Thursday, January 4, 1996
AROUND THE WORLD EDITED BY SIMON GROSE
About 470 Aussie bleeders turned up at Beijing’s Sheraton Great Wall Hotel for a New Year’s Eve ball last Sunday. Organised by our bug-free (we hope) embassy, the big do was emceed by Andrew Denton, with music supplied by Canberra’s Big City band.
Once the show got going, they could have been back in the Michigan Room at Canberra’s Lakeside in mid-winter because Beijing’s temperature these days hangs around zero. But the Big City band and singer Gaye Reid, had a Beijing experience the previous day which made them realise they were along way from Garema Place on a Saturday arvo.
Visiting Tiananmen Square for a squiz, they discovered a footpath artist dashing off their caricatures. He offered them the drawings but refused to accept money in payment. The happy big Vegemites, not wanting to take advantage of a fellow down-trodden artist, decided to return the favour by chortling Waltzing Matilda into the chilly China air.
The Weird Mob choir quickly attracted a crowd. But after a single verse, the words came true: “down came the troopers, one two three”. The Square Police, who had left their tanks at home, broke it all up, told them to button their lips and move on.
Denton missed that impromptu gig. He and the band were flown in courtesy of Cathay Pacific and its Chinese airline Dragon Air. Qantas refused to be so generous, despite the fact that Beijing’s Aussies try to arrange their travel to support the one weekly Qantas flight to Australia.
Mrs Denton (once a key 60 Minutes celeb Jennifer Byrne) and son Connor had hoped to make the trip, but chicken pox kept them in Melbourne.
First published in The Canberra Times, Thursday January 4, 1996
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