Celebrating PRIDE at the FABalice Festival

This weekend just past, the inaugural FABalice Festival was held in the Red Centre to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and provide a safe celebratory space in the Red Centre for individual expression.

For the festival a number of popular Drag Queens from around Australia were brought into the Red Centre for “Drag, glitter, racing and performances.” And let me tell you, they delivered on all four of these things. While the festival had a couple of free events stages all around town, in order to participate in the Quarry Party and the Pool Party, you needed to purchase a rainbow wrist band to gain access. A couple of my friends decided we were keen for the Quarry Party so snapped up festival passes as soon as they were released.

The festival started on the Friday night with a ‘drag crawl’ to three different bars around town. Unfortunately I didn’t get to participate in this event as I had a previous dinner, but from what I heard, it was a great time.

The festival kicked on Saturday morning with an activity to ‘Paint the Town’ with a rainbow flag, followed by a parade and ‘drag races.’ The festival then progressed to the Quarry Party and a show by Throb, a drag bar from Darwin. I didn’t stay for the Throb show as I was feeling a little unwell, but I heard it was pretty good.

I really enjoyed ‘painting the town’ in chalk to create a rainbow walkway down the Todd Mall. It was so nice to see everyone getting involved, crawling around on the ground, colouring in and having a great time. Bonus: the outdoor mall looked so gorgeous.

The Quarry Party was so much more than I’d thought it would be. The rolling red hills made for an amazing backdrop to the party put on my DJ Kitty Glitter and the drag performances that ran throughout the night.

I had such a great time at this festival, and I’m looking forward to future editions of this festival.