In what has become a tradition (ie it has happened more than once), the helmet boys – Chezza and Will joined the BotF topped with bike helmets. We lamented the cool breeze out the back, but were grateful to be out the back. The security guards, whom we thought had been sacked, did the perfunctory rounds and actually advised us to hide our beers.
The 3 GF weekend is looming and the lads discussed the likely outcome of the 3 games. There was one vote for the Students, one vote for the Slime and one vote for ambivalence in the rah, rah. Two for the Maggies, one for the Sainters in the AFL replay and in the Rugby League it was two for the Dragoons and one for the Rooters.
Speaking of the Rooters, one their biggest fans (Matthew Alvarez) pulled off one of the greatest ticketing coups of all time and got BotF a bait to Cold Chisel at the Shellharbour Workers Club. This was a warm-up gig for the Chisel’s gig in front of 20,000 at the Deniliquin Ute Muster. I’d never seen Cold Chisel before and despite some trepidation about the quality of Barnesy’s voice – it was a wonderful experience. All the anthems were sung – Saturday Night, Khe Sanh, ChoirGirl, Rising Sun, You Got Nothing I Want, My Baby and my favourite – Flame Trees. The 1,500 punters loved it and the Shelley’s auditorium was a great venue for this sort of gig.
back of the ferry 
The Chisels were huge. Certainly well worth the $80 (which included a $20 tip to the kid we paid to drive down from Sydney – at 4.30am on the morning tickets went on sale – and stand in the queue for us!). J. Barnes was pretty good but he screamed the lyrics mercilessly and perhaps unnecessarily. Ian Moss was the man for the hour, the bass guitarist stealing the show with his non-stop, 110% performance. They played for two hours (including three encores) with barely a break between songs. I thought Merry Go Round was fantastic along with those mentioned by bladdamaster above and the finale of Goodbye Astrid was massive. No jibber to the audience, just good hard rock. Fantastic.