From NSW's colourful Parkes Elvis Festival to the cockroach races that unfold in a historic hotel in Brisbane, Australia is home to some of the world's most eccentric - and fun - festivals.
What do racing camels, rodeo clowns, street machines and potatoes have in common with Elvis Presley?
The correct answer is, of course, nothing at all.
Except that each one is the focus of an event on Australia's ad hoc calendar of eccentric, sometimes surreal festivals that draw curious crowds to country towns and cities from Boulia in Queensland to Parkes in New South Wales - and, of course, Canberra.
I've had the privilege of attending many of these gatherings, some of them more than once. There is always beer, Bundy and bush poets - and generally a lamington store and a sausage sizzle, and a van selling alleged foods unknown outside of Australia, such as dagwood dogs and Chiko Rolls. They are attended by campers and caravaners, grey nomads and schoolies, footy teams and hens' nights and baffled-looking Japanese tourists.
Every affair celebrates the apparently insatiable appetite of Australians to party away the weekend in the oddest places on the flimsiest of excuses while taking the mickey out of everything - but particularly themselves.
Most events took a break during the pandemic, but next year they'll be back and as strange as ever.
Parkes Elvis Festival, NSW
What is the connection between Elvis Presley and Parkes?
The correct answer is, of course, nothing at all.
It's just that 30 years ago, the owners of the Graceland Restaurant in Parkes decided to hold an Elvis party and, somewhere down the line, the whole town got in on the act.
Parkes is now a major international hub for Elvis impersonators. It is hard to match the existential peculiarity of walking through a 19th-century town in the Central West of NSW and seeing Elvises on the street, in the cafe, in the pub and everywhere in between. Historically, most of the Elvises have tended to be white jumpsuit Vegas-era incarnations but the 2023 festival theme is Blue Hawaii so you can expect to see more Aloha-shirt Elvises.
Many visitors dress up as Elvis (or Priscilla) to watch the Elvis impersonators perform: they are, in effect, Elvis impersonator impersonators, an idea too complex and contradictory for the human mind to process.
Parkes Elvis Festival: January 4-8, Parkes, NSW, parkeselvisfestival.com.au
Street Machine Summernats, Canberra, ACT
I don't have a driving licence and I didn't even know that burnouts or doughnuts were a thing until I first turned up to Summernats and watched spinning vehicles disappear in clouds of smoke, as if in a war zone.
Summernats is Australia's biggest party for revheads and their loved ones (that is, their modified cars). Events such as Heads Up Go to Whoa, where two side-by-side cars accelerate to a standing stop, may not quite measure up to Formula One race driving as spectator sports, but the crowd roars as loudly as the engines.
The modified lawnmowers race, however, will make it to the Olympic Games one day.
The headline music act at Summernats is, of course, Jimmy Barnes.
Summernats has spread to Queensland - which was surely its spiritual home all along - with Rockynats at Rockhampton (April 7-9) and to the NT with Red Centre Nats in Alice Springs (September 1-3).
Street Machine Summernats: January 5-8, Canberra, ACT, summernats.com.au
Tamworth Country Music Festival, NSW
Australian country music is as little known internationally as dagwood dogs, but it is much loved in the, er, Australian country.
In 2023, headliners of Australia's biggest country music festival include veterans Troy Cassar-Daley, Lee Kernaghan and Kasey Chambers and, of course, John Williamson. But the most talented artist in the line-up is surely the wonderful Michael Waugh, whose "The Asphalt & the Oval" is the best Aussie country ballad since, I dunno... Slim Newton's "Redback on the Toilet Seat".
Waugh played the song beautifully with Dwayne Picklegun at Tamworth in 2019. Check out that performance on YouTube, then go to Waugh's gig at The Pub in Tamworth on January 19.
Toyota Tamworth Country Music Festival: January 13-22, Tamworth, NSW, tcmf.com.au
Cockroach Races, Brisbane, Qld
Cockroach racing on Australia Day is as Aussie as two-up on Anzac Day, although, admittedly, it is the younger of the two traditions: it began in 1982, at the Story Bridge Hotel in Brisbane.
For an indescribable day out in the beer garden of a great pub, colourful cockroach-racing identities flock to the cockroach Gold Cup. But beware: while the cockroach is a notoriously speedy insect, it is temperamentally unsuited to the discipline of organised sport and tends to scuttle off in whichever direction takes its fancy, including - and I'm not kidding - up the legs of unwary spectators.
Cockroach Races: January 26, Story Bridge Hotel, Brisbane, Qld; storybridgehotel.com.au
Tunarama Festival, Port Lincoln, SA
The town of Port Lincoln in the Lower Eyre Peninsula is known for the many local fishing families who have made fortunes off the tuna's back.
Tunarama celebrates fishing, fish and shellfish - in various unusual ways.
The tuna is not generally known as an aerodynamic beast so it's Akubras-off to whoever came up with the idea of the Tunarama Tuna Toss, in which grown adults compete to throw a frozen southern bluefin tuna for the greatest distance.
Add competitive prawn peeling, prawn tossing and salmon tossing, and you have a seafood quadrathlon.
Tunarama Festival: January 26-28, Port Lincoln, SA, tunarama.net
Roberston Potato Festival, NSW
The Robertson Potato Festival in the Southern Highlands of NSW promises a "spud-tacular weekend" of potato-themed entertainment including competitive peeling, a spud 'n' spoon race and potato-sack racing, as well as various potato-cooking demonstrations for people who are uncertain how to cook potatoes. Highlights will surely include sometime TV chef and Better Homes and Gardens staple Ed Halmagyi's Rawhide session where he'll make potato, halloumi and orange roll, potato leather, branded confit potato and roped potato pecorino stacks.
Robertson's Big Potato has a sorry reputation in the field - get it? - of Big Things, due to its alleged resemblance to... well, you'll have to take a look for yourself.
Robertson Potato Festival: April 29-30; Robertson, NSW, potatofestival.com.au
1770 Festival, Agnes Waters, Qld
I haven't been everywhere, man, but the 1770 Festival, held in 1770, Queensland - "the only number on the map of Australia" - is number one on my list of events to visit for the first time.
Maybe 2023 will be the year I finally get to 1770 to watch the people of the Town of 1770 and Agnes Waters perform their re-enactment of Captain Cook's landing in period costume. I have heard that it is a spectacle like no other. Fringe events include a heart-stopping Duck Race, featuring bath-toy rubber ducks.
1770 Festival: May 19-21, Agnes Waters, Qld, visitagnes1770.com.au
Boulia Camel Races, Qld
I'm pretty sure I'm the only journalist in Australia ever to have jockeyed in a camel race (I finished fifth out of sixth at Sydney, if you're interested). It was the most terrifying experience of my life.
I'm told that camel racing is an exciting spectacle for the spectators, but I was too frightened to pay much attention while I was waiting for my ride. The 1500-metre Boulia Camel Cup is the longest camel race in Australia, but even the shortest race feels like an eternity when you're saddled behind the hump.
Boulia Camel Races: July 14-16, Boulia, Qld, bouliacamelraces.com.au
Mount Isa Rodeo, Qld
Bull-riding looks even tougher than camel racing, and the men and women who stay on the bucking broncos until they... well, fall off, are Australia's most watchable cowboys. But the real heroes of the rodeo are often the clowns, who dress up in bright-coloured outfits, make up their faces with greasepaint (the kids love 'em) and dance in front of the bulls to distract them from goring a downed rider.
The rough and remote city of Mount Isa hosts the biggest event on the Australian rodeo circuit, and you know you're witnessing something special. It's great to see the increasing prominence of Indigenous bull-riders at the Isa, and the talented Arnhem Land rapper Baker Boy will headline the entertainment at the new Mount Isa Mines Indigenous Rodeo Championships.
The Alice Springs Rodeo, held at the deliciously named Blatherskite Park in October, is also worth a visit.
Mount Isa Rodeo: August 10-13, Mt Isa, Qld, isarodeo.com.au
Henley on Todd Regatta, Alice Springs, NT
The Henley on Todd Regatta is a boat race without water. Ironically, "Australia's only dry-river regatta" is held in Alice Springs, one of the thirstiest towns in the country. At Henley, teams of dry-sailors race inside boat-shaped structures without bottoms - imagine The Flintstones at sea, but with no actual sea.
Turn up and build castles in the sand in a desert city without a beach. You'll quickly learn that there is no other "town like Alice".
Henley on Todd Regatta: August 19, Alice Springs, NT, henleyontodd.com.au
Birdsville Races, Qld
Australia's most famous and remote picnic races give the small settlement of Birdsville in southwestern Queensland the opportunity to host something close to a huge B&S bash in the middle of nowhere.
It takes a great deal of effort to get to Birdsville from anywhere else. By the time travellers arrive, they are generally ready for a cold beer and a party. The Birdsville Hotel is the place to be seen because it's, well... pretty much the only place.
Go to Birdsville for the journey through the outback and to lose money backing amateur jockeys riding bog-standard thoroughbreds. But if fighting's your thing, this year might be the final time that Fred Brophy turns up with "the world's last boxing tent", a troupe of tough-but-measured fighters who'll go three short rounds with anyone willing to "take a glove". it's truly a glimpse into a lost Australia, where a black eye was once simply the proof that a young man had lasted until closing time at the Birdsville pub.
Birdsville Races: September 1-2, Birdsville, Qld, birdsvilleraces.com
Deniliquin Ute Muster, NSW
What could be more Australian than shortening the name of a town to its first two syllables, then holding a rally of pickup trucks and calling it a muster? The Deni Ute Muster, as it is universally known in the universe where ute musters are known, is a fun and friendly gathering of people who really like their trucks, held under the shadow of an old car on a tall pole.
The ute is such a potent symbol of Australia that politicians evoke it to show how Aussie they are. Who can forget when Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party Sussan Ley thundered that nobody in the world was making an electric ute - even though similar vehicles are manufactured by both Ford and General Motors?
Events at Deni include circle work and a version of barrel racing in which horses are replaced by - you guessed it - utes, as well as non-ute country sports such as whip-cracking and woodchopping.
For a more disturbing look into the raucous side of Aussie culture, spend time browsing the bumper stickers that plaster many utes with sometimes dubious "jokes" and slogans.
Deniliquin Ute Muster: September 29-30, Deniliquin, NSW, deniutemuster.com.au