the 75th birthday of the man known as “The King” of rock ‘n roll, thousands converged on the tiny, drought-parched town of Parkes 300km west of Sydney for the annual Elvis Festival.
It began almost two decades ago as the dream of Bob and Anne Steel, who ran a retro-themed reception center called Gracelands and were desperate to liven up the relentless summer months in the farming and mining town.
“We had hoped that a January festival would bring some business to town, and I think everybody’s doing handstands now,” Anne Steel said. “Most people can see what it’s doing for the economy and, by God, we needed it.”
Home to straight-talking farmers and mining men, it seems an unlikely place for a tribute to the pioneering popstar. The town’s only previous claim to fame was “The Dish” — a radio telescope used by NASA to receive images of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
But the Parkes Elvis Festival has exploded from a humble town carnival with 200 visitors in 1993 to a national event that this year attracted more than 10,000 people and brought in excess of A$5 million (US$4.6 million) to the local economy.
Hundreds packed onto the “Elvis Express” train from Sydney on Friday, adorned in their retro best to kick off the festival weekend with serenades by a tribute artist and dancing in the aisles.
The trademark quiff and jumpsuit are a staple and rarely is there a gent to be seen without sideburns and a swivel to his hips. Priscillas and Lisa-Maries are also out in full-skirted force, feather boas and wedding veils in tow.
The diehards stake out a street corner to busk, while others try their hardest to impress the lookalike contest judges. There’s an Elvis Idol contest, gospel services and “The King’s Castle,” which hosts the largest collection of Elvis memorabilia in the southern hemisphere.
Waitairie, who has traveled some 600km to take part, plans to win the street busking crown and renew his wedding vows at the mass “Back to the Altar with Elvis” ceremony in a park.
“Elvis was about love, about peace,” he said. “Since I was 14 I liked that about him.”
White-suited lookalike contestant Graeme Mackaway, who has made the journey to Parkes four times on the “Elvis Express,” said the Main Street parade was always his highlight.
“Every year we come and the crowd gets deeper and deeper and the route seems longer,” said the company director, who swing dances and collects antique jukeboxes in his spare time.
In just five days the festival brings in more than one-tenth of the 11,000-person town’s annual tourism revenue, its third-largest earner after agriculture and mining.
Hotel rooms are booked more than a year in advance not just in Parkes, but surrounding towns, and the sportsground, converted into a tent city, is overflowing. Officials say the expanding crowd is getting younger every year.
It may have begun as the brainchild of “two silly people who were Elvis fans,” said Steel, but the festival has become a celebration of 60s rock culture and a coming together of city and country life.
“I have been a fan since I was 11 and I’m now 66, but now you don’t have to be an Elvis fan, there’s something for everyone,” she said. “The fella who gets dragged here kicking and screaming by his wife is always the first to book for next year.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS