To say The Kransky Sisters are odd or a little bit strange is a vast understatement: these girls are just plain weird.
Together, Mourne, Eve and Dawn Kransky have an Old World charm that is at once deadpan and endearing.
They hail from the small town of Esk in Queensland where they took up residence in their mother’s brother’s house after he died at the hands of one of his own inventions: a high-sprung wind-up envelope opener.
‘From an early age, we have listened to the wireless and sung along with the songs,’ explained Mourne Kransky, the eldest of the three sisters.
‘Our father gave Eve the saw along with his violin bow, after our mother complained about the screeching. I was given an old guitar by a neighbour, and our other sisters Dawn and Arva learned to play the tuba.
‘On Sundays while our mother was out doing her chanting at the Freedom for Evermore conventions, we would get together in the lounge-room and play our instruments along to the songs on the wireless.’
From there the sisters plucked up the courage to play at the local RSL, the manager of whom scored them gigs in some other places. So they packed up their father’s Morris and hit the road.
They haven’t looked back since.
Recently the sisters took to Europe, touring the great nations there and sampling some of the delights on offer.
‘The ship takes a very long time to get there!’ Kransky explained. ‘We travel over with our Morris in a cargo ship to save money.
‘There are some very nice sights to see in Europe, and they have interesting food too.
‘In Holland we got to taste Bitter Ballen. They are small crunchy crumbed balls filled with a greyish-white gravy. Very tasty and remind us a bit of the Welsh Rarebit our mother used to make.
‘They also have crusted cheese soufflés, and a favorite of Eve’s are Ollie Bollen. They are simply, oily balls. If anyone wonders where the holes go from the donuts, that’s where they are, in Holland.’
Food, it seems, is a priority for their upcoming Australian regional tour too.
‘It is very nice to tour in our own country,’ Kransky said in that creepy sing-song voice of hers.
‘We can also pack up the car with familiar food, and save some pennies along the way. We take oats for porridge, cabbage and some spaghetti tins. The meat safe sits on the back seat next to Dawn.
‘In the really hot places we tour in Australia, we can even cook some eggs on the bonnet of the Morris. It can be a nuisance to clean off though. Last time we were fortunate to find a hungry wandering Llama to lick off the leftovers.’
Ok…
Of course, this odd banter is all part of the act and is the main reason why The Kransky Sisters are so wildly popular: their naïve charm is uncomfortably infectious.
They also take modern pop songs and infuse them with yodeling or eerie harmonics, using the guitar, tuba, saw and toilet brush to add musical variety, the likes of AC/DC, Steppenwolf, Talking Heads, The Eurhythmics and Michael Jackson all in for a little Kransky-ising.
In this modern age, one can’t resist asking The Kransky Sisters exactly how they deal with social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook… if indeed they even know how to turn on a computer.
‘The only sort of social net working we’ve ever done is fishing,’ Kransky exhaled.
‘As far as my space goes, we have plenty of it in our back yard, and our scrapbook is full of faces we cut out from the magazines Dawn brings home from the hospital.’
Naturally, being in a modern age such as this modern things happen, like the internet and the fact that women can become Prime Ministers of Australia.
‘We’ve seen her in one of the magazines we get from the news agency,’ Kransky said of the new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, news they’ve only just heard about on their return to Australia.
‘We don’t have a television. Our mother forbade it in the house, and told us it was evil.
‘I hope the new Prime Minister is a nice person and makes the lamington drive a compulsory annual event. Everyone likes a lamington.’
The Kransky Sisters West Australian Regional Tour kicks off in Kalgoorlie on Friday August 13 with them appearing at Perth’s Playhouse Theatre from Tuesday 17 to Sunday 22 (www.bocsticketing.com.au) before hitting Geraldton, Mandurah, Bunbury and Margaret River. Full tour details online at www.thekranskysisters.com.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
