Event Horizon Report
Here's a long report on Event Horizon - thanks to my diary.
Event Horizon: Blake's 7 convention held at Carindale Hotel, Carindale, Brisbane, Australia 27th-29th January 1995
Guest of Honour: Gareth Thomas
Reported by Kathryn A
Friday
We arrived at the hotel about 10:30am, too early for the official check-in time, but we were able to check in anyway. Then we carried many and numerous boxes up to the room (strictly speaking, two rooms with connecting door) which Annie and I were sharing. I had originally thought we were sharing with Ellen, but it seemed those plans had changed; it was M-C that we were sharing with, and some other person: Annie was very vague. Karen M. (as distinct from Karen McD.) who had been staying with Annie the previous few days, was in another room, but she helped us carry boxes. Then we all went our separate ways, Karen to the city, Annie back to Ellen's place, and me to unpack and make a list of the rest of what was needed for the teleport bracelet workshop. Then I went over to Carindale shopping centre, bought the items, had lunch and came back. M-C was there when I got back, introduced herself, and we started stuffing con packs, collating flyers and putting in the other contents. There were: a dozen-odd advertising flyers, the con book (containing bios, articles, histories), The Slothful Rebel's Guide To Holiday Entertainment (containing puzzles and quizzes, for Delta, Beta and Alpha grades), a B7 diary, New Horizons bookmark, New Horizons fridge magnet, B7 calendar, and an eye-patch for all those budding Travisses. I think there might have been something else, but I can't remember what it was. When Karen returned, she aided our endeavors, until we ran out of con books.
Then Leith Fogerty rang up and said she was sharing with Annie Hamilton's niece, and we were naturally confused, and Annie and Ellen had just left, so Leith came up and waited, and it turned out she was, indeed, sharing with us. When Annie and Ellen arrived, they had more tasks for us: collating and stapling the programme, and later the video highlights info. As well as putting little containers of M & Ms into the con packs. So it was our fault that one of the sheets in the programme was backwards, but I just said, "It's an intelligence test". We got some unexpected assistance from three congoers (whose names have fallen between the cracks of my memory) who had been directed to our rooms. They asked us what was going on with the convention and we said "Nothing. Nothing is happening. Things start happening at 6pm." But we said they were welcome to come in and help (or more precisely, they were welcome to come in if they helped 8-) and they did. So there were seven of us collating away, and it wasn't until after 6pm when it was all done (though piles of stuff had been taken down to rego before 6pm so that was okay).
In the meantime, disaster had arrived (or not arrived) in the form of the video rental company, who decided not to deliver the video projector at 4:30pm as had been requested, but thought they just might manage to deliver it by 8pm. So, the afternoon video programme was shot down in flames.
I went down, got registered, and actually sat down and looked at this programme we'd been collating (which is when I discovered we'd gotten one of the pages around the wrong way). I marked various things, spotted Bryan D. and had a chat with him.
The first major event, the chocolate and liqueur party, started more or less on time and went on later than it was intended, but that was okay, since the Live Debate wasn't ready yet (probably due to the problems with the video). I bumped into Henry C. and had a good chat. Then we both bumped into Faye Bull, come from New Zealand to bask on the aura of Gareth Thomas. I finally edged my way close enough to Monsieur G. Thomas (who was there enjoying himself with a beer and a smoke) to have my picture taken by the roving photographer (*). Gareth was saying he was surprised at how little there was on his schedule for the con, since most of the other cons he'd been to were U.S. cons, and there his schedule was usually jam-packed. He said that whenever he wasn't scheduled, he'd be in the bar, available to be talked to. (I heard some comments later that over the con, he'd made himself much more accessible than he'd ever been before at cons.) One of the people there (some dinkum Aussie guy wearing a footy jumper and holding a beer of his own) said that he was surprised that Gareth was there at this party at all, since at other cons he'd been to, you'd never see the guest so informally. Then Gareth was dragged away to have another photo taken, and I talked with the the guy (Paul?) and his girl (Jenny - who looked rather like Bester's assistant in the Babylon 5 episode "Mind War") about B7 and Dr Who and how they got hooked - general fannish talk.
Mary Webber then announced that the Debate was starting, we got lost, but we eventually found the right room. The topic of the debate was that The Federation Is A Force For Good.
The Pro side consisted of Christine Lacey, Christine Poulson and Danny Murphy. The Con side consisted of Catherine Brown, Lucy Z. and Mary Webber. Danny Murphy was actually in Sydney at the time, but due to the marvels of virtual reality (and a pre-recorded video tape) he was able to make his presence known to us. Hadyn (the M.C. for the con) was very good in turning the monologue into an apparent dialogue, but then, Danny was very creative in what he said!
The Pro argument (I wish I'd brought my tape recorder) said that the Federation was good for the normal person, since it brought order, and order was a necessary environment for good to happen. They used many metaphors and few examples. Such as, giving everybody suppressants is like giving everybody free coffee (and everybody loves coffee, don't they). That Blake was like somebody who parked in a disabled person's parking space and ignored all requests to the contrary. They said that Servalan and Travis etc were individuals, they weren't the system, and the Federation was there to protect its citizens from people like Blake as well as alien invasion forces.
The Con side had many examples (too many to go into detail over) and argued that the Federation was a force for order, order at any cost, and neither good nor evil were considered in its policies. Servalan, Travis, Morag, Raiker and others, were individuals, yes, but how else can you evaluate a system except through the actions of individuals. Also, considering the number of corrupt individuals in positions of power and authority (The President who was also head of the Terra Nostra, Servalan) and the ineffectualness of those with integrity (Leylan versus Raiker, Le Grand versus Servalan) it would seem that the system at the time of Blake was more corrupt than it used to be. If Servalan, Travis etc had been aberrations in a just system, then they wouldn't have gotten as far as they had. Indeed if Kasabi had been listened to, Servalan would not have gotten an officer's position, let alone risen to Supreme Commander.
The Pros argued that we don't see the whole picture, that we see it from a biased source, from Blake's point of view. The Cons said that this source, this text, is all we have, and that's what we have to work from, not fabrication and speculation.
The Cons argued that even as a force for Order, the Federation weren't really good at that, or they would have caught Blake long ago, they would have put Star One in a better place, and they would have had a backup system for it. Indeed, one comment was that they put it where it was because they knew that no place inside the Federation was secure - why? Because of the rebelliousness and discontent of the populace. Mary Webber had some fine things to say about people enduring the pain of chaos (the violence, the death, the discomfort) for the hope of producing a better order, and order which was better than the current one.
Both sides were very creative at insulting the opposition, too. The Pros ended up by throwing lollies into the crowd, though when the final vote came, most of the audience abstained.
Then Gareth spoke up from the back of the room (he hadn't been there earlier) and asked if he could ask a question. Well, he had the floor, of course. "Speaking as a retired revolutionary," he said, "After the clone died and Avon was the only one left standing... there was one point that both sides had missed... he'd been talking with Avon... (Did you really have an affair with Servalan?)... and Avon pointed out that they had a common enemy. Common enemy? Yes, he said - we were fighting the Bee Bee Bloody Cee!"
He brought the house down. Wish I had a recording.
After this the theme of the night was vampires, so I departed.
(*) The roving photographer was a professional who specialized in functions. Basically she took lots of photos, they were processed and available a few hours later at a table downstairs, you could look at them, decide whether you wanted to buy any, and pay about $5 a photo. This was good for several reasons: it meant you could get a record even if you didn't have a camera (and I didn't), they were good photos (not nasty polaroids), you didn't have to buy them if you didn't want to, and you had a photo there that you could get Gareth Thomas to sign.
Saturday
Up and at 'em, wearing my brand new Silver Alpha costume. More collation. I was told to ask Catherine B. about the cardboard rolls for the teleport bracelet workshop, and she had left them at home because nobody had told her she had to bring them. So she dashed off to fetch them, and Annie asked me to mind the New Horizons table in the dealers room (since Catherine had been the one who was going to before this happened). So I carried the box full of Horizon stuff down to the dealers room. I didn't even know which table it was, and I thought it was already set up. But no, it was not set up, and there was no-one there. So I set it all up, on the table that had a piece of paper on it saying "New Horizons" - Horizon stuff, New Horizons stuff, and sundry other stuff, such as second-hand books and zines, and cards with landscapy pictures of unicorns on them - and not everything had a price on it. But I managed to set aside the only copies of DoubleTalk and Down & Unsafe #8, both of which I had been wanting to get for ages. So that was good (indeed, that was the first purchase for the table...) I didn't get a chance to look through the Horizon (and other) photos before the hordes descended, but I did manage to buy some in the lulls. The photos were the most popular item, I think. Then it turned out that I had set up in the wrong place, because Linda (Mitchell) couldn't get to where the table was because of the steps, so all the stuff had to be moved. Then Linda took over the table and I left, and got organised a bit more.
The opening ceremony was short. Hadyn gave a speech like the opening of Babylon 5. I tried to record it, but the recording didn't work. So much for the idea of recording stuff!
The next thing up was the teleport bracelet workshop, led by Yours Truly. How to build a model of a Liberator teleport bracelet out of cardboard and glue. I dashed over the road to get scissors and newspaper. I was late. There were a fair few people there, about 15, probably because it was announced at the opening ceremony that the teleport bracelet workshop was part of the World Domination Badge, which was news to me!
Confusion reigned, and Mary W. and another lady jumped the gun - Mary started painting her cardboard roll, and the other lady stuck grey tape on hers. Mary kept on saying you get points for originality. But I managed to get their attention and explain (mostly) what was the order of doing things, and we started getting a production line in order (due to the shortage of resources such as scissors, rulers and glue). We had to re-do the templates because the cylinders were a different size to my prototype - of course! And of course, things took longer - we had only been allotted half an hour, and the whole thing would have taken a couple of hours not including drying time. So next time, if there is a next time, I think we'll do it a bit differently! We were there in the room for an hour, until we got kicked out. I just hope that the people who were there were able to take their bits home, read the instructions (yes, there was an instruction sheet) and actually end up with a teleport bracelet of their own. Sorry guys.
At the same time, after our allotted half-hour was up, Karen McDonald turned up to organise a World Domination Badge event - the assassination club. Which is why, I think, that Hadyn thought that the Teleport Bracelet Workshop was part of that. The assassination club was like so: you wrote your name on a card, all the cards were mixed up, everyone was given a card, and whoever's card you drew you had to assassinate, by putting a red sticker - a corpse marker - on their back or arm or hand. Then you got their target, and continued, until either you were killed, or you were the last one standing (which you would know because you would end up with yourself as a target). The World Domination Badge was supposedly like a Boy Scout Badge, you got it by participating in the events for it, but it was like a competition also, since only the top three entrants actually ended up with a badge (yes it was an actual cloth patch badge) at the end of the con.
The event we got kicked out for was the autograph session. Because I was prepared, I was fairly early in the queue. The queue did not move fast, though, because Gareth Thomas was chatty, and the wandering photographer was taking pictures of everyone. I had five items to sign - one of them was my copy of The Totally Imaginary Cheeseboard which had been already signed by the guests at ZenCon II, where I had originally bought it. Gareth exclaimed when he saw the signatures already there, and asked me when/where I got them, so I told him. The photo I posed with Gareth Thomas had both of us wearing teleport bracelets (I with my cardboard prototype and him with my Horizon model) and he said there were more teleport bracelets around now than there had been during the series.
I went back to look at the New Horizons table after that (noticing that the autograph queue was huge) and every single photo they had of Gareth Thomas was gone. Wasn't I glad I had bought mine earlier!
Time was running out for part two of the teleport bracelet workshop. I went over the road, grabbed lunch and some paper towels, arrived at the place for the workshop about 10 minutes late, and nobody was there! I guess they either didn't realize it was on, or got tired of waiting for me. I hung around for a bit, then gave up, went to my room, and changed into my Tarrant outfit (complete with clip-gun and Scorpio teleport bracelet).
The special event of the con was the Red Cross charity auction. You could almost say it was "The Charity Auction Strikes Back", since there had not been such a super-duper auction (with oodles of very collectible stuff) since 1986, when this same bunch of people ran ConQuest at the Gold Coast. (It was a relaxacon, but really, the Guest of Honour that year was the Charity Auction). This year was graced by more rare and obscure things than the other one. The auction started late, but I was happy about that, since I was late too. They didn't get through everything scheduled for part 1 (part 2 was to be on Sunday) so they said that they would continue after the Guest of Honour stuff, at 5pm. But I had other things planned to see then. So, the highlights of what I was there for...
Two Jerry Doyle autographed photos went for $170 to Linda M. and $250 to Mary W. Garibaldi would have to be the character in Babylon 5 that most Aussies like, maybe because he combines two Australian archetypes: the underdog and the larrikin. I opened the bidding on both photos, at $50 and $80 respectively. There were two more of the photos on on the next day, but I didn't think I would get them, because even though I did have the money, they weren't worth that much to me, that I should be prepared to pay $250 or more for one. Other notable purchases over $50: Jeremy Brett signed postcard, $80; Anthony Hopkins photo and calling card went to Mary W. for $60 - it was certainly spiffing, but not enough for me to want to outbid Mary; John Thaw signed photo, $75; Robert Heinlein first edition signed by the dead author, $110; Drop The Dead Donkey cast photo with numerous signatures, $100; Drop the Dead Donkey script, $120; chapbook by U.K. Le Guin and V. McIntyre (autographed), $75; autographed photo of Patrick Troughton, $165. I got an autographed photo of Alexandra Bastedo for $35. It was very pretty, and I was very happy!
Then Gareth Thomas spent two hours standing up on stage by the microphone, chain-smoking and drinking beer (good ol' Queensland XXXX beer) and talking very cheerily in that oh-so-recognisable voice. Yes, his hair was grey, and the affects of drinking beer had been made known on his anatomy, but the voice was the same.
The first hour was his Guest of Honour speech. He said that Ellen had said that he could talk about anything he liked, so he decided to talk about acting. It was very good, I wish I could have recorded it. Here are what crumbs I was able to write down later. An actor is an idiot, intelligent, a masochist, an optimist, a trained observer. Acting is dressing up and pretending to be someone else, and theatre is "real for now". The joy of acting is to be able to use language at its best, instead of merely babbling. Fandom is a side-effect, highly appreciated, but not what actors do it for. Good plays are easy to remember, TV scripts get forgotten as soon as they are done. What could I be but an actor? There's not many jobs for a fifty-year-old kid.
The Question and Answer session tended to follow on from what he had said in his talk, rather than dredging up exclusively the old days of Blake's 7 - which was good, because I think one of the things his talk told us between the lines was that there was much more to Gareth Thomas than just the guy who played Blake.
At 5pm the Guest of Honour session finished, and I went upstairs to get changed because I was hot, despite the so-called air-conditioning of the hotel; some of the function rooms were nicely brisk, and others were hot and stuffy. As a result, I was late for the Forever Knight episode on the video programme (Only the Lonely) and missed the start. But apparently I hadn't missed much. I wanted to see this because I wanted to see how Nat and Nick met. No, I'm not really a Forever Knight fan, FK is just my Highlander substitute.
We had to go to the dinner straight after that. The food was fine, but the fun part was the Trivial Pursuit quiz competition (done by table) which we spent most of our time on. I was partially prepared because I had helped collate it that morning, but all that meant was that I knew that it was happening. The hardest bits were the Memory section - name all 13 episodes of the first season of Blake's 7 in order, and the Literature section - write a clean limerick entitled "The BBC", which contains the words "special effects" and "budget". Our entry was not the one that won. I wish I did have a copy of the one that won, it was very good. All I can remember is the last line! "And a budget that lasts only seconds." Faye Bull and I put our heads together on the B7 episodes, but I'm sure we didn't get them all right.
Some of the questions had no obvious right answers, and I expect they were judged on wit - such as "How many rebels does it take to change a light bulb?" Our answer: None - Avon's brilliance never goes out. I didn't like that one, but I was outvoted. In the same category, Metaphysics, was "How many roads must a man walk down?" Our answer: 42; and "What do you want?" Our answer: They are not for you. (courtesy of my hazy memory of the Babylon 5 episode "Signs and Portents", which is where the question came from.) Other sections were things like "Physical Dexterity" - see how long a piece you can rip a mintie wrapper into; ours was not as long as the winner, but we said that ours was cuter, so I think we got a point for that. Construction: the highest construction one could make out of straws. Well, we hadn't been ordering drinks with straws in them, so we couldn't make one. I think we wrote down that our straws were Federation-issue, and so our construction crashed (or something like that).
After that, back to the Hotel for the evening program. First up, the costume walk, which consisted of grabbing people in costume and making them walk on stage. There were four of us - including me, unintentionally, it's just rare to find me at a con nowadays not wearing a costume. It wasn't really surprising that there weren't more; the place for spectacular costumes in Australia is in Melbourne, with the likes of Robert Jan and other spectacular costumers, I have never dared to enter a costume parade in Melbourne yet. Far too intimidating to enter, though very enjoyable to watch. So here, there were four of us, including me. I was dressed in white pants, black tabard, chain head-dress and long full silver and white cloak. Fortunately I didn't have to say what I was dressed up as, which was just as well, since "Nothing in particular" doesn't sound very impressive. A lass dressed up as Q from Encounter at Farpoint won, I think because Gareth Thomas didn't know who Q was; he kept on calling the costume "The Red Shadow" (and well, I don't know what he was referring to). There was also a lady dressed as Servalan - white with the funny wire collar and the red flower; and Bryan D. was dressed as a Babylon 5 security officer, and I thought, gee, he must be really into Babylon 5 if he's getting into Babylon 5 costumes already.
A rendition of the Blake's 7 musical, "Fiddler on the Run" was next, and that was very good. This was the second time I had seen it performed (the last time was sometime back in the eighties). As usual, it was performed with enthusiasm more than perfection, but so what? Gareth Thomas played Avon, and created history by being the first person playing that part to actually follow the directions and not have trousers on underneath the towel wrapped around his waist (at the point at which Avon comes out from his bath, you see). He also for that portion of it, was wearing a Tshirt with a Blake photo on it with the caption "Real Welshmen wear nothing underneath" or words to that effect. Apparently it was the first time he'd had an appropriate context in which to wear it. Though the singing was ragged in places, and people's labels kept on getting twisted over, it was real fun. Jon Swabey and James Collins carried out their roles with the best singing. Gareth Thomas roared out there with "Did he say Tarrant?" with great gusto. There was an encore (though not a standing ovation.) 8-) For those curious about this musical, the script was printed in the Enarraré Blake's 7 special. Written by Danny Murphy.
Then the World Domination Badge people had to say why they wanted to/ought to dominate the world. I can't remember the answers, though some were pretty clever.
I left the main room just before 10pm, so I could catch The Omega Factor first episode in the video room, but it was running late, basically because people had decided, when there were very few people there, to watch what they liked rather than what was on the programme (which was fair enough, I think). There was just one lady in the room when I arrived, watching The (new) Tomorrow People. When a few more arrived, we switched over to the scheduled Omega Factor, which I basically watched out of nostalgia.
Then I went to my room and spent two hours writing in my diary. (No wonder I can be so detailed!)
Sunday
I made my way to the video room after breakfast (my early arising due probably to the one-hour time-difference between Queensland and the rest of the east coast, since Queensland don't use Summer Time) and found yet again, someone watching the (new) Tomorrow People. I dunno, it seemed that every time I went into the video room and they were showing something non-scheduled, it was The (new) Tomorrow People. When the episode finished, I put on my own non-scheduled showing: the Logan's Run episode which had been shown earlier (but I didn't see). I was curious, since Annie had mentioned the episode years before as the only really good episode in the Logan's Run series - and now I know why. And anyone who reveals the ending of this episode (the one where the time-traveller comes forward to Logan's time to try to find out what caused the holocaust and so prevent it), any one who does so ought to have their tongue cut out. One of the rare cases of real science fiction in TV SciFi.
After this I wandered around, being one of the few souls who was out and about, and went to the "10 best Fantasy books" panel because there was nothing much else on. I had fun interjecting a lot, and made note of one lot of books out of the ten (they decided to choose authors/series instead of books) that I should try to read, C.J. Cherryh's "The Dreamstone" and "The Tree of Swords and Jewels". The rest I'd either read already or wasn't interested in.
The auction (part 3) started at 11am, and I can't remember what I did before then. And I lost my sheet of paper with the items and the prices I went for (it was good, they gave out to everyone a list of all the items in the auction, with spaces for people to write down what each item went for, and many people did.) So my record for this part is vague. Catherine B. and I had a bidding war over the third Jerry Doyle autographed photo. It got up to $275 (I was crazy) when a voice came from the other side of the room, "300". Well, Annie got it at that price! So Catherine and I proceeded to fight over the last one. I started losing heart at about $250 - some of my earlier madness had left me - so I let her have it at $276. Gareth Thomas was heard to mutter "Who is this guy?"
I did manage to make other purchases, though, small things that few other people wanted. I bid on many more things than I got, since the prices moved rapidly higher than they were worth to me. Some things took me by surprise - I was astonished to get an autographed Steven Grief photo (and calling card) for only $36! Maybe all the most fanatical had burnt out their frenzy on the previous item, a copy of Horizon #27 with his autograph on the photo on the back. I didn't bid on that one at all, since I wasn't really interested in owning two copies of the same newsletter, even if one of them was autographed.
The Sapphire & Steel annual (autographed by David McCallum) went for over $100. (And I know the circumstances in which it was signed...) About half way through, Gareth Thomas took over the auction, even though his voice was going. The committee had just wanted him to auction the three Horizon items, but he said "I know these people" (the ones who had contributed a number of the items were UK actors) and proceeded to do the auction while telling anecdotes about the contributors. That was great. The Sir John Gielgud autographed photo went for about $175, and even Gareth put in a couple of bids! The second Patrick Troughton went for more than a hundred too. The other Babylon 5 cast photos (Caitlin Brown, Peter Jurasik, Andrea Thompson) all fell for more than I was prepared to pay, alas.
The auction finished about a quarter to one, and I can't remember exactly what I did then. I saw a bit of the Babylon 5 panel, I saw a bit of Znow White and the Seven - a funny weird retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves with B7 characters and funnily appropriate slides. I think the funniest slide was the Liberator in nappies... (the mind boggles...). I had a very late lunch with Lucy Z. at the pancake parlour (the only thing open on Sunday) and we were late for autographs/picking-up-auction-stuff. Since I had the autographs I wanted, I got in the queue to pick up auction stuff. James C. accosted me while I was in the line, to drag me off to be interviewed (with a bunch of other people) by the Bris-31 (public television) people, assuring me that it wouldn't take any longer than waiting in line would have been. But it took longer, it took much longer, long enough so that I missed most of the closing ceremony! Many thanks all around, and Gareth said he'd love to come back. From what other people told me later, a number of other things happened. Prizes were given out. The trophies (I did see one with my own eyes) consisted of an elegant glass (long, with a stem, either a parfait glass or a champagne flute) with tiny silk flowers tied to the stem, and "Event Horizon 1995" engraved on the glass. The World Domination Badges were given out (and Gareth Thomas was given an honourary one - he said he'd show it to Paul Darrow as soon as he got back) and the winning entries in the Trivial Pursuit were read out.
I did much listless wandering after that, so much so that I missed most of the "Travis Happy Hour" in the pub (drink drinks and filksing from the songbook - oh that was what else was in the con-pack that I missed) but at least I got to see what was in the Mystery Box. There had been a raffle, and the prize was a mystery box, contents unknown, except by the people who had put it together. It was a very mixed bunch of things, from Star Wars action figures to the complete "Mind of Man is a Double-Edged Sword" trilogy, to "A Companion to 'A Brief History of Time'". A very mixed bunch indeed.
After departing that scene, I saw that the video room was filled with people watching the first "Sapphire & Steel" adventure, so I popped in and out of there, nibbled some dinner, wrote in my diary, and generally had a very non-eventful rest of the day. And thus ended Event Horizon.
Postmortem
Guest: good. Friendly, extremely approachable, and no, though he did drink much beer, he did not get drunk, like so many people snidely said to me he would. Interesting guy.
Programme: good. imaginative ideas. Some things could have been done better, and there were the expected latenesses, but not too many. The banquet was good, the costume parade would have been non-existent because they're always like that in Brisbane, the art show was cancelled due to lack of participants. The video programme was good, having a wide selection of old and new rarities and favourites.
Hotel: good. Once you got there, the location was good, with the shopping centre across the road. I can't comment on public transport access, since I got a lift and stayed in the hotel. But there were supposed to be reasonable busses. The function rooms were fine for the numbers (despite the air-conditioning). The video room was a function room with a video projector, not a tiny cramped room with a TV at the front, which happens so often at cons. One black mark - there were no maps/floor plans provided, so you had to ask where things were. But once you knew where things were, they were easily found.
Dealers: There was a variety of dealers, mostly on Saturday. All the stuff I was interested in was on the New Horizons table, though.
Attendance: It was not a large con. About 100 people. Oddly enough, most of the people were not from Brisbane. 75% of the attendees were from interstate. And one from New Zealand!
Overall, a great con. I think it's safe to say that a good time was had by all, including the guest.
Are the committee crazy enough to do another one? We can but hope.