The party that started it all ... apparently

Nineteen years ago a friend had a birthday party.

It was a small affair in this friend’s back yard ... in the middle of winter.

As with any Saturday event of the late 90s, there was some pre-event socialising and organising to happen at the Conargo Pub on the Friday night before.

This included discussing just how cold it was going to be on June 24, 2000, and how many blankets would be required in swags, or how many bodies would be required in aforementioned swags to stay warm.

At that time it wasn’t uncommon to legitimately share a swag or bed with someone in a purely plutonic way.

I had often come home from nights out letting my parents know I had shared a swag with someone - a mate - just as that. Hand on my heart, no wandering hands or hanky panky, just sleeping alongside one another because someone didn’t bring a swag or it was cold. As friends.

And so, on this night before the party while indulging in Friday night drinks we discovered the back of Pete’s ute actually had a proper mattress, flannelette sheets, 3 blankets and 2 doonas.

I knew new where I was sleeping. Next to my new best friend, Pete. Warm.

When Saturday rolled around and the party happened - it was bloody cold! I remember cutting holes in the bottom of 44-gallon drums with a block splitter to get the fires within them to rage.

Pete spent the whole night trying to pick up someone, who he would declare - quite literally until the day he died - looked like ‘the hot chick from Braveheart who the English kill to get to William Wallace...’

Somewhere there is a photo from that night of Pete earnestly talking to this girl around a fire drum and she is absent-mindedly looking the opposite direction.

But late in the night at bedtime, once I’d warmed up the bed, she reappeared, seemingly much more interested in him (because, as I vow and declare, she had consumed a lot more alcohol).

I wasn’t giving up my bed for the night - and refused to move ... mostly because, as I pointed out many times in years past, she had a boyfriend, I was warm, and another mate had already grabbed my swag and was snoring his head off in it - boots on and beer in hand.

So Pete lucked-out in the pick-up stakes.

Turns out, that night wasn’t a complete write off.

Because according to many people at the party, apparently we had hooked up.

Apparently it was because we shared the back of a ute.

Apparently because I might have still technically had a boyfriend (Sorry Ed! x)

But what did happen that night was him realising that maybe he’d been chasing the wrong chick ... because he proceeded to ring me, every night, for the week following until we saw each other at the Conargo Pub the following Friday night.

Apparently this didn’t go unnoticed by my parents, who were most concerned about why this 28yr old man was ringing their 20yo daughter.

Turns out, being able to talk on the phone was a pretty important thing as 10 days later I moved to Sydney and we began 18 months of nightly phone calls and fortnightly driving of the 800km between us.

Before Pete died, there had only been 3 nights in our entire relationship where we hadn’t said goodnight to one another on the phone or via message before going to bed.

Some of those declarations were more cryptic than others when typed or slurred in the wee hours of the morning after a night out.

In the early days, sometimes more than one person was involved in our nightly professions of love when there was no mobile phone reception in Conargo and so I had to ring the landline at the pub to find him, which led to me talking to many more people than just him.

And more than once I found myself waking up with the phone off the hook with a snoring noise emanating from it after he’d fallen asleep mid conversation and I’d clearly followed suit.

I cried the night I was driven home from the hospital the day he died because I knew I wouldn’t ever get another “night, love you” message from him again.

He was pretty terrible at keeping in contact with a lot of people.

But in almost 19 years, he actually barely missed a day touching base with me.

And I miss that. A lot.

Thanks for having the party, Parksy Xx