Circus champ comes home

By Kath Gannaway
“HAVEN’T I seen you before somewhere” isn’t just a line people use to get to know Perry Bros. Circus performer Miss Xena.
“I get it all the time,” said Miss Xena who as Carol Streckfuss has twirled her way to countless state and national championships and led even more festival parades over a 40-year love affair with baton twirling.
For Healesville audiences thrilled at Miss Xena’s fire-twirling and delighted by her slapstick antics as part of a comedy ballet routine when the circus came to Healesville recently, the “haven’t I seen you” thing goes back a long time.
It goes back to her days as a member of the Yarra Glen Baton Twirlers, her Healesville High School days and leading roles in numerous Gateway Festival parades.
The circus is now at Seville and no doubt, as a Warburton resident for the past 20 years, she will be the same line there.
Carol joined Perry Bros. in 1998. She wouldn’t do anything else.
“It’s a passion. It comes from in here,” she said putting her hand on her heart. I really miss being out in front of a marching band,” she said, lamenting the passing of many of the parades which she says were killed off by rising insurance costs.
She has led bands in the Bendigo Easter Parade, a 15-year stint, Moomba “from when I was a little kid to a grown-up”, the AFL Grand Final “that was a big one”, the Red Earth Festival, Gateway and probably Winterfest.
“I know I’ve twirled in parades in Warburton,” she said. “If there’s a parade with a marching band I’m upset if I am not there,” she said.
But, she loves the circus, too. Love’s seeing the reaction of the families who just giggle, laugh out loud and clap their way through all the low-tech acts – the slapstick, jugglers, performing ponies and dogs, the tightrope walker, clowns … the whole old-fashioned travelling circus.
“It’s the oldest circus in Australia and was the first to circumnavigate Australia,” Carol says
Perry Bros. Circus, featuring home-grown Miss Xena, will be at Seville until Sunday.