The annual town fair is around the corner. Bell Street, a quiet wide lane lined with purple jacaranda trees, has been closed off. No one is going to be hindered by its closure. It is at the best of times a dozy strip usually peopled by pram-pushing mums headed for Javier Park nearby.

The park, with its lush green fields, has been commandeered too. Tents, makeshift kiosks and temporary gaming stalls have started springing up. Buntings and banners. Signboards (unvetted by grammarian or spelling bee) are receiving a hammering from tradesmen wielding their tools with such proficiency it’s not going to be easy to remove display boards offering, for instance at the CD shop, ‘Buy one single, get two sons free’! Or, in variation on the free theme: ‘Buy two, next flee’! Or, ‘Mama’s Diary: Fresh from the cow’!

Before the festival ends — at day’s end — someone is going to be famous, or infamous, depending on the vagaries of the public attending. Every year, apart from the usual mix of food stalls, music bars, discount clothes shops, there is always one special attraction.

Two years ago, there was bungee jumping. It made senior Mr Chen famous. It was purported to have cured him of vertigo, a condition that had plagued him since 1972, the Year of the Rat, when he was still a young man washing (nauseously) high rise windows.

“So happy was he that his condition had disappeared that he took five jumps that day imagine, at A$5 a jump. I just laughed happily and let him enjoy himself,” said a jubilant Mrs. Chen, considerably shorter than her husband and who has had for years been the butt of jokes from her girlfriends (who amidst giggles observed at their sessions of peppermint tea and spring rolls at Harry Wong’s restaurant that Mr Chen’s having to look down on her from his beanstalk elevation was surely the cause, coupled with the fact that she loved being in control and ruled the Chen household with an iron fist, a situation guaranteed to give any six foot plus other half advanced vertigo.)

Last year, the illusionist Mirage Maker, made teenager Jade W famous after everyone saw her sawn in half only to be restored whole and healthy once again. Jade has since gone on to a promising career in modelling. Her picture has been on numerous local magazine covers and she’s appeared in two short commercials with other professional models where her own appearance has been so brief it’s been like an illusion itself, a blink-and-miss experience. Mrs W. reckons (although no one in town can find a logical link) that Jade’s burgeoning career had its genesis in the sawing-in-half experience.

This year, its biggest attraction was meant to be the renowned psychic and mind reader, Stella Galaxy. Stella, who apparently claims to be able to inhabit (with intense concentration and meditation) another dimension in time, a dimension that is, like, two time zones ahead of the one we inhabit, so she can tell people before hand what they will be doing in the next couple of days or years because she’s seen it all already. Well, Stella has had to sadly pull out due to an unforeseen illness. Which has in turn put the organisers in a spot.

And then, one afternoon, my prankster friend Barney, who is on the organising committee and has been among the ones scratching their heads for a solution, wandered up at the coffee café in the mall. “It’s all been taken care of, Kev. We’ve got a replacement for Stella. Chap called Aardvark Phssthpok,” he said. Aardvark Phssthpok? “Yeah, dynamic name, eh?” I refrain from reminding Barney that I, too, do the British cryptic crosswords and these are, coincidentally, the names of two setters. I know immediately who the stand-in psychic is going to be! As I said earlier, someone is going to end up being famous or infamous. Depending. Good luck, Barney.

— Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.