I was just settling down to plan my Friday night – dinner, a movie, that sort of thing, when my teenage daughter, aka The Princess, called me.

“The thing is Mum,” she said, “there’s four of us, and we’ve all got tickets to Fright Night, and we don’t know how to get there and back.”

Oh. Really. Damn.

So there we are a few hours later, the four of us tootling up the Highway to Movie World where, apparently, I’m going to spend four hours being scared out of my brain. Not only that, but it becomes obvious from the moment we step inside the gates and are greeted by a blood-spattered zombie, I’m going to spend it ALL ALONE, because four teenage girls have disappeared into the dark terror-filled night, to somehow – surprise, surprise, meet up with teenage boys – and one late (very late) middle-aged mother, is standing, just a tad mystified, surrounded by acres of smoke-filled air filled with the sounds of sirens, chainsaws and screams.

I got my bearings by slinking around, with my back to the wall, my camera held out in protection, as I tried to look very cool, not flinching at all when the mad chainsaw massacre man wielded his machine of death up and down the main street and the scariest, bloodiest, masked men I’ve ever seen jumped out at me from – oh my god – strobe lighting. I tried to emphasize my absolute professional disinterest in all things scary – simply here to take photographs, observe, you know, that sort of thing.

They walk amongst us…leap out and scare us – and we love it…

It was with a huge sense of relief that I chanced upon The Space Cowboy’s Show. One of Byron’s own colourful characters, I’ve seen several of his shows, and so I relaxed, while he merely juggled chainsaws, real this time, until the man with the Pig Face mask booed me from behind.

“Enough,” I thought, and headed for, of course, Rick’s Café Americain, where they have a Fright Night special of all you can eat pizza, pasta, salad and dessert for $15. Well, I can tell you, you can make an all-you-can eat dinner last a very long time if you space yourself, and the food looked way more attractive than the doughnuts I’d seen on the way in, complete with blood filled syringes. Injecting my food has never been high on my list of priorities for a Friday night.

After dinner I took to the horror-filled streets again, and was amazed by the amount of apparently not scared small children running around. If a three-year-old could talk to zombies, I figured, so could I, so the next time a few of them lurched at me, I had a chat and asked them all about themselves. The only problem was they were talking zombie language, and I couldn’t understand a word, but we parted on friendly terms – I think.

Talking ‘Zombie’…

I’m not quite sure when I realised I was actually enjoying myself – there’s nothing like going outside your comfort zone to upset the equilibrium – in a good way, and this was truly fun, especially once I got brave enough to stop slinking in the shadows.

I talked to a friendly vampire ambulance driver, who told me that Fright Night had started just as a Halloween night back in 2006, and had become increasingly popular, so that now it’s on every Friday night throughout October, the culmination of course being Halloween.

It’s a strange idea really that there are hundreds and thousands of us who will pay good money to go and be scared out of our wits, but the show is truly value for money. I couldn’t quite cope with the idea of going through the scary mazes by myself, and The Princess’s phone was definitely off to Mother callers, but I talked to some people at the exits who were in awe of everything.

“It’s like, really scary,” said one girl.

She’s like, so right.

When I finally met up with The Princess and her friends, and we headed for home, they talked excitedly for half-an-hour and then fell sound asleep.  The Mother taxi wended its way back down the highway. Not my usual Friday night, but a fun and freaky one for sure.

Flame throwers, the bearded lady, Byron’s Space Cowbody, Fright Night food, and more…

For more information and to book tickets go to: frightnights.com.au

The post Ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump – on Fright Night appeared first on .

The Gold Coast’s first ever LGBTIQAP (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersexual Queer Asexual Pansexual & Polysexual) Festival is in full fabulous flight this weekend, with something for just about everyone.  The week-long Festival, which finishes this weekend, features a mixture of free and ticketed events including a community Fair Day (featuring markets, entertainment, activities, fun run and ending with a free outdoor movie), cabaret performances, comedy, visual arts, Race Day, theatre, curated gallery, social gatherings and film.  The aim of Glitter is to bring the community together through the medium of arts and culture.

SATURDAY AT GLITTER FESTIVAL, Gold Coast!
Catch comedian Joel Creasey, a performance be the legendary Carlotta, a fabulous drag act ‘SUNTAN: Art Simone and Philmah Bocks’ or sing along as ‘Lady Sings It Better’! All on Saturday night as part of the inaugural Glitter Festival on the Gold Coast. For more information, visit: theartscentregc.com.au/glitter
GLITTER FAIR DAY
Celebrate as a united and inclusive Gold Coast community when the Evandale Lake becomes the perfect outdoor backdrop for a jam-packed day of entertainment, activity, picnicking, networking and community pride.

Following the inaugural Pride Run, join in a full day program of outdoor games and activity, community sharing, markets (over 60 stalls), music, service provider stalls, bands, DJs, food and drink. The Glitter Fair Day is welcoming to the entire extended family and concludes with an outdoor screening of Priscilla Queen of the Desert theartscentregc.com.au/glitter-fair-day

The post All that glitters – is on the Gold Coast appeared first on .

The Banaam Indigenous Surf Titles will be the Gold Coast and Tweed’s first official Indigenous Surfing competition in over a decade. Running  September 11-13 at Fingal Beach it’s much more than just a surfing contest. It’s a celebration of the Indigenous surf culture of Australia, writes Samantha Morris.

The Gold Coast and its beaches have provided hundreds of Indigenous tribes with a sanctuary to hunt, gather, live and socialise (including surfing) for centuries – part of a special relationship salt water mobs have had with the ocean for more than 40,000 years.

Joel Slabb is a Director of Banaam Indigenous Surf Titles – a known local surfer with a few competitions under his belt. He grew up on the beach at Fingal and he’s a Coonjinburra man, from one of the north eastern tribes of Bundjalung Country. “It was sort of a natural progression from fishing,” he says, when asked about how he came to surf.  “Our family is a fishing family and grew up on the ocean. We started riding anything we could to make it fun while waiting for our parents, and progressing to what it is today and surfing.”

“When Aboriginal people are in the ocean, they know they are in their country. They belong to it. They don’t own it…surfing’s about being part of the wave.” – Joel Slabb

According to Slabb there is still a strong presence of Aboriginal families around the Fingal and Tweed areas and, he says,  they were fortunate around Fingal with two of his Elders being the first Aboriginal surfers to join Snapper Boardriders, who are partners in delivering the Surf Competition.

“The First contest I went to was in Black Rock near Nowra, in 1993 or ’92,” says Slabb. “It ran there for a couple of years and then moved up to Fingal in ’94 or ’95, something like that. And was there until 1999.” According to Slabb, that’s the last time an Indigenous surf competition was run there – some 16 years ago. So what happened? “It was the perfect storm,” he says.  “I got told Billabong went through some changes and the Surfing Queensland border changed from Byron back to the border. That all occurred in the same year. So the competition just didn’t happen.”

Looking north from Fingal Head Platform. Photo: Geolocation

Fast forward more than a decade and surfing group Surf Support Agency started to give young people surfboards in Fingal, and Slabb was a part of that. He says it sparked a few ideas and everyone was keen to see the competition happening again. “But putting it together was hard – especially finding sponsorship after 16 years.  There are no corporate sponsors – just personal sponsorship,” says Slabb. “We had a family group donate $10,000 to the event. They live in Fingal and they see it as a real ‘close the gap’ initiative and they wanedt to give money to something that’s working.”

Slabb credits surfing with helping him to not ‘drift’ as a youngster. “As a lifestyle choice, surfing has been the right one,” he says, adding that the catchphrase for their event is #seeyaoutthere. “It’s sort of an invitation, to draw people to the water and enjoy what we enjoy. There are lots of people with drug and alcohol issues…we want to change that, to just get that message across – to see them out on the water other than doing destructive things.”

Two of the elements the team is most excited about are the kids’ program and the allstars event. That will see a team of Indigenous surfers go head to head with surfers from Snapper Boardriders.

I ask Christine, Joel’s sister, whether there’ll be a large contingent of women.  “Over the last couple of years, with all the grom girls coming up, it’s starting to get popular,” she tells me. “The younger generation are more firey, more competitive.  I started because Joshua, my husband, was a junior pro surfer back in the day and I got sick of sitting on the beach, watching him surf, so I  just decided to pinch his board one day and go surfing.”

Joshua will be competing in the tournament and so will their kids. All four of them surf. Rory, who has joined us for this conversation, will also be competing.  He’s done quite well in Oceanic Cups and says his favourite spot is Cloud Break in Fiji. We talk about his island heritage – his dad is a South Sea Islander and his mum is Aboriginal: “I suppose our parents see it as a good outlet for kids,” he says. “My parents were nothing but encouraging, they would drive the whole east coast of Australia driving me to comps.”

Slabb’s father, an Aboriginal Elder, organiser of the first Fingal Indigenous surfing competition and a highly regarded member of the community gives the event a firm stamp of approval.

“Having been part of the surf festival in the past, I found it be the most rewarding and positive experience for Indigenous People,” he said. “It’s like the old days, the gathering of people, Coroborree, meeting of all tribes throughout our great nation. What a venue. Tweed, Gold Coast, Bundjalung Area.”

The Banaam Indigenous Surf Titles will include a bunch of events – Open Mens, Womens, Juniors (male only), Masters (over 35) and Longboards for both pro and upcoming leagues. From  September 11-13 at Fingal Beach.

There’ll be live music, performing arts, market stalls and food and drink plus surfing and cultural exchange activities to create a festival atmosphere. There will also be surfing lessons and sand castle competitions, artist workshops and a wooden surfboard expo as well as an Exhibition on the History of Idigenous Surfing with live shows, painting, installations, archives and story-telling. And as if that’s not enough, the program also includes a screening of the 1999 documentary Surfing the Healing Wave featuring vintage footage from the first Indigenous surf competition in Fingal. Traditional opening and closing ceremonies will also be performed by local dance troupes.

This story by Samantha Morris first appeared in Blank: https://www.blankgc.com.au

The Banaam Indigenous Surfing Titles | Fingal Beach | 11 – 13 September

The post Indigenous surfing competition makes a comeback at Fingal Head appeared first on .

The post A soaring school of architecture at Bond University appeared first on .

Verandah Magazine is proud to present two don’t miss events – an intimate Sunday lunch with Hollywood actor Victoria Tennant talking about her ballerina mother Irina Baronova, on Sunday March 29, and an evening with Victoria Tennant at the Arts Centre Gold Coast on Tuesday evening March 31.  Victoria, in conversation with Verandah Magazine publisher and editor Candida Baker, has extraordinary stories to tell of her mother’s journey from Russia to the hinterland of Byron Bay, where she spent Baranova spent her final decade. Victoria’s beautiful hard-back book, Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo is published by the University of Chicago Press and will be available at the event.

Read more here: verandahmagazine.irinas-legacy-lives/

Booking details:
Byron at Byron: Lunch with Victoria Tennant: Sunday March 29, 12.30pm, $85 per head.  Enquiries: [email protected] or phone 02 66392000
Arts Centre, Gold Coast: An Evening with Victoria Tennant : Tuesday, March 31, 6.30pm, $45: Book here: theartscentregc.an-evening-with-victoria-tennant

The post Two events with Victoria Tennant appeared first on .