September 20, 2020 was, I believed, to be an auspicious date. It was to be a great date for the next Bendicon, it had a good ring to it, and made for a snappy Insta hashtag. The year 2020 has indeed turned out to be a memorable year, for all the wrong reasons.
It is usually about this time of the year that I am busy with bookings for Bendicon. Artists and guests will have been booked or confirmed, accomodation and travel arrangements will have been made, and enquiries from near and far will have been flooding my inbox and Facebook page.
An early call was made to postpone the next Bendicon, given the then Covid-19 situation in Victoria. For a while there, when the curve flattened in Australia, it was starting to look as though we may have acted prematurely. Unfortunately with the recent community transmission cases in Melbourne and the subsequent return to Stage 3 lockdown for Melbourne and neighbouring Mitchell Shire, it’s looking like a fair call.
As a small regional convention, we are fortunate in that we don’t have a massive outlay or financial commitment to mitigate. I shudder to think of the damage control all of the bigger conventions are enduring at this date, both here in Australia and worldwide.
The important thing at this stage is to stay safe, let this pandemic wash over us, and see what shape we are in for next year. If you are anything like me, you have a decent amount of unread/unwatched media to see you through.
Fingers crossed for 2021!
