“Then grab the hottest, hippest room at the Heartbreak Hotel …” I could hear her Eartha Kitt miaow: “Leave the rest to me.”
I had to remind her that the photograph she was talking to so insanely was now, as the grandkids might say, “well old”. My blue suede shoes had curled and died, my eyes wore specs, the hair was Awol — and the Heartbreak Hotel was her fantasy. “Look around you. It hasn’t been built yet.” She looked around.
“I see a bush town,” she said. “Surrounded by gum trees and paddocks. And streets so deserted they look like Lonely Street.” Enough! On the trail of Elvis, we’d come, improbably, to Australia. You may wonder why. I do myself.
So I drove the car to the north edge of town and booked us into the Station Hotel. They were selling bottles of Elvis chardonnay at the check-in. As you do.
“Welcome to Parkes, the Elvis capital of Australia,” said Tammy, the manager. Her mother, she told us, was mega-hot for the King, but Tammy confessed she herself was not even tepid, and wrinkled her nose.
Like everyone else we met in Parkes on our two-day stay, she was overloaded with joie de vivre. Except for the ladies at the tiny town museum, who may have been closet Buddy Holly fans. The Elvis “infestation” was not to their taste. “Too much noise. We take our hearing aids out.” I think one of them almost smiled. We didn’t tell Tammy.
“Yeah they come here in their thousands,” Tammy confirmed. “Hundreds of Elvises in jump-suits, crowds of Priscillas, all making whoopee during the weekend of Elvis’s birthday.”
“I’ll come as the devil in disguise,” I jested. She humoured me with a smile. The bottle of chardonnay was my penance. It cost £9. “Get drunk on Elvis,” she said as she pocketed my cash and mentioned a couple of places to eat. After we’d drunk it, we took to the streets in search of an Elvis burger and peanut butter sandwiches (deep fried).
Tammy had told us about a restaurant called Graceland whose owners started the Elvis shenanigans 17 years ago. In January (at the height of Australia’s hot summer), trade was traditionally quiet. They’d hoped that the King might buck up business. The whole thing rocked out of control.
Wildest dream does not describe what happened next. Soon, the bush telegraph pulled in Elvis fans from all the surrounding shires to join in the bash. News travelled fast. Cue fans in coach-loads, planes (the Priscilla Plane) and trains, getting all shook up from the moment the Railroad Elvis Special rolled off the buffers at Sydney station with Elvis in residence, serenading them every inch of the way to Parkes.
Ellie Ruffoni, who runs the festival, says: “It’s boomed. Three hundred people came the first year. Now we’re awash.” Ken Keith, the mayor, and one of the nicest guys you could meet in the land of Oz, gets dressed up in shades and wig and jumpsuit. He spouts statistics: “We have 11,000 residents and 9500 Elvis fans who sleep in an army of camper vans, tents, hotel rooms and B&Bs, contributing zillions of extra dollars to the coffers. We all have a ball. It’s spend, spend, spend.”
Getting into spend mode, we duly vamoose to nearby Coles’ supermarket, a favourite haunt of the Kings, I am assured, passing en route the Big W Car Park scene of the Elvis annual Gospel Service, said to attract 10,500 worshippers. “Gospel singing was where the King started,” Ellie had told us. “We try to be faithful.”
In Coles’ — in all other respects a bog-standard Aussie store -- they confess they’ve witnessed Elvis sniffing the big cream buns, ogling the burgers (king-size, of course) and buying deodorant. “Lots of deodorant! After three days of constant wear, those jump suits stink as well as shrink!”
says a fan at the check-out. “I love the King’s movies: Jail House Rock, Love Me Tender. Come next year for the barefoot bowls. It’s a great weekend.”
I hadn’t known about Elvis’s weakness for outdoor bowls.
But I don’t demur. I check the aisles, but the King has definitely left the building. Outside on Clarinda Street, the main artery of the town, things are so quiet that even the dead have gone elsewhere.
I try to picture it swamped with swaggering, sweaty look-alikes, street amplifiers pulsing with Girls Girls Girls and all the shop windows arrayed in mannequins dressed up as Elvis or Priscilla.
“It’s a different world, mate,” says a local who asks to be granted anonymity. “It’s an Elvis bonanza. I guess you could hear it back in Scotland if you shut up, and opened the window. They got a Miss Priscilla Dinner, Bingo with Elvis Nights, Elvis Karaoke, Elvis soundalike contests, a Jailhouse Trivia and Games Night, and a guy whose private collection of Elvis memorabilia is awesome. My wife goes missing for four straight days! I should be grateful. I reckon I would be if I could cook.”
The memorabilia guy turns out to be Elvis Lennox, christened Neville Steven Lennox, who started collecting all things Elvis as a kid and changed his name by deed poll to Elvis 13 years ago, the year he went to Graceland, Tennessee, to beef up his collection.
He went with two suitcases, came back with eight. “I asked my mum if she minded the name change. She said it was mine. I could do what I liked.”
This year, the festival theme was Viva Las Vegas. The King, had he lived, would have been 75 on January 8. “No ‘would have been’ about it, mate,” says a fan I meet in the bar of the Parkes Hotel. “He never died.”
Getting there:
Emirates flies return from Glasgow to Sydney, via Dubai, from £946.60 including taxes and fees. www.emirates.com. Car hire:
Parkes is a four-hour drive west of Sydney. Public transport is available by bus, train or air. Best car rental deals are available from Europcar. Where to stay:
The Station Hotel offers good value accommodation. Superior rooms from £66. www.stationhotels.com.au. Where to eat:
Mainstream cuisine at Windmills Restaurant, Welcome Street. Mains from £8. Also Brysons Restaurant, 440 Clarinda Street. Mains from £7.50. Good takeaway at Chester The Chick, Clarinda Street. What to do:
The CountryLink Parkes Elvis Festival 2011 runs from January 5-9. www.parkeselvisfestival.com.au .
For information on what to do in and around Parkes go to www.parkes.nsw.gov.au. For further information on holidays in Australia go to www.australia.com.
