Every year Ivrea awakes one winter morning in February with an incredible weight of expectation. Usually calm, the town quickly becomes a cauldron of sensory overload that sweeps along everyone gathered there for its popular annual carnival, the Orange Festival.
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Fetish items include witchcraft and the sexual; a cast iron penis “for sexual performance improvement” retails at around $250 to import to the western world.
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On Fraser Island, there is no shortage of beaches… as the 125-kilometre-long island is totally made of sand and is the world’s biggest sandbar!
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The Goroka show is partly a tourist event, but it’s a rare opportunity for travellers to experience the customs of over a hundred tribes that populate the Papua New Guinea highlands. During the course of the weekend the tribes gather for music, dancing, showing-off and extraordinary displays of tribal rituals.
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In Swaziland, the Ncwala Festival (first fruits) is the most important and colourful occasion of the year, held in December. The Swazi people have a strong allegiance to their king who forms the central focal point of this festival. It is a chance to honour the royal family as a source of fertility for the country. This is quite apt as the late King Sobhuza had over 100 wives and 600 children!
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