After mentioning to Hans and Johnny of Tawney's Restaurant that I previously worked at the Menzies and Chelsea Restaurants in Sydney, I started that night, after just a week in Cairns. Suffering from the lavish expenditure of those bosses, the restaurant hired organist Les Dixon on weekends to pick up sales. Les played and drank, and just after 10, boyfriend Johnny Bond arrived, dragging along everyone from the Marlin Bar. This largely gay clientele drank the bar dry, yet the takings never improved and Hans and Johnny left. A new manager, uncultivated and ill-mannered, accused the bar staff of not charging the gays for their drinks. Surely not! Impossible! Well, possible or not, that ended the gay nights.
THE GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL YIELDS ITS …show more content…
I worked there after tending the fine dining, and remember well the prehistoric cash registers. Try serving eight drinks and adding it up in your head! After every Cairns Show, the 'showies' invaded the club, with the annual all-in-brawl a foregone conclusion - busted chairs, windows, faces and anything else which could break. Spending most of the night under the bar, we eventually wised up and everyone kept a baseball bat close at hand to wallop whoever they could while waiting for the police. All for one and one for all, the gay bar staff and some of the biggest straightest bouncers ever seen - we all worked, drank, danced, and fought …show more content…
Once, when my sister and I casually mentioned that we might host a small gathering after the Sunday session, about 100 people turned up. At one party, Les (yes, him again, the umbrella-wielding organ player), crooned into the head of a mop while Les Girls performed with and without costumes to a spellbound audience of drunks and dope smokers. In the middle of all this, someone said a friend wanted to see me at the front door, and hoping for hot trade, I instead found Alan, an old Sydney friend, his wife and two kids, claiming I'd invited them for a holiday. Not remembering, I nevertheless ushered them upstairs, away from the mayhem, and made a nice cup of tea. Alan's wife chatted politely about my 'lovely' Queenslander, until Buddy Rocket, who worked at George’s Bistro, tap-danced into the kitchen and leapt on the kitchen table to perform a number from
THE GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL YIELDS ITS …show more content…
I worked there after tending the fine dining, and remember well the prehistoric cash registers. Try serving eight drinks and adding it up in your head! After every Cairns Show, the 'showies' invaded the club, with the annual all-in-brawl a foregone conclusion - busted chairs, windows, faces and anything else which could break. Spending most of the night under the bar, we eventually wised up and everyone kept a baseball bat close at hand to wallop whoever they could while waiting for the police. All for one and one for all, the gay bar staff and some of the biggest straightest bouncers ever seen - we all worked, drank, danced, and fought …show more content…
Once, when my sister and I casually mentioned that we might host a small gathering after the Sunday session, about 100 people turned up. At one party, Les (yes, him again, the umbrella-wielding organ player), crooned into the head of a mop while Les Girls performed with and without costumes to a spellbound audience of drunks and dope smokers. In the middle of all this, someone said a friend wanted to see me at the front door, and hoping for hot trade, I instead found Alan, an old Sydney friend, his wife and two kids, claiming I'd invited them for a holiday. Not remembering, I nevertheless ushered them upstairs, away from the mayhem, and made a nice cup of tea. Alan's wife chatted politely about my 'lovely' Queenslander, until Buddy Rocket, who worked at George’s Bistro, tap-danced into the kitchen and leapt on the kitchen table to perform a number from