We are so happy after our achievements on our last performance that we decided to organize a dinner to celebrate them with all the colla. And now we can say that the first dinner of Castellers de Sydney has been a huge success. Delicious food, great party and the best people in Sydney… actually, what could have gone wrong?

Thanks to the cooks for preparing such a delicious paella for all of us and thanks again to Gure Txoko for letting us celebrate our first dinner in your club. Much appreciated! We can’t wait to repeat it again!! Thinking about a good excuse right now…

For the second year, Sydney had its very own Festa Major, which replaced the traditional Christmas BBQ to celebrate that everyone was back to the city after the Christmas Holidays. And as a good Festa Major, it required a diada castellera and we were ready to give our best for the occasion. We all met at 11:30 am at the Rodd Park, where two huge paelles were already being cooked and the vermut was waiting for us. After all, a very hot (42^oC!) forecast shouldn’t discourage a colla who had been rehearsing over the last few weeks to attempt our first tower with a pillar, right?

We started with a pilar de 3, with a new enxaneta. After, we repeated the pilar de 4 that we did for La Castanyada. However, this time it was heavier, trying to get some experience for a possible pilar de 5 late this year. Both pillars gave great results and we continued our performance with the most difficult tower of the day: the 4 de 5 amb agulla (with a pillar). There were last-minute changes in the structure, but everyone worked very hard and we could crown it (and complete it) without falling. We continued with a 3 de 5, which felt very long, but we completed it, being already our third 3 de 5. We finished our best performance ever with another pilar de 3 raised from the bottom.

Finally, as per tradition (and because it was really hot!), the new castellers were baptized by the older members of the colla pouring on them large buckets full of water. This started a huge water battle among all the colla… which finally left absolutely everyone participating in the Festa Major (non castellers included!) completely wet.

Thank you all who participated in this performance and in the previous rehearsals, we can’t be prouder of our colla! Thanks for the pictures, Martín. We had so many nice photos that it was hard to keep the gallery below 50! Here you can watch a video that Casal Català made of the event (castells from 2:40 till 5:30).

Castells: pd3, pd4, 4d5a, 3d5, pd3ps

As a way to get more people involved, today we organized a special “newbies’ rehearsal”, which became an unexpected success. We are very happy to have seen so many new faces and enthusiastic (and skilled) newbies! After a 3-hour rehearsal, with plenty of pillars and new trials for the tronc and the pom de dalt, we can say without a doubt that we definitely have great castellers hidden there. We hope we’ll see you next week!

… and our brave canalla look great with their new helmets, right? Nothing will stop them now!

Summer is almost here, but we couldn’t leave for the Christmas holidays without doing our last performace of 2016. Again, we were participating in the event organized by the Casal Català, this time in Berry Island Reserve, a small and pretty unknown park on the shore of the Paramatta river.

After all the kids “fessin cagar el tió”, Castellers de Sydney started with what was going to be the biggest challenge of the day, our first 4 de 5. In contrast with our previous performances, this tower was very steady from the very beginning and it didn’t lose its squared shaped at any point. The canalla climbed smoothly and quickly, so we achieved our major goal almost without noticing it. With great confidence, we set the base for the 3 de 5. Although there were some changes in the structure of this tower, we could defend it easily and we also completed it. We finished our performance with a pilar de 3 and, for the first time on a performance, a pilar de 3 raised from the bottom.

Thanks again to Casal Català and everyone who joined us at the pinya. Without you we wouldn’t have been able to do two 5-floor castles in the same performance! Go colla!

Castells: 4d5, 3d5, p3 and p3ps

Today we have so many good news!

To start with, we could wear our official shirts for the first time, which came directly from Catalonia (getting shirts to Oz is already an Odyssey worth telling, but we’ll do it another day). We have decided to wear yellow (groc terrós) shirts, since “gold” is of the 2 national colours in Australia (together with green) and none of the international colles had it. It looks great on us, right? Admittedly, we had some issues with the kids’ size, but we’ll fix this “little problem” as soon as possible.

And we can also proudly say that our effort finally gave its results and we had major achievements today. But let’s start from the beginning. Since the founding of the colla, Castellers de Sydney and the Casal Català de NSW have had a very close relationship. La Castanyada was not going to be an exception, and Castellers de Sydney happily participated in the event organized by the Casal Català at Centennial Park.

We decided to start with the pilar de 4. A combination of 3 experienced castellers in the tronc and a little but very brave enxaneta resulted in a very steady pilar de 4, our first “official” pilar ever. Encouraged by this success, the whole colla was ready to face the new challenge. With the assistance of many friends at the pinya, we attempted the 5^th level for the first time. Our last rehearsals paid off, the tower was significantly better than in September and the canalla did a great job, so we can proudly say that we did our first 3 de 5. We ended our performance with our usual pilar de 3. Congratulations colla! That was an excellent performance!

Thanks Paula for such a nice video of our performance!

Castells: p4, 3d5, p3

As it’s starting to become a tradition, the Casal Català de NSW organised an excellent Diada to celebrate our National Day so far from home. This year we met again in the Royal Botanical Gardens, one of the best locations in our city.

After facing cold and rain during our winter rehearsals in Hyde Park, it was a great surprise to see that the weather was (finally!) going to be nice with us and we would be able to perform. And that was something that we had been looking for over the last couple of months, because we wanted to try our first 4-level tower.

We started the performance with a pilar de 3, which was followed by our main goal for the day, the 3 de 4.5 (or 3 of 5 with “aconxaneta”?). Unfortunately, we had to go down on our first attempt, since the second level was a bit too closed. But we made it on our second go! As you can see in the video, it was shaky and certainly not the nicest tower ever… but what a great background we had for our first 4-level tower, right? We finished the performance with 2 pilars de 3.

We would like to thank everyone who made this performance possible. Without your help, we couldn’t have done it. We are so motivated right now… and we’ll definitely push to our next step. The 5 levels are getting closer!

Thanks Robert for such a nice video ! (castells from minute 6:10)

Castells: 1 p3, 3d5 (aconxaneta), 2 p3

And the colla keeps growing! We are so happy to have new members from all around the world joining us every month. Now we finally have a committed canalla who is doing better and better every single week… and a tronc that is getting stronger and more stable at each rehearsal. Winter in the Downunder can make rehearsals in Hyde Park a bit challenging, but we are not going to stop now… we are preparing our first castell for the Diada!

Today Castellers de Sydney are finally a reality! After only two rehearsals, attended by very few – but very enthusiastic – castellers, we couldn’t wait anymore to present our project to the Catalan community in Sydney. And thanks to Casal Català de NSW we did it in a very nice way, while celebrating Sant Joan on a sunny morning in Olympic Park.

Among other activities scheduled for that special event, we did a human towers workshop, which finally lasted for around 2 hours. Although at the beginning some people were a bit reluctant to participate, they soon joined us and it ended up being a success. The more experienced castellers taught the newbies how to climb, how to make a pinya for a pilar and for a torre, and we completed the workshop with our first pilar de 3. And what a better way to celebrate this achievement than eating delicious coca de Sant Joan (amazing bakers are living in Sydney!) and drinking some cremat?

We saw great potential among the adults and we hope that our brave new enxaneta will come back next Thursday! See you all at Hyde Park every Thursday from 6 to 8 pm.