Having been running for nine years, MiDFur is Australia’s largest annual gathering of furries; fans of anthropomorphic animals and associated creatures. Last weekend furries from all across the country converged on Melbourne for the massive meet that began with a Friday night dinner and ended with a Sunday night party. The time in between was filled with many events and much fun.

MiDFur (which stands for Melbourne in December Furmeet) kicked off with a dinner at Sophia’s and the turnout was just brilliant with 110 people showing up – twice the attendance of last years event. There was a lot of catching up with people who I hadn’t seen in months or since last years event – as well as getting to meet people whom I’d only encountered online as well as meeting complete strangers.

One of the things I enjoy most about these events is the type of people that you get to meet. All variety of geeks were plentiful; from video gamers to theatre buffs to music nerds. Much to my delight, a large percentage of the attending population had played Portal – even if Portal references were done to death over the weekend. But who am I to talk? It was also interesting the kind of things that people did. There weren’t just artists, writers, animators and fursuiters, but also a chemical technician, a robotic engineer and someone who’d worked on the production side of Spamalot.

So for about three hours we all overtook a section of Sophia’s, most of us wearing name badges (because there were too names to remember!) and a few donned ears and/or tails. After meeting a lot of awesome people and eating some pretty good food, some of us made our way to a nearby bar to shoot some pool.

So that was the first day of MiDFur. The second day (Saturday) had several events running simultaneously, such as the wine and cheese tour that went on while the rest of us went on a walkabout through the city of Melbourne.

There was lots of wandering around, splitting up into groups, meeting back up together again and then splitting off only to catch up with each other once again. It all kept us moving about, mingling and meeting people and seeing stuff, with the walkabout taking people through such stores as Mind Games and Minotaur.

Thanks to some diligent organizers everything went ahead despite the rain. In the middle of the day we ended up in a museum, as opposed to the original plan of going to the park due to the aforementioned rain. Moving over fifty people to the new location was achieved by crowding two city trams full of people, which was interesting to say the least. The museum served the purpose of being a place where the lot of us could hang out, with some folks whipping out their sketch books to draw or putting on a fursuit/animal costume. The costumers/fursuiters received some pretty good responses, especially a werewolf costume who was pounced on be a group of strangers who just started hugging the werewolf and wanted to do so forever apparently.

The rain subsided in time for a BBQ in the park, where one person made the insightful comment that this wasn’t so much as a meet, as a circus. And what better way to end a day of trekking around than with two hours of laser tag.

The third and final day saw a few of us meet up at the markets near Luna Park in the morning. While the stalls there sold only cruddy bric-a-brac, the main event of the day was a party down in Noble Park. Again, attendance was double last years for the Sunday party, which involved binding local furry magazine South Fur Lands, an outdoor screening of Bee Movie and (of course) lots of socialising and drinking. It all started at about 3:00pm and went until the host booted us out at midnight. Fair enough really, seeing as the host was also one of the organisers in dire need of sleep. 

That weekend definitely made up for my lack of a social life these past few weeks as I’ve been something of a hermit in front of my computer or a video game console as of late. Plans are already underway for next years MiDFur which aims to turn the gathering into a convention, which (if everything goes ahead) will be even more awesome than this years gathering of some very cool people. 

Many thanks go to the organisers, attendees, people who took the photos in this article and those who read my early draft of this article. You know who you are. (Because otherwise there would be too many people to list.)

Kyle Evans -