Your reporter was (virtually) present at this meeting courtesy of Jeff Clark, who had arranged that in the face to face meeting, there was a camera connected to ZOOM so that I (and others who wished) could view what was going on. Thank you Jeff !
The meeting was opened by AL HIRSCHEL, host for the night, on the topic of "Paper and Everyday Objects". He commenced with the Paper Tear, saying that he loves this trick, although it does not always work. This time, it did, with a nice restoration to the original newspaper.
He also loves the item "Cutting a Business Card so you can put your Head through it". This involves very precise cutting with scissors! He did it successfully for us. He said that if he were to use a postcard, then you can put your whole body through it !
Next up was DAVID WHITSON who vanished a cane by rolling it in a sheet of newspaper and then scrunching it all up to show the cane had vanished. He fanned the one pack of cards in different ways to produce half a dozen brilliant patterns. He showed us a pack of shrinking cards, and after diminishing them five times, he vanished the pack entirely – really good fun ! He fanned a pack of cards, and then when he fanned them a second time, they glowed gold.
JOEL HOWLETT displayed a piece of black paper and a piece of white paper and turned them into a black and white checkerboard pattern. Showing us a large capsule, he asked someone to open it, and inside was a tiny paper bird. This Joel vanished, and made it reappear inside the capsule.
Baby Mia featured in his next item. Joel dealt cards down until the spectator told him to stop. Then he displayed a photo of baby Mia, holding a playing card – and, yes, it was the card stopped at !
JEFF CLARK produced a puppet bird for his item. A card was chosen by a spectator, put back in the pack, and the pack thrown in the air. One card was caught by the bird, but it was the wrong one. A prediction envelope held by a spectator was opened, but it only contained a blank sheet of paper. Joel scrunched this up, and fed it to the bird puppet. The bird coughed it up again, and written on the paper was the chosen card !
STEVE IRWIN used something as simple as three bottle caps and one ball bearing to make magic ! After he moved the caps around, the spectator (Diane) was asked which cap held the ball bearing. Yes, she could not get it right, and the ball bearing was under the control of magician Steve the whole time.
Then Steve asked a spectator to choose a card, and replace it in the deck. By spelling "S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K H-O-L-M-E-S" as he dealt cards from the pack, he ended up on the chosen card ! At the end of the evening, Steve kindly work - shopped this trick for us.
To round off the evening, AL HIRSCHEL performed a coin matrix. (He credited Dennis Norman with teaching him this item.) He reminded us that the Australian 5 cent coin features an echidna. He described the life of an echidna, and laid out four five cent pieces in a square on a mat. He showed a five cent piece "burrowing like an echidna" under the mat from one corner to the other, and showed that the one coin had been joined by a second, and so on until all four coins had magically assembled in one corner. As well as being amazed by the coin assembly, we learnt quite a bit about echidnas !
