1:43pm: Melbourne Cup Zombie Day
The zombie walk held on Melbourne Cup day was a great success and fun was had by all. Lauren and I stayed up late trying to create a reasonable fake blood. In the end, we went with a mix of water, cornflour, cocoa and red food dye.
In the morning, Lauren zombified me with a combination of liquid latex, fake blood and talcum powder. Then I drove off to Carlton Gardens to meet all the other zombies. I had no idea how many people would show up and was worried that there would only be about a dozen of us.
As I walked through the gardens, heading for the meeting point, I saw the young lady pictured (sans blood) and she asked where the zombies were meeting. We wandered towards the meeting point together and found half a dozen zombies getting ready. At this point I was slightly concerned because it was now midday (which is when the walk was supposed to start) and there weren't many zombies about at all!
We hung around for about 45 minutes and during that time our ranks swelled to about 100. After a quick poll of the zombies to see if anyone was waiting for friends to arrive we headed off. After determining that we weren't waiting for anyone else we gave a cry of "BRAINS!" and wandered across Victoria Street. We got some very odd looks from the people in their cars, as well as a couple of thumbs up.
We went past a corrugated iron fence, and the zombie mob decided to bang on the fence as they went past. A guy on the other side yelled "Stop banging on my bloody fence!" and popped his head up to see who was making such a racket. I think he was rather surprised to see the large mob of zombies shuffling past. As soon as his head came into sight, the zombies clustered around with cries of "BRAINS!". I tried to get a shot of this, but just as my camera was ready, the man jumped back down behind the relative safety of his fence.
After the fence was a driveway with a large chain to block access when not in use. One zombie took it upon himself to be a chained up zombie, snarling at everyone walking past.
From there we headed down to Swanson Street, although I paused to indicate that the public toilets were now zombie-friendly. It was at around this point that my camera fell out of my pocket and hit the ground.
Shit.
Luckily, the only thing that was broken was a little latch that held the battery case closed.
*Phew!*
We milled around on the lawn outside the State Library for a while, then continued on to Federation Square. Along the way, some poor bugger, dressed up as a giant Boost Juice drink with the slogan "love life" was handing out vouchers. Unable to resist, many zombies crowded around the mascot.
Some other zombies tried to get on one of the many shopping tour buses that were parked nearby. For some reason, the organisers of the shopping tour weren't too keen and asked them to get off again.
We reached Flinders St Station, where there were four people standing around in "Free Hugs" t-shirts. Many zombies got given a hug and the t-shirts became slightly bloodstained. I offered to share my ziplock bag full of blood with any "normal" people that would stand still for long enough, but very few people took me up on the offer. My standard tactic was to hold out the bag, ask "Share?", then after they decline say "Look! Yum!" and dip my fingers in it and dribble it into my mouth. This really disturbed quite a few people. I don't know if they thought it was real blood or if it just looked icky.
We left the station and crossed the road to Federation Square. Zombies posed for photos, some for fellow zombies, others for tourists. Then the zombie shuffle broke up and we went our seperate ways. I headed off with a few zombies to get something to eat at The Lounge. An old guy sitting at a shoe shine booth saw us walking down the street and started yelling "Dracul! Dracul!". I didn't think it would do him any good if we went back and explained "No, no, it's okay. We're zombies, not vampires".
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brains!
gloomy
silly
contemplative
