A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
The first thing to go was forty blue cable ties, and I blamed lighting.
Friday, four in the afternoon, the valley ringing with cicadas. From the front-of-house tent I could see the small world I'm paid to keep in order: one stage under a white shade sail, nine hundred people on picnic rugs, a downtempo set rolling out slow and warm. And close behind everything, the dark wet wall of the rainforest, bangalow palms fanning over it like hands.
My desk sits under that tent like an altar, and I keep it like one. Every channel labelled on blue tape in my capitals. Every cable tied in blue. Blue means mine. Thirty-one years at the desk, and nobody has ever touched a fader I didn't hand them.
The bucket of ties by my left boot was empty.
"Dmitri," I said into the radio.
"Wasn't me, mate," said lighting, much too fast.
✦
The caterer came over at six with a plate I hadn't ordered.
"You're Bryn. Front of house. I'm Mele, I feed the crew." Tongan, thirty-something, a laugh that arrived a full second before she did. Her cropped tee was printed with a temple built from speakers: black cabinets stacked at both shoulders, a crowned figure glowing in a gold sunburst at the centre, a violet console blazing at the hem.
She was wearing my job on her chest.
"I eat at the desk," I said.
"Nobody eats at the desk."
"I do."
She set the plate on my road case anyway, tore a strip of masking tape, wrote BRYN on it in marker and pressed it to the rim. "There. Labelled. You like labels."
By Saturday morning my roll of blue spike tape was gone too.
✦
"Somebody's pinching my straws," Mele announced at nine, arriving with two teas and sitting on my spare road case uninvited. "Forty blue paper straws. And a peg off my tea-towel line. A blue one." She produced a notebook. "We have a thief, Bryn."
"We have a lighting department."
"Suspects," she said, and licked her pencil.
We worked the crew between breakfast and lunch, and I'll say this for Mele: she interrogates beautifully. She asks about your mum first.
Dmitri, lighting: a blue torch, a blue lanyard, a blue swag. Alibi: at four on Friday he was forty feet up the truss, two witnesses holding the ladder.
Bree, the runner, blue hair, blue ute, who builds found-object sculptures at the gate. Hers was a dragonfly of wire and bottle tops, all silver and green. "Blue's too common," she sniffed.
Nev, stage manager, the tidiest man in New South Wales, bins anything left lying around. Prime suspect. Mele climbed into his skip, delighted: cardboard, a sandal, thirty-two cable ties. Black.
Back at the tent she flipped through her notes.
"Your red tape's still here," she said. "My yellow pegs are still on the line. Nothing goes at night, when you lock up. Only blue. Only daylight."
At the rainforest path she bent and came up with a scrap of my spike tape, its edge torn into a tiny zigzag, as if someone had gone at it with very small pinking shears. From the scrub came a whirring rattle, like a modem dialling in, then a snatch of some other bird's song, not quite right.
On the catering bins, an olive-green bird with a scalloped chest worked at a watermelon rind and turned one startling blue eye on us.
Mele went very quiet and wrote something down.
At two o'clock the blue USB stick vanished from my open tool case while I walked to the stage and back. On it lived the show file for the headliners, Ironbark Hi-Fi: three nights' work at my kitchen table.
I rebuilt what I could from memory and said nothing for two hours.
✦
At 6:05 the desk crackled.
I unplugged the blue network lead, a slim jumper that joins my desk to the stage line, set it on the desk, and walked round the rack to reseat the other end. Ninety seconds.
When I came back, the lead was gone.
Without it the desk can't hear the stage. Nine hundred people, a seven-piece dub band, and at eight o'clock, silence.
The spare was running Dmitri's lighting, lent on Friday as a peace offering. The nearest shop that sold one was forty minutes away and had closed at five.
"It's a bird," Mele said.
"Birds don't steal network cables."
"My Aunty Losa's clothesline lost every blue peg she owned in one spring. Satin bowerbird. Blue is his whole personality." She was already pulling on her boots. "He builds on the ground. Two walls of sticks. This time of year he's decorating to impress the ladies, and he guards the place. Which means he's in there now."
Under the canopy, the light was already going amber.
"It'll be dark in there by seven," I said.
"Then stop talking."
✦
The valley was cooling fast. I pulled on my hoodie as we went, and under the palms the air smelled of leaf litter and fallen fruit. Three more zigzag scraps of tape marked the path, then a blue straw at the creek, and at 6:50, in a hollow under a lilly pilly, we found him.
Two neat parallel walls of sticks, an avenue between them just wide enough for a bird, the inner walls stained dark where he'd painted them. At one end, a platform blazing blue. My forty ties fanned out like petals. Mele's straws. Her peg. My spike tape. A blue feather off some parrot. My USB stick, set dead centre like an offering.
And laid across the top like a crown jewel, my network lead: a hand-span long, no heavier than one of Mele's pegs.
He sat on a low branch above it all: glossy blue-black, a sheen on him like oil on a desk lid, one violet eye fixed on me.
Not on me. On my hoodie.
"Oh, Bryn," Mele whispered. "He likes your jumper."
The bird dropped to the platform, puffed up twice his size, and gave us the whole act: a churring buzz, a rattle, wings quivering half open, a blue straw held up in his beak like he was showing me the merchandise.
I knelt and started counting ties.
Mele's hand landed on my wrist. "Only what you need. The rest is his rent."
I took the lead. I took the USB stick. I touched nothing else.
Two things out. I'm a tidy man; the ledger bothered me.
Mele dug in her apron and held out a blue bottle cap from the soda-water crate. "Worked it out at lunch," she said. "Figured we'd owe him."
I set it down exactly where the lead had been, square in the middle. He tilted his head at it, then at me.
We ran.
✦
At 7:10 the lead clicked home, and green lights marched across the desk as it found the stage. Lionel, their bassist, gave me four minutes of bass so deep the shade sail trembled. At eight o'clock, to the second, Ironbark Hi-Fi dropped the first riddim into a valley gone blue-black under the stars.
During the last tune's long outro, Mele climbed into the tent with a plate. Her tee glowed violet in the stage wash, the speaker temple lit up across her chest.
"Third night," she said. "You going to eat this one?"
I dragged the spare road case beside my chair. I found the Sharpie in my thigh pocket, tore a strip of white tape, wrote MELE in capitals and pressed it to the lid.
She stared at it. "Why not blue?"
"Blue goes missing around here."
She sat down. I ate the dinner with my name on it. Then I took her hand and set her fingers on the echo send.
"On the snare," I said. "When I nod."
I nodded. She threw it. The snare went out across the field, came back, went out again, each echo smaller, rolling down the valley and into the rainforest, all the way to a hollow under a lilly pilly where, I like to think, a bird with violet eyes looked up from a blue bottle cap and listened.
Mele laughed, that laugh that comes a second early.
Thirty-one years. First time the desk has had two seats.
The tee, the shorts and the hoodie the bird admired
Temple of Sound has pushed a classical violinist toward a dubstep soundsystem in Play for the Floor and stood through a Bristol sound clash in Forward for the Teacher. Now it gets to solve a mystery. The art is a shrine to the speaker stack: black cabinets rising like pillars, a crowned figure in a gold sunburst, winged guardians at the edges and a violet console glowing like an altar, in lavender, slate blue, violet and gold. Mele's crop top is the Temple of Sound cropped T-shirt ($40), with the whole temple across the front.
Bryn's pocketful of Sharpies, spike tape and good intentions is the Temple of Sound men's cargo shorts ($65; $70 in 4XL and 5XL), a black speaker cone printed on one cargo pocket and a Flower of Life lattice with a small crowned figure on the other leg. The bird's favorite is the Galactic Alien Oracle cotton pullover hoodie ($100): periwinkle, indigo and silver-white, a long-faced crowned oracle at the chest holding glowing orbs among crescent arches and crystal spires.
- Cropped T-shirt: microfiber, 95% poly / 5% spandex, 180 g/m² · short sleeves · regular fit, XS–2XL · dye-sublimated, so the colors won't fade and the image won't crack.
- Cargo shorts: 100% poly with a denim-like feel, 190 g/m² · button-closure waistband · multiple cargo pockets · regular fit, S–5XL.
- Cotton hoodie: 100% cotton, 310 g/m², dye-sublimated · kangaroo pocket · drawstring · relaxed regular fit, XS–6XL · expect 3–5% shrinkage after the first wash (wash cold, air dry).
Kit out your own long weekend on the rug: women's tops · men's shorts · cotton hoodies
What should you wear to a festival in the Byron Bay hinterland?
Plan for a warm day and a cool night. Spring afternoons in the hills behind Byron Bay run warm and humid, so a breathable top and shorts carry you to sunset. After dark the valleys cool: Lismore's November nights average about 60°F (15°C) and can dip into the 50s, so keep a cotton hoodie in your bag.
- Dub and downtempo dress code: easy, earthy and unhurried. Soft tees, roomy shorts, a hoodie for the late sets and anything you can sit on a rug in for three hours.
- Rainforest edges: closed shoes for creek paths and leaf litter, insect repellent at dusk, and a hat for open fields in the midday sun.
- Pockets earn their keep: cargo pockets hold earplugs, a torch, sunscreen and your phone while you dance.
- Mind your blues in spring: satin bowerbirds are decorating their bowers, so keep blue pegs, straws and small blue gear zipped away.
For a real spring weekend in Australia, Strawberry Fields brings house, techno and bass to the red-gum bushland of the Murray River at Tocumwal, New South Wales, in late November, with nights around 55°F (12–14°C); in early March, Rainbow Spirit, formerly Rainbow Serpent, fills the Victorian bush with psytrance, where nights can drop to 45–50°F.
Frequently asked questions
Why do satin bowerbirds collect blue things?
Male satin bowerbirds decorate their bowers to court females, and mature males use more blue objects than any other colour, a glossy blue-black bird building a shrine in blue. In the wild they gather blue feathers and flowers; near people they take blue pegs, drinking straws and bottle tops. Rival males even steal from each other's bowers.
Can you take something back from a bowerbird's bower?
Native birds are protected in New South Wales, so never harm the bird or damage the bower. If a bowerbird carries off something you truly need, lift out only that item, leave the stick walls and every other decoration where they are, and step away quietly. In spring, the simplest plan is keeping small blue things out of reach.
What is dub music?
Dub grew out of reggae in Jamaica in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Producers remixed existing tracks, stripping out most vocals, pushing the drums and bass forward and washing everything in echo, delay and reverb. Dub pioneers such as King Tubby and Lee Perry treated the mixing desk itself as an instrument, a habit dub engineers still keep.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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