By Rhonda Valentine Dixon.
A dozen colourful people clutching marvellously modified teapots registered to compete in the Steampunk Teapot Race. After signing in they made their way to the contestants’ table and sat down, placing their vehicles in front of them.
The women were resplendent in full skirts, some pinned up with porte-jupes revealing lacy petticoats. They wore corsets and bustles and blouses with ruffles. From their belts, they hung chatelaines with scissors, keys and clocks, or a decorative box holding a fragrance to mask unpleasant smells. English bone China cups and saucers were secured in fabric pouches and hung from their belts, as well. A woman was always ready for tea!
The male entrants were equally impressive in pinstripe waistcoats, tailcoats and slacks and top hats adorned with cogs and sprockets, fobs and goggles. Heirloom watches were resurrected and tiny industrial piping sprayed to age it was put to good use by two industrious men.
The Steampunk aficionados’ teapots would be competing in a downhill race on a plank and the teapot to roll the furthest would be deemed the winner.
There were rules. This was a fair and serious race.
Contestants were required to mount their pots on a four-wheeled chassis, not exceeding specified dimensions.
Every teapot needed a ‘driver’.
There was no weight restriction, so teapots could contain stabilising ballast. However, contestants had to retrieve any debris that burst abroad if a pot fell from the slope and broke.
There were two categories. The Tin-pots Race for metal teapots and the Crackpots Race for China teapots.
Plastic toy teapots were strictly forbidden.
Mike Aitkin employed a Britdis chrome-on-copper six-cup New Zealand teapot with a birdcage ladder for the driver, Gumby’s, embarkation. Gumby’s banner, featuring him and his horse, was tied to the pot handle. The teapot was screwed on to Mike’s childhood Tonka tip truck and the truck bed was screwed to the chassis. The teapot’s lid was soldered to the spout and Gumby held reins fastened to its knob.
Moira Bingham cleaned up a teapot from her grandad’s shed. He’d previously used it to grow seedlings, and a good soapy wash was all it needed. It too was metal, but a bit battered compared to Mike’s Britdis. Moira put more effort into the 19th Century costume for the driver, Barbie, than into decorating the teapot. Barbie’s long legs were bent, and she sat on glass marbles within the pot. Moira super-glued Barbie’s hands to the rim and fastened the teapot with string through its handle and around the body where the spout met the pot, to a Jayco roller skate.
Mal Bond had glued the arse-end of a stuffed mouse on the generous knob of a teapot lid. The front paws rested on a steering wheel fashioned from a sprocket on a rod soldered to the pot. Its wheels came from a pull-along toy.
Nora Smith’s entrant was a Victorian China teapot. She stuffed a soft, bespectacled octopus in the pot, rested its specs on the rim and pulled one tentacle out through the spout.
Successive contestants’ entries were equally impressive, and the vibe in the room was electric.
Most contestants were in it for the fun of creating something others would admire. However, there was a $500 prize, raised from an Easter cake stall that sold biscuit bunnies in top hats and fondant clock faces on fruit cakes. The prize money heightened the excitement.
All contestants took their turn.
Mal Bond’s mouse came unstuck, and it fell on its head in a flower bed. Mike’s Britdis held sufficient ballast to stay on the plank, but Gumby lacked the weight to finish the course. Barbie should have been bent back at the knees, and her body covered with marbles–at least to her breasts. Instead, her legs were bent forward at the thighs, and she was seated on top of the marbles, so her bum bumped up and down on the ballast. She lost her bonnet, and the pot fell off the plank.
There were some hilarious mishaps, and various comments about tempests in teapots, being down and out, and staying on track.
In the end, Nora’s teapot with the octopus operator won the ceramic pot race and Tom Cob’s vintage Swan tin pot, with its driver’s outstretched arms gripping the spout and its lower body, squashed under the lid won the tin pot race.
It was wonderful fun, and the contestants all repaired to the pub for a pint and chips.
©Rhonda Valentine Dixon
