Feature-length documentary on Bells Family Carnival gets television airing

A feature-length documentary exploring the world of carnival family the Bells as they cross the country on the show circuit has been broadcast on the SBS channel.

Premiered at the Sydney film festival last November, The Carnival has been presented as part of the third season of SBS’ Australia Uncovered - following the Bell family on the annual circuit that takes them from Adelaide to Darwin and back again, meandering through a vast area of Eastern Australia, following much the same route as previous generations.

Shot over the course of seven years, The Carnival follows Bells Family Carnival exploring their hundred-year heritage of attending country and agricultural shows and holiday season stays in almost every corner of Australia.

The documentary covers how life as ‘showie’ or ‘carnie’ has always been tough, highlighting how the Bells have faced up to the unprecedented challenges of recent years: the Black Summer bush fires, the COVID pandemic and attendant lockdown and travel restrictions.

It also reveals how showies are a tight-knit community, even outside of immediate family - at one point The Carnival sees Elwin’s wife, Selina, a seventh-generation carnival worker, preparing Christmas lunch for 80 guests.

Director Isabel Darling spent several years travelling off and on with the Bells, who average one or two locations a week on their endless cross-continental journey.

A world people are generally born into, as Elwin was - telling the tale of his own entry into the world, born three months premature near Biloela in 1969, far from decent medical care. He made it, and flourished - old home movies giving a window into an earlier time that, smartphones aside, isn’t too dissimilar from modern showie life - but it does demonstrate that life on the road means you’re often far from amenities and infrastructure that stay-in-place types typically take for granted.

His own children, also born to the life, have had mixed feelings about it. Elder son Leroy is now an electrician who prefers the comforts of suburbia. Daughter Elle briefly went to university in Newcastle before returning to the showie world, and laments the difficulties involved in finding a romantic partner when you’re in a new town every week. “It’s like a running joke in our family that I’m gonna be single forever,” she notes at one point.

And then there’s Roy, named for his grandfather who ran a boxing tent back in the day before new regulations introduced in the 1970s put an end to fighting under the canvas. A cheeky 15-year-old when the documentary first meets him, Roy has a baby with fiancée Caitlin by the time the credits roll, and is running his own rides.

Roy grew up not only on showgrounds, but in director Isabel Darling’s lens.

He remembers “I was just a little kid running amok (then) all of a sudden there was this good-looking girl with a camera, so I just played up for her.”

Images: The Bell family share their life on the road in 'The Carnival' (top) and Elle and Roy Bell (below). Credit: Sideshow Films.