Rocky and I bought our first home together back in late 1995. It was a lovely 3-bedroom semi-detached house in one of the inner-western suburbs of Sydney.

We found ourselves holding a housewarming for it in January 1996, and for some reason lost to history we settled on a parody / lampooning of the poster for the annual Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, re-creating the organisation and re-convening its signature event a few suburbs to the west.

Original image credit: artsandculture.google.com. Original poster art: Glenn A Moffat.

Somehow the party became an annual celebration. Certainly the venue lent itself to a late-Summer party, with the airy internals complemented nicely by the small patch of green out the front, and the small backyard.

At some stage we started to take advantage of the sub-floor and ceiling access to rig lights and other gimmickry, and it’s this that the party’s probably more renowned for these days.

“The effect” is always kept a secret until the night of the event, with its details only ever shared on a “need to know” basis.

I’ve been slow to document some of these, but I’ve finally broken the inertia with this post, and those that follow. As I add a year, I’ll be retrospectively stuffing its page into the time-line here, and updating this index.

2019 – The “Disco Death Star”

What do you get when you cover a 4′ inflatable beach-ball with TWENTY layers of papier-mache, then add 96 metres of individually-addressable LEDs?

• The Disco Death Star – Part 1.
• The Disco Death Star – Part 2.

2018 – a DIY light-show for the guests.

100 individual RGB LEDs, each controlled by an IR remote control. And we left the remotes around for the guests to play with.

2017 – the “Mission Impossible” laser LED criss-cross light trigger.

2016 – a GIANT (motorised) Newton’s Cradle.

2014 – 1000 helium balloons – some rigged with confetti and theatrical explosives.

2013 – the things we do for LOLs. RGB LEDs inside the rim of the toilet bowl.

2010 – 70+ motorised Chinese paper lanterns.

2003 – smoke coming up through the bathroom floor.

2001 – the multi-media bathroom experience.

2000 – bouncing a BLUE laser beam up the hall.

 

– G.