So about two months ago I went to the Melbourne Zine Fest in the capacity of a seller of zines. This year the zine fest was going under the name of Paper City 2013, which contained several zine events. I didn't go to the opening involving several bands playing on the first night, as that was the day I had arrived and I'd been up already for about twenty-something hours hours without sleep. And I missed a guided tour to a zine archive in Melbourne's state library, and some talks because I was in Geelong that day. I did briefly pop into someone's zine launch but couldn't stay long as I had to catch a train to Ballarat.
But I did go to the main event, the 2013 Melbourne zine fair. It was held at the Town Hall which was very grand indeed, so congratulations to the organisers for scoring that venue. There was plenty of space and enough room to accommodate about a hundred zine makers most of whom had their own tables. I did hear from a few of the regulars that the number of attendees was less than previous years. Possibly because of the Chinese New Year parade outside. But thats OK, its not all about sales. I got to meet people, did some networking, did some swaps and the usual stuff one does at these things. There was of course, a wide variety of zines there, ranging from the cheaply produced photocopy zines to those who took advantage of Australia's cheaper printing facilities to create flasher looking productions. A besuited fellow had had also covered one of the tables with little paper houses, a little paper city within the paper city. There were also various musical combos playing on the stage, at an appropriate volume, not too loud, not too quiet. Just right.
So a good time was had by most, maybe even all. If you want to have a summer holiday in Melbourne, try and coincide it with the Melbourne Zine Fest next Year (its usually in February). Check the Sticky Institute blog for information on upcoming zine events in Australia. If you're lucky you might sell a few zines and make some money to spend on beer or trams or museums or Koala food or something afterwards.
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| Melbourne Town Hall stage |
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| Melbourne Town hall ceiling |
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| The paper city |
