November 1996, Kooky down at Club 77. I’d been away for almost a year. John Howard had been elected and a pall had drawn over. Groovii Biscuit did a drag performance in a three-piece suit with big messy eyebrows and clunky glasses. The song was ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, spliced with soundbites of Howard. Behind Groovii/ Howard was a map of Australia covered in stickers of Aboriginal flags and trees. S/he pulled off the flags and threw them to the ground. S/he pulled off the trees and threw them to the ground. Across the middle and top of the continent, s/he whacked the nuclear waste symbol. S/he whacked up dollar signs, and USA flags. The song crescendoed and s/he started to strip. Groovii’s Howard was awkward, ugly and grotesque. S/he stripped down to Y-fronts, which had the US flag painted on them. S/he was packing with a little gun. S/he started to wank, and the show ended with an almighty gungasm. Oo-oo! Oo-oo!

Black Vine III, Sydney Town Hall. That grim year, 1997, when Howard’s mission was well underway. This was one of three concerts organised by Stephen Page. Bangarra artists did solos: I remember Sidney Saltner’s cat-like elegance. But some of the best works were drag and comedy numbers. Lillian Crombie singing ‘There’s a hole in the bucket’, popping her eyes, all ham. Leah Purcell doing a country and western song, half in language. And the patter between all of it: political, cheeky, humorous, defiant. Five-star deadly black cabaret.