As told by Winks
Gus and I always feel the weight of Safari lift off our shoulders after the final award is given out and received. A year’s worth of op-shopping, work shopping, clothes shopping, and test running culminated in one huge night of glamour, high disappointment but also many proud winners. One particular year we had pre-arranged for the big final prize (a metre square wooden map of Australia covered in shells with four lovely kangaroos captured photographic splendour in the middle) to be hung on the wall at the last venue.
The bar manager had not followed our instructions to the letter and the prize was locked away in a store room to which he did not have the key - slight disaster to say the least. As you can imagine it is hard to hold an audience at the best of times and at midnight in a noisy nightclub when everyone is drunk, it’s near impossible. Luckily a little over an hour later the key was found and we had our prize, (I think the manager wanted the prize for himself) but most people including the lucky winner of the award had moved on to a big party in the hills.
Gus, Dene and I (Winks) grabbed the award and the first cab to the party. On our arrival to the party I noticed a mass of people spilling out onto the lawn of the front yard but didn’t think much of it. It was a big party and a hot night and I was suitably dressed in my checquered safari suit with shorts and walk socks, blonde TV show host wig, gold chains and desert boots. Gus and Dene had Afro’s and big sunnies, Gus had the powder blue on and Dene had a very flowery colourful jumpsuit on. We made our way with haste to the front gate, discussing what we could remember about the evening and how well it had gone. We were weaving our way through the crowd, who were mainly dressed in black, receiving the odd look here and there. I was leading the way but was looking back mostly to keep in conversation with Dene and Gus.
We maintained a pretty steady pace but came to an abrupt halt when I bounced into the bouncer! Now, I’m not normally one to be on some door list or anything - actually I struggle to get into places even when I am - but there we were confronted with a situation. Not only had we snaked it past probably 100 people, (who would normally be on the guest list) to get to the front of the queue, but now we had a big bald bouncer to contend with. Gus just casually leaned forward and said ‘Charlie invited us’ and the perplexed bouncer stood there for a moment or two and then said ‘OK, you’re in’.
The suit came through again!
The party was pumping, Hollywood style. We caught up with Ben, the winner of the Don Dunstan Young Achiever Award, and handed the prize over. Now, the likes of Kylie Minogue and Molly Ringwald were in town shooting a movie and were at this party - I didn’t see them but I reckon they saw us.
THE KEY IS FUN – FUNKEY!
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