Sydney Life

Boredom and procrastination on a Saturday afternoon leads Cath and her posse of fun-loving adventure trippers into the wilderness of a Vet Party At Camden.

Jennifer Aniston leads Cath to make a super good decision (“Thanks Jen! And thanks for ruining Friends for me. But your hair is nice.”)

So I’m sulking on the couch because it’s late Saturday afternoon and I have nobody to play with. Everyone’s all “Sorry man, I’ve got an essay to write” and “Hello?! Thesis thesis THESIS” and “Cath get the message I just don’t like hanging out with you”. I also have some things I should be doing: for a start, there’s that imposing and complicated assignment worth 100% of my marks in one subject. A lifetime of back-readings for my politics courses. My laundry. Some business about a tax return. But it’s Saturday. So I don’t do any of those things.

Flatmate G wanders in. “So, there’s this thing tonight —some sort of a Vet party. They call it barby-grog, apparently. Might be a lark?”

Barby-grog? If this party is what it sounds like, I’m hearing two things I like very much.

G scratches her head. “Trouble is, it’s at the Camden campus. You know, where the fourth year Vets do uni?”

“Oh, you mean at the end of the known universe, where there’s only sheep for friends...?”

[Unfair call, I know. For non-Sydneysiders, Camden is around an hour by car from central Sydney. So, you know, practically the end of the universe.*]

I admit, I’m not originally sold on the idea. We discuss, I waver, we make some calls. Finally, exasperated (and probably a bit hungry, poor lamb), G says to me, “Dammit Cath, it’s either the Vet party or The Breakup on DVD...”

Well.

Jennifer Bloody Aniston is not stealing my Saturday night away from me. I go and fetch my driving hat.

The end of the universe: quite impressive; lots of grass.

Our group of five reaches the Camden vet campus on dark and we’re promptly floored by the air, the open space and — yeah! — the stars. There’s a big outdoor stage, a band (Vetallica — because nothing’s as fun as a pun!) and a couple of hundred excited vet kids sitting on hay bales. Fair dinkum honest to God hay bales. Someone gives us each a nametag, and it’s one of those plastic things farmers use to pierce the ears of cattle. Cow earrings! And mine’s purple! Cute!

I’ll say this much about Camden: it’s a pretty sweet setup for Vet students. Sydney Uni has a full-on veterinary science campus there, with more clinics, farms and animals than you can poke a stick at. But if you’ve ever been plagued with nightmares of demon-eyed rampaging sheep with opposable thumbs (for their sceptres, naturally), you wouldn’t be poking many sticks at many sheeps. You’d be staying the hell away, actually. Luckily there seems to be few rampaging sheep, and many rampaging students.

So we survey the scene. This is BBGrog, and although we’ve missed the barbecue, it’s ok because the show is about to start. This year it’s a Grease-inspired affair called Lube Is Still The Word. Lubricant? I soon find out it’s a reference to the “exploratory” work vets have to do on the inside bits of animals. And that’s all I want to say about that.

The show is terrifically funny. These vets sure have an obsession with inappropriate animal husbandry, don’t they? There also seems to be a lot of jokes about members of the staff, and obscure scientific phenomena... which I’m sure would be riotously funny if I was a vet student, and if I had more than a 6th grader’s knowledge of science. As such, these bits are a bit over my head. Even though we feel a bit dumb in parts, we all laugh a lot and try to show such a level of Great Personality and Hotness so the vet students will like us regardless.

Thankfully there’s a striptease, a frighteningly accurate impersonation of Vicki Pollard from Little Britain, and a very funny mash-up which turns an educational video on dog-handling into, well, something slightly less appropriate.

The coolest thing about this show is how nobody cares when stuff-ups happen. This is a one-night show, and it doesn’t matter if they forget the lyrics, if there are tech difficulties, or if there are delays because the actors have inexplicably gone missing. The crowd loves it! I make a mental note: secret to winning audience approval = alcohol. This may prove useful during my next uni tutorial presentation.

Afterwards a band plays. This whole vet party has been a pretty successful adventure. Dancing in a wide open space where there’s no chance of noise complaints, no ego-tripping bouncers or doorpeople to say you aren’t dressed right, nobody looking at you funny when you decide to create the mother of all dance moves (the robot, except with more moshing). What more could you want?

* I joke, I joke! Being a “regional” myself, I’m aware of the absurd tendency of Sydney people to think they are at the centre (and in many cases, pinnacle) of civilisation itself. Truth is they’ve all got a secret inferiority complex re Melbourne...