Camp Bibliophilia has come out the other side of the Blazing Swan 2025 event with some observations and reflections.
The bare bones story –
.Our allocated camp site was cut in half, so we only had room to put up one library tent instead of two. Nobody’s fault.
.Our shipping container (with all our gear) was carried by Blaze to our Camp Site – we made the usual contribution to DPW by way of thanks.
.The contents of our shipping container (5,000 books, tents, etc) weighed 4.5 tonnes
.We started building our Theme Camp approximately two and a half days prior to the Wed noon public opening of the event.
.We officially opened on the Thursday morning. We effectively closed around 1pm on the following Monday
.We had around 1,800 books on display at any one time. Aprroximately 600 were gifted.
.We had approximately 300 visitors. Most appeared to be very happy to find us, a few were overjoyed and one was , well, overcome. We provided a late night safe space for one person who needed it.
.The library was ‘staffed’ by one person from around 9am to 7pm most days
.The weather was mild, with occasional showers and cold nights
To elaborate –
.Out of our team of four, three were working shifts with Rangers (including extra shifts). The other team member had been working 15 days prior, and 5 days post-blaze in the kitchen, and cleaning toilets for Blazing Swan. We were all tired.
.Although the setup of the library tent worked much better than expected, the electrics were never completed, so there was minimal light at night, and no decorative lights at all.
.We tried, but largely failed to sort all the books. On the other hand – in three cases out of four – we were able to retrieve specific requested books from the over 3,000 left in the shipping container, and do that within a few minutes.
