{"id":433638,"date":"2026-01-24T03:59:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T03:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/433638\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T03:59:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T03:59:11","slug":"what-was-it-like-working-for-the-great-moscow-circus-in-1990","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/433638\/","title":{"rendered":"What was it like working for the Great Moscow Circus in 1990?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most people, running away to join the circus is a fantasy or a joke.<\/p>\n

But after graduating from Rosny College in Hobart in 1990, Dave Wellington’s joke turned into reality.<\/p>\n

What was meant to be a few days working for a show in Hobart turned into four months touring around Australia.<\/p>\n

At 18, he and his mates, Gus and Joe, had no idea joining the circus would lead to malnutrition and being watched by the KGB.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Dave Wellington pulls a rope in 1990 as a worker with the Great Moscow Circus. (Supplied: Dave Wellington)<\/p>\n

Working 17 hours a day, every day<\/p>\n

Mr Wellington and his friends responded to an advertisement for labouring work with The Great Moscow Circus performing at the Derwent Entertainment Centre.<\/p>\n

The job involved setting up and packing down the bell tents, stages and circus equipment.<\/p>\n

There were bears, horses, dogs, and lots of Russian performers walking around them.<\/p>\n

After a few days, they were asked whether they would like to join and travel with the circus as it toured Victoria, New South Wales, and Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

His mum and dad were less than impressed with his choice to join, as they were hoping he would apply to work at insurance companies or banks.<\/p>\n

“You can imagine the look on both their faces when I said I’m hopping on a plane \u2026 and running away with the Moscow circus,” he told ABC Afternoons.<\/p>\n

“We worked for 17 hours a day on average for 7 days a week \u2026 [and] we were paid 2.81 per hour.<\/p>\n

“It was hard work, but it was so enjoyable, and we met so many characters.”<\/p>\n

\"Bears<\/p>\n

Trained bears performed for crowds. (Supplied: Dave Wellington)<\/p>\n

Malnutrition and exhaustion<\/p>\n

After a long day’s work, Mr Wellington would head back to a caravan he shared with four others.<\/p>\n

As a footy player at the time, he was physically active but said his fitness “suffered” over the next few months with the circus.<\/p>\n

“We were living on hamburgers and Cornetto ice creams,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We just didn’t have the ability to go and get fresh food nor did we have any cooking facilities.<\/p>\n

“Despite working hard we didn’t look after ourselves too well back then.<\/p>\n

“The rule was in the caravan, we weren’t allowed to have any food in the fridge, it was always beers.<\/p>\n

“After around three and a half months, Gus was in hospital with malnutrition, and we were exhausted.”\"A<\/p>\n

Dave Wellington told his story on Tasmania Afternoons with ABC Radio Hobart.\u00a0 (Supplied: Dave Wellington)<\/p>\n

The organisers would hire 100 to 200 labourers at each country town to help put the show on, according to Mr Wellington.<\/p>\n

“There were a lot of people who were on the run,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A lot of blokes would turn up and not even give names, as I can imagine they were on bail and things like that.<\/p>\n

“It was a bit of an eye opener at 18 years of age.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Great Moscow Circus has been Australian-owned since the Soviet Union collapsed. (Supplied: Great Moscow Circus Facebook)<\/p>\n

Watchful eye of the KGB<\/p>\n

In 1990, the Great Moscow Circus was owned and run by the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

The KGB, or the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopanosti, were a feared security service for the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

“The KGB were the security \u2026 they were immaculately dressed every day, black shoes, black suit, black tie with a white shirt and scary looking big men,” Mr Wellington said.<\/p>\n

“The performers were not allowed to roam free, they were not allowed out of the area that was fenced off.”<\/p>\n

He recalled a night they all snuck out with “Sasha the bear trainer”, who had too much to drink and they all had to carry him back to the caravans without waking the KGB.<\/p>\n

Looking back, he said it was very risky as Sasha would have been sent back to the Soviet Union if caught.<\/p>\n

Mr Wellington would call his parents from a phone box and remembered his mum threatening to get on a plane to come get him.<\/p>\n

“I said mum there’s KGB, and she said, ‘Well, they’re not going to stop me,'” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Circus<\/p>\n

The Great Moscow Circus tours around Australia.\u00a0 (ABC Wide Bay: Scott Lamond)<\/p>\n

Beautiful bonds along the road<\/p>\n

It was a sad goodbye when the time came for the three Tasmanian boys to go home.<\/p>\n

Many great relationships were made on the road, but one that stood out to Mr Wellington was a with another performer named Sasha, who was deaf.<\/p>\n

“We were leaving on a bus at 6am and he had the KGB with him at the bus station and we gave him a hug,” he said.<\/p>\n

“As we drove off, and he was waving, it was just one of those moments where you look back and you think it’s amazing to have a bond like that with someone that not only spoke a different language to you, but was also deaf.”<\/p>\n

The trademark name of the Great Moscow Circus was purchased by an Australian family after the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.<\/p>\n

The circus is still touring Australia today, but has changed since the early 90s, with new performances and regular security guards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most people, running away to join the circus is a fantasy or a joke. But after graduating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,4632,226820,134,12804,27213,31880,2801,226819,18535,1782],"class_list":["post-433638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bears","tag-circus","tag-entertainment","tag-hobart","tag-kgb","tag-malnutrition","tag-tasmania","tag-the-great-moscow-circus","tag-touring","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}