For 40 years John Barone has been building Adelaide’s favourite Pageant floats

More than 300,000 South Australians turned out to Saturday’s Christmas Pageant to see Santa come to town. And a lot of the fun and joy is all thanks to this man.

If you had made your way through our city streets during the early hours of this morning – say from about 3am onwards – you’d have seen people unfolding their chairs and laying down their blankets on select vantage points near the sides of the bitumen.

More than likely, it’s a familiar ritual; the very same spot they’ve held down for many a year, quite possibly from when they were young with their parents or grandparents.

They’ll probably sip a cuppa, wait patiently for the sun to rise, probably hold a spot for the kids, and then, a few hours later, welcome the arrival of Adelaide’s annual Christmas Pageant.

All the while crossing their fingers that the rain holds off.

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By the time you read these words, the parade has likely already started to weave its way down South Tce, into King William St, to Wakefield St and then North Tce, before heading back again.

Weather permitting, the numbers will likely be well north of 300,000.

That’s not a misprint.

It is an event, after all, that proudly wears the badge of biggest public parade of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

If you come from outside of South Australia, it can be a little difficult to comprehend our city’s love of the annual Christmas Pageant.

A mere mention of the words may elicit a raised eyebrow, a dismissive shake of the head and a query as to “why is it held in November?”.

Not for John Barone (or hundreds of thousands like him, for that matter).

He’s heard the chatter and, like most South Australians, couldn’t care a toss.

He recalls as a kid getting up in the morning barely able to contain his excitement. All his family, cousins included, would come together bright and early.

John Barone, Christmas Pageant Workshop Manager. Picture Matt Turner.

Mum didn’t drive so they’d hail a bus near their Evandale home. There was so many of them, he recalls with a loud laugh, that his family would fill up half of it.

From there they’d head into the city and walk straight to their favourite spot on Grenfell St (a route since retired).

There they’d wait until the annual parade of Christmas floats came past; a flurry of colour and larger than life characters.

Through the eyes of a child, and even a few adults, some would seem like giants.

It was such a special time. It meant family. It meant community. And, importantly for a child, it meant Christmas was just around the corner.

And it didn’t really occur to a young John Barone at the time that this would become his life’s work.

Well over half a century later, this year he’s clocking up his 40th pageant and, as the event’s official workshop supervisor, remains one of the key driving forces behind the event.

It’s pretty obvious this all means the world to him.

“I remember the feeling I had when I was a kid and then seeing our kids do it now and having the same look in their eyes is something special,” he says.

“And now I have grandkids doing it as well.”

It’s inside a nondescript 6000sq m warehouse west of the city where much of the magic happens.

A group of about 10 people, give or take, work around the year getting new floats designed and built and the old ones up to scratch for the big day.

A first glance there’s a yet-to-be released float called Sounds of Christmas, which backs on to an enormous pink monster called Bruto, followed by a panda bear on a surfboard, a giant meticulously crafted elf known as the List Keeper and then a drummer with a green mohawk overshadowed by what looks like a Marshall stack (although there are no brand names here and, while some floats may arguably resemble some popular cartoon characters, copyright generally prohibits any direct copies).

The List Keeper Christmas Pageant float. Photo: Naomi Jellicoe

Many floats here will be instantly recognisable to pageant aficionados.

The Nipper and Nimble horses have been there in various carnations since the start, having started life in The Magic Cave, and the big red double decker buses – genuine buses shipped over from the UK by pageant founder, the late legendary philanthropist and John Martin’s owner Sir Edward Hayward (who incidentally came up with the idea for a pageant, while touring the US and Canada and became inspired by New York’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Toronto Santa Claus Parade).

In between there are more modern floats, like the Summer Holiday caravan float designed and built by Barone in the shadow of Covid and the big, yellow, smiling Toby Toy Truck, which looks like it’s come straight from Luna Park.

John Barone with Toby Toy Truck. Picture Matt Turner.

Barone came on board as a trades’ assistant to help the carpenters in 1984.

He was employed by John Martin’s, which ran the event in those days, for six weeks while one of the regular blokes was on sick leave.

The other bloke didn’t come back for six months, Barone finished his first pageant and was asked back the next year.

“And guess what, I’ve been there ever since,” he says.

“This is the 40th pageant … my 40 years is actually March next year.”

In the early days, the floats were all constructed on wooden chassis and frames.

Each would take three to four months to build and a small crew of carpenters, welders, mechanics and artists would work on anything up to five floats at a time.

They’d paint them all at the end. These days it’s a little more modern.

“Up until about 10 years ago, all the chassis and bases were wooden frames,” Barone explains.

“Over time we deleted a lot of those and created new frames and new chassis. Now they’re all steel and Holden or Ford wheel chassis … things like that.

Billy Bulldozer is a new float at this year’s pageant. Picture: Tricia Watkinson.

“A lot of the old chassis used to have old wooden spoke wheels on them, they would have been old Dodgers and old Model T Fords.

“If a collector knew what we had under some of these vehicles; for example in Stardust Castle there’s a 1948 Humber, which is an old English vehicle, which is now 75 years old or something.”

He points to another float which is built on top of what used to be a Toyota HiAce, and another new one, Christmas Limousine, which is built atop a modified ute.

“The bloke who gave this one to us couldn’t believe we were going to chop it in half,” he says.

All up Barone reckons he’s been involved in building at least 80 floats (but says it’s probably more), an average of about two a year, and has created and designed more than a dozen himself, as well as a number of mini-floats (... the ones people push along).

He reels off his favourites like he’s remembering his kids.

There’s Pageant Express and there’s Cinderella. Looking further back there’s Nasty Neville, the Pirate King and Jolly Swagman.

Christmas Pageant float Cinderella.

All started their life as a drawing on a piece of paper, before being transformed into a styrofoam model 1/10th of the scale, before the hammers and nails came out.

So what made these so great … and what’s the secret to a great float?

“It’s the wow factor for the children,” he says.

“A child sitting on the side of the blue honour line sees this huge shape come along to them and you’ve got 30 seconds to tell a story.

“So it’s really important to get that message across quickly, to either an adult or child, and they’ll see it go past and think, ‘Oh my God, wow’.”

Being the pageant’s workshop manager is a year-round job and Barone is the longest working member of the team.

These days his job is more operational; he still works on the designs but is heavily involved with the float drivers, the office staff and the scores of volunteers who all come together to ensure the day runs smoothly.

On the day about 3000 people come together to make the pageant happen.

The Summer Holiday float debuted at the 2021 Christmas Pageant. Picture: Matt Loxton

To illustrate the point, he gestures to a bunch of chairs gathered in rows at the front of the warehouse.

“That’s for clown school tonight,” he says.

Clown school?

“Yeah all the clowns and elves come in and get some training on what to do on the day and how to use the props. There’ll be about 300 of them.”

Beyond that, his main focus right now is putting the finishing touches on the event and ensuring that everything runs smoothly.

On pageant day, he and his team will get to the warehouse in the early hours of the morning. With military precision the 65 or so floats will be taken onto the road to begin the slow journey into town.

“Once that happens, my job here is done and I just sit back and watch it all unfold. Then I’ll relax,” he says.

He still has to pinch himself that he’s been involved for so long

“I remember when I first started there was a chappie who had been here like 35 years and I was like 17, 18 years old when I first started, and I just couldn’t believe that a person could be in a job for so long” he says.

“And now I’m like, ‘Oh God, here I am now’. And I’ve got a young kid that’s just started and he says, ‘I can’t believe you’ve been here 40 years’ … exactly what I said to the old chaps who were here before me.”

John Barone. Picture Matt Turner.

John Barone doesn’t find it difficult to fathom the state’s abiding love for the Christmas Pageant.

“Adelaide’s a big community and this has a real community feel about it,” he says.

“Whenever I’m getting ready for the pageant, people just want to help you out; give you a discount or do it for free.

“It’s probably because they remember going to the pageant when they were a kid, like I did.

“It’s really something that has been passed on from generation to generation; that’s one of the biggest things.

“Families will always keep coming back, because that’s what their parents did and their grandparents before them.

“Also it’s a free event. We actually crack down on people trying to sell stuff there. And there’s not many free events left out there these days and a lot of people are doing it tough.”

The National Pharmacies Christmas Pageant is on Saturday, November 4. Details: christmaspageant.com.au