Well it came and went, with two 6m diameter tents set up along with a welcoming space (a 6m x 3m marquee). We had around 3,000 books out on display and gifted around 600. Once again Blazing Swan helped greatly by moving our storage shipping container up to the event site (8.5 tonnes of it). There was a cyclone and a fuel crisis in the lead up to the event which messed up a lot of plans and we set up with about half the number of people we’d originally hoped to have. Despite that, the lessons learnt from setting up last year in the same place made things easier – and possible. But the third tent didn’t happen (we asked people if they found it to let us know), and the decor and lighting didn’t happen either. At the time I thought this was a trivial thing, but since then people have told me that they walked past the library thinking the tents were private accommodation and didn’t ‘go in’.
So with the late set up, and being worn down by volunteering for three weeks prior with Blazing Swan on site, I was exhausted for most of the time. We’d planned to close up a day early and take it easy during packdown, but the number of people visiting had been building towards the ‘end’ so we stayed open till Monday night. And it was the best night, for meeting friends and conversations. The packdown went fairly well, in a compromised sort of way. Boxes went into the container and were stacked on the floor. I went back with a friend a few months later and moved the books from the boxes up onto the shelves, which was an absolute necessity in order to be able to work in the container space getting ready for next year.
