Archive - Aug 2005

(This post is based on a postcard that I sent to JPB)
When the fifth dancer took to the pole, it was time for us to go. She was wearing skimpy black underwear and was boring. At the very least Scary Spice, who came out before her in all white, showed us her boobies. She had the pelvic grinding action down pat and we cheered her on. Number three wore a very Posh-looking little black dress; she was very tall and very awful. Her boyfriend (pimp?) went around the club trying to get us to sit closer to the stage, probably so that we would slip her a few dollars, but this little poofter wasn’t budging. Number two dancer was very fit and very sporty-looking and she had by far the best pole technique; not very sexy but she was flying around that pole. I don’t remember the first dancer but she probably sucked.

I wasn’t really that enthused about going to a strip bar (no, really, I wasn’t!) but everyone else wanted to go, being the only place in Mount Isa that was open past midnight and it was NL’s last night with us. Also, a night out at the strip bar in the Isa, that’s gotta be worth a blog entry! But despite being told that it was a strip bar, it seemed more like your run-of-the-mill bar that featured a stage with a pole and any random person could give it a go. Either that or it was amateur night. Any which way the video projection held my attention more, at one stage I was watching Madonna sing about meeting a beautiful stranger and being interrupted by a chick with fake breasts having her filthy way with some guy.

The crowd was scruffy looking but seemed friendly enough; most of them were at the Irish Club earlier on that night. And there were quite a few female punters as well. The main attraction seemed to be pool, not pole. Still, I felt I needed to order a VB to be safe, so that I didn’t look too out-of-place. It was a bit of an experience, although I almost didn’t make it in: it was quite smoky and they were charging $10 for the pleasure.

Tags: Mount Isa, The Club.

101 & 1/2 moon, iv
Originally uploaded by dans.photo.

Unbelievable. What an amazing building.

Tonight I won ten cents at Keno at the Carpenteria Buffalo Club. And it only cost me a dollar.

Tags: Mount Isa, Keno.

With hill climbing fresh in my mind and after pondering reasons behind my sexuality, the first thing I did upon my arrival at the All Seasons Verona in Mount Isa was to run up City Lookout to get a good view of the phallic symbol that is the Lead Stack (Aka the Big Chimney). I had to run to catch the sunset but then had to wait over an hour for the “residual light” to fade to get a decent shot of the mine lit up. I called JPB and, with the sun setting in the distance, it was kind of romantic in a disconnected kind of way.

Afterwards I went down to Carpentaria Buffalo Club for lamb shanks and, with memories of my lovely first date with JPB still in my mind, where I ordered the same thing, it was extremely disappointing. A shame, really, you’d think that in a scruffy outback mining town they’d be able to get it right.

tags: Mount Isa.

It was a cool overcast five o’clock as I was making my way down the Castle Hill (Mt Cudtheringa) when I started pass quite a few eager joggers going the other way. Apart from think how mad they were for taking on the rock-and-dirt with such vigor, the most startling observation was the different ways that men and women approached the task. Specifically, most of the women that I passed would be chatting to their fellow joggers, as if running up a three hundred metre high rock wasn’t challenging enough. Guys would generally limit their discourse to a mere syllable, on the order of “hey” or “hi” or simply a barely audible grunt in recognition of our shared presence on this narrow winding track. Being a guy, this was the only reasonable course of action, I mean, I found it hard enough WALKING up the hill (though admittedly I did scale it via the much steeper Goats Track) and, to me, talking would have been a waste of much needed energy.

I don’t know exactly what the women were talking about, tired as I was I couldn’t even muster the energy to pay attention, but the mere fact that they were talking was astounding. Where do women get the energy to talk? It is plain fact that women in general talk far more than men do. To me they seem to have a need to fill some kind of daily quota of spoken words even if it means resorting to talking about the mundane. Like the famously mythological “sweets stomach” that allows women to eat all manner of desserts even after a hearty feast, women must have some kind of extra energy source that’s specifically devoted to speech that men don’t have. Knowing how much women talk, the source must be nuclear, situated in extreme close proximity to the throat. Male vocal chords are hardwired to the mains and is one of the first things to shut down to conserve energy for more demanding tasks like running up a hill. Regardless, it’s one of the great mysteries of women. That and the fact that women require companionship whilst going to the toilet (though I suspect it’s related to the fulfillment of their daily spoke word quota, so demanding a task that they require even those seemingly private moments of waste excretion to do the job.)

With the guys I met on the way up, it only made sense to converse only at pre-determined stops along the track, to avoid the risk of heart attack. The women talking to each other on the way up, saying how hard it was, unnecessarily expending precious energy, made no sense whatsoever. Possibly one of the reasons why I’m gay; I just simply don’t understand women.

Oh, and Castle Hill; it was really satisfying to make it to the top. One word of advice though: don’t wear jeans… Obviously, really. The city isn’t all that pretty, it’s just ugly sprawl radiating from the base of the hill, like a dark shadow weaving around the other big lumps of rock (Mount Louisa, Mount Stuart…). Far more exhilarating is the view of the distant islands in the sea. Silently contemplating Castle Hill from the plane en route to Mount Isa, it seemed so small and abrupt, oddly placed on it’s own so close to the coast. The sound of women chattering away over the top of the plane’s propellers.

Tags: Townsville, Photos, Women, Talking, Gender Divide.

Third performance on this tour and I'm feeling pretty fantastic. Lucky me had a massage beforehand and while being worried that the masseuse went a bit too hard (on my request, BTW) and bruised me, by the time I got to warm-up class I was feeling lovely and luscious, my limbs pendulous and weighty. We've also taken with us our lovely tarquet that has the perfect balance of slip and grip and dances like Goanna that has alot of floorwork is relatively effortless and we're not at the mercy of the theatres in their choice of floor covering.

Afterward we waited forever for a taxi and ended up getting lifts from various audience members kind enough to offer transport. By the time we got to Southbank just about every restaurant had closed their kitchens and were in *bar* mode. Except for the Rhino Bar, which was serving tapas. A wonderful idea, you can get a bowl of chorizo and accompany it with a Corona. Which is what I did. Though I also had wedges (sorry, a rather boring choice) and a Moroccan carrot and olive salad. Tapas and beer, what a fantastic combination.

The Rhino Bar was quite a swish little venue with great light fixtures. Check 'em out!

That last one was taken by YB, she's constantly nicking my camera and taking pictures, she really needs to get her own camera!!! There were quite a few good-looking and well-groomed guys here as well, a surprise considering we're in Northern Queensland.

Tags: Townsville, Rhino Bar, Photos,
Bangarra.

We finished rehearsals rather quickly today and had most of the afternoon to wander around town. All I wanted to do was to sit in the Sun by the beach and so DB, YB, BO-A and I headed off to Rockpool. Unfortunately it was rather windy so swimming wasn't really an attractive option. Neither was sitting down and reading a good book. Instead, we played on the swings!!!

On our walk back we passed the Water Fun Park. The bucket slowly fills up with water and subsequently spills out when it's full. Looks like fun!

Tags: Townsville.

The best thing about Mackay was the audience (sorry for sounding so conceited!) Warm and enthusiastic, and with significant TSI representation, they cheered loudly at the end of our Turtle encore and were eager to thank us afterwards. It helped a great deal that half the audience seemed to be related to home boy PT in some way. But I found the auditorium to be so vast it was difficult to connect to the audience and in any case I was still trying to get back into performance mode, especially for this show which, for me, is much more emotionally demanding. SP said I looked so upset he thought I was going to cry which I guess is appropriate but I certainly wasn’t feeling it as much as I have felt it before.

Mackay itself is a rather unremarkable city. If it wasn’t for PT’s family (and the lovely feast that they organized for us the night we arrived) it could have been any other country town – clean, tidy and friendly people. The location of the hotel didn’t help much either, being a twenty minute walk from the city centre, our nearby food options were KFC, Domino’s and the hotel’s pricy restaurant. At the very least I got pretty decent coffee at Foodspace, the café near the Entertainment Centre.

So it was such a relief to land in Townsville. We’re staying on Palmer Street, an up-coming trendy restaurant strip on the “Southbank” and five minutes from the centre of town (though, admittedly is a bit sparse but Flinders St East looks pretty cool). Within half an hour of checking into the hotel and I’m having a good coffee at Coffee Dominion. Later I took a long walk up and down The Strand, which was really beautiful. The cool breeze coming off Cleveland Bay was really pleasant, and to think I was freezing my butt off in Sydney a week ago. People were hanging out, walking, jogging… I just wished I had my own little someone to walk with…

By the time I got back to the hotel, some of the crew were preparing to go out to dinner, to find decent seafood. The concierge recommended Tim’s Surf and Turf on Ross Creek, which didn’t really sound promising but she insisted that it wasn’t too touristy (in fact, she pointed out that the beach was generally touristy and the river was more for the locals). We decided to take her advice and rewarded with the sight of some of the biggest food servings we had ever seen. Tasty too. The garlic prawns looked so good I decided to risk it, despite having suffered reactions to them in the past, and the oysters were quite fresh. AND we had a really good drop of white, and damn it I can’t remember what it was. Afterwards, I ran into more of the group having margaritas at Cactus Jack’s and had a cocktail with them. Man am I going to put on a lot of weight on this trip.

Tags: Townsville, Mackay, Queensland, Southbank, Photos, Food.

On our last tour my laptop’s hard drive decided to give up the ghost which, despite being rather inconvenient, I didn’t consider that to be a big deal and pressed on with a live Linux distro. A week before setting off into the countryside I bought a new hard drive (a comparatively luxurious 40GB), re-installed everything and tested it for a week. So imagine my frustration upon arriving at our first destination last night to find my laptop complaining of an unrecognizable memory module. Removing one of the memory… things… solved the problem, though it didn’t matter which one. It seems that my laptop wanted me to give it a lobotomy.

I’ve taken this thing across Australia and the world for two and a half years. I first bought it prior to my first tour with Bangarra through regional NSW so that I could complete my Honours thesis. Since then it’s provided ample distraction from the more tedious elements of touring. Last night I was depressed enough from being away from Sydney, having just commenced a relationship with a very sweet and adorable guy, without having to have this happen to me. Running it with 128MB of memory is adequate but painfully slow but at least it plays movies.

But I will have to consider replacing it very soon…

I had that Rabbit-In-The-Headlights look on my face again. Staring into the boot of my car, I waited until the NRMA guy to drive away before turning to EK. The keys weren't there! Having been unable to find them in the studio, the dressing room, the office, this just HAD to be the place I left them. The last memory I had of the keys was me placing the keys in the boot to unload my washing, saying to myself to not forget my keys. Obviously by saying not to lock my keys in the boot, I had jinxed myself into leaving my keys in the boot.

I had already wasted an hour of running around the place moaning about how it was the worst day of my life and how stupid the girl at the NRMA call centre was for not being able to find the Sydney Theatre pier on the map. A couple of minutes of actual thorough searching was all I needed to find my keys behind the mirror curtains, right near where I had left my bag. How stupid, then, did I feel when, a couple of hours later I was moaning about how it was the worst day of my life and turning my apartment upside down looking for my keys only to find them on my bed, under my bag.

This general lapse of intelligence had nothing to do with me having a date that night...