A gradual disappearing act

Generations of Australians once thrilled to see the circus roll into town. And while urban sprawl is taking its toll, a small band of families keeps the magic alive, writes Andrea Lemon.

IN 1938 A YOUNG CLEO Rinaldo left home to become an elephant handler and magician's assistant. She was not so much running away with the circus as she was being sent on the next stage of her life journey. At just 14 Cleo was "put into training" at Bullen's Circus as a baton spinner, leading the circus parade. "But then quick smart I got caught into riding the elephants, and then into the aerial act. And I was on my way."

She later married the eldest Bullen son, Stafford. Like many circuses of the era, Bullen's regularly circumnavigated Australia, performing one and two-night stands in towns along the route, and Cleo's mother saw her daughter only once every two years as the circus passed through their town.

How could a mother give her daughter away so young to such a strange future? For Cleo's mother, Freda Cuthbert, it was not such a surprising move, as Freda herself was a snake charmer and lion tamer with South African Bostock and Wombwell's Circus. Her father, Joseph Rinaldo, was an Austrian stuntman. So by her family's standards, Cleo's life was quite ordinary.

I have spent much of the past two years on the road, travelling Australia searching out traditional circus people. I also joined Stardust Circus as it travelled through outback Queensland and NSW, doing one and two-night stands in towns such as Charleville, Brewarrina and Lightning Ridge. I was curious to know what life is like for traditional circus people, and to learn how times may have changed for them over the past 50 years. I met extraordinary people, living lives they found quite ordinary.

Topsy Hutchins' mother took her small daughter to Sole's Circus in 1920, enjoyed the show, and left alone. This is all Topsy knows about her origins. Now 87, she says: "I was only about two, and she gave me to the circus. That was it."

To this day Topsy has no idea who her parents are, where she was born, or on what date. "But I do know my original name was Agnes."

Topsy went on to perform a unique contortion act in which her pomeranian dog Flicka walked over her body as she tied herself in knots.

Many circuses in the early 20th century "adopted" sons and daughters. Some were taken into the family officially, some were bequeathed by desperate parents coping with poverty or social stigma. Circuses at the time depended on large families for their survival. The more children you had, the larger your show could be and the more hands were available to perform in the ring and help out around the lot. So began the tradition of family circus in Australia.

Even today traditional circuses are a close-knit community of interconnected families, sharing many of the same names as circuses that were touring early last century. Circus people have a broad understanding of family. Many live their entire lives on the road, marrying into other circus families, and can trace their personal circus lineage over eight generations. They also extend their sense of family to the many people who live, work and travel with them every day of the year.

Family circuses are fiercely loyal to their cultural traditions. They perform many of the same acts and clown routines as their parents and grandparents. They follow traditional routes up the east coast of Australia, and down through central Queensland. Some circuses still head north for the winter. But whereas circuses would once "overwinter" on a patch of land they bought, leased or borrowed - a time to train up new acts and animals and take a break from the rigours of the road - today, circuses can't afford to lie fallow for months at a time. They are battling the financial and emotional costs of drought, rising fuel prices, urban development, competition for the entertainment dollar and conflicting federal, state and council regulations. As a result they are on the road most of the year.

When Frank Gasser started Circus Royale in the early 1970s, only one licence was required to operate a circus in Australia; now he needs 175, each licence with its own regulations and associated costs.

"If you forget to renew one licence they can sue you or take the licence away," he marvels. "Some are just for one state, and you might not have used it because you are showing down in Victoria. So you drive over the border and suddenly, oh no, have we renewed those licences?"

Lindsay Lennon, of Stardust Circus and Lennon Bros Circus, says in Sydney alone up to 30 per cent of traditional circus sites have been lost to urban development in recent years. As circuses are pushed further to the edges of towns and cities, the opportunity for people in the inner suburbs to experience traditional circus is becoming limited.

Traditional circuses keep their costs down by living on-site, just as they did in the 1800s, and in many ways life on the road has never been better. Many circus families today travel in state-of-the-art caravans with built-in bathrooms, toilets and laundries. Even with the restricted sites, some circuses now forgo the expense of regional travelling in favour of staying within city boundaries. Here they can draw a more mobile audience to them, giving circus families more time and access to resources available to those who live in the cities.

Life on the road in the 1930s and '40s was a very different story. Cleo lived in a tent until she got married in her late 20s. She also had to take her turn walking the circus stock from town to town.

"Mrs Bullen would make the girls do a week on the road walking with the stock. This was before we had trucks to carry them. We walked about 35 miles a day. You might camp out in the bush. We had donkeys, horses, camels, elephants. So we'd ride the horses until we got sore, then we'd transfer and ride an elephant until we got sore, then we'd walk. Then we had to be on the front door to do the tickets. Then we were performing and at interval time we had to sell the drinks, ice-creams and programs."

Circus people still run from the arena at interval to sell fairy floss and programs. It is still a constant collective effort to keep the circus juggernaut performing, to pull it down and get it back on the road. Labour is still clearly divided, with men doing the heavy lifting, hammering in tent pegs and putting up the big top, and women taking a less physical role in the canteen and ticket box.

Likewise, in the arena women generally perform the "glamour" acts such as single trapeze and descent rope, while the men perform feats of strength or create mayhem as clowns. Whereas "new" circus is a site for the performance of gender transgressions, traditional circus generally upholds traditional gender roles.

Yet in the 1940s and '50s it was possible to see Mai and Toni Belogamba's balancing routine, in which tiny Mai, in an equally tiny bikini, took her burly Russian husband and balanced him upside down on her head.

Some older circus people, like Cleo Bullen, have "gone off the road". In Cleo's case, she lives on her large property at Wallacia outside Sydney. Here she is matriarch to her children and grandchildren, as well as the offspring of monkeys, lions and pumas who moved with her and Stafford when Bullen's Circus closed in 1969.

But for circus people who choose to stay on the road, their lives are public property. They don't go "home" at night. The circus lot is their home and it is most often on the side of a highway, on public land, using public facilities.

We walk through their backyard, we stop and chat, stand and stare. We have little consideration or understanding of the risks these people take to entertain us. But this is their family and circus is in their blood.

Even with the odds stacked against them, they are fiercely loyal to each other and swear to continue living out this unique cultural tradition.

I hope they do, as I sit enthralled, watching generations of the one family support each other in the ring. Fathers are catching their daughters, grandmothers are cracking whips and jokes with their grandsons. I wonder at their courage and resilience, and I wish for our children that they too will have the joy of watching Mai balance Toni on her head, Topsy tying herself in knots and Cleo spinning the baton.