The Gun Club part 1

Imagine a place if you will, where anarchy and debauchery reign supreme, a place where nobody was crowned king and noone was trodden down, a place where everyone who had ever been, never came out the same...

This place was called The Gun Club and it was there that a biannual party was held for about 7 years, it started as a party for a group of people who's birthdays were held all around the same time in mid August, it then grew beyond measure, what started as a party with about 20 attendees ended up by the culmination of its 7 year stretch with about 300 people attending, it was known about and looked forward to by everyone in the local area, it was a place where you left your inhibitions at the gate and if you weren't physically and mentally prepared for what you were about to bare witness to, you would likely break down, which I saw many times.

I'm going to tell you some of the stories that I remember from the days of yore, so sit back, relax and try not to vomit.

In the early days of the Gun Club parties it was just a small group of close friends who were getting 6 birthdays out of the way at once, we would all turn up about 3 or 4 pm and start setting everything up, bbqs, generators, bins, beds and bonfires all the while starting to drink.  As you can imagine things started to get a little hazy and crazy by about 6 or 7 pm, by that time everyone had rocked up and the bonfire was about to be lit.  Douse the bonny with enough petrol to run a big block chev for a few days and away she goes, WOOOOMFFF.  Eyebrows, facial hair and pubes melt and curl from the heat.  These early days were pretty tame compared to what followed in the years to come, but that's not to say these parties weren't fun.  I can remember one of these early parties, someone 'found' a keg of beer, or at least that was his story.  I don't think I've witnessed so many people sculling beer before, it was a little warm, the tap was stuffed, so everyone was just hammering it down like it was the last keg on earth.  Now I've seen movies that paint a pretty good picture of what a Norse mead hall must have looked like but the little shed on the gun club property was as close as you would get to one in the modern era, there was singing, cheersing, sculling, spilling and screaming, the floor was slick and glistening with spilt beer there were young people passed out pissing themselves it was pretty much what you would imagine after the Vikings had returned from a successful raid and were celebrating their spoils of war... But it wasn't, it was 20 or 30 close friends making a mess of themselves in a place where they used to shoot guns at clay targets for fun.

Now this is when the word started to get out about these wild, out of control parties, the people who attended started telling people they knew and from here on out these parties started to gain quite a reputation. 

Ok so I can't really remember what order these memories come in, as it's been a number of years and I was very, very drunk for most of these 'memories' so I'll just write them as they come to me. 

It had become a bit of a tradition at these parties that people would bring old couches that they no longer wanted or needed so that people would have places to sit. I don't think many or any of the couches made it past the first party they attended, as they were always getting busted and thrown in the fire.  On this particular night one of these couches was an old kind of wooden one, with thin cushions and slats along the back of it, kind of like what you might see at your nan's house in the family room.  Anyway, I was sitting there chatting away... Uh... Bullshitting away to whoever would listen, when I look up and see my friend who is a larger fellow coming over to join me on the lounge, he says something smartass to another one of our friends who proceeds to give him a playful shove, my friend (this happened in absolute slow motion by the way, the world around us slowed to a glacial drip) he trips, stumbles grasping at anything that would slow his fall but there was nothing able to stop his descent, he crashes through... Literally through the couch, the one I am sitting on, but the seat over.  I saw my life flash before my eyes, I shot up, surprised I wasn't dead or injured and looked back at the lounge which was completely shattered, like the slats on the back were all snapped in half and the seat was smashed in beyond recognition, my friend was completely fine, we were brought to tears of laughter for about 15 minutes and then proceeded to smash it up more and lob it on the fire, because... It was broken.  We were probably going to do it anyway, but this gave us a better excuse.

There was another tradition at the Gun Club parties where people would go out in to the empty paddocks in their cars and rip it up, it got to a point where people would buy cars or build something ridiculous specifically for this reason.  We had a guy build a home-made supercharger for his tiny little corolla which had to poke out of the bonnet, chain drive straight from the flywheel.  Or another guy had an old hq wagon where the exhaust was cut off and poked through the bonnet which shot flames and made it sound like a truck. My brother took his turbo cordia out there once and thrashed it so hard that the manifold was glowing red.  My best mate took his old Gemini out and thrashed it so hard and for so long that sparks began to fly out of the exhaust which managed to set the paddock on fire for a bit.  I got out there in my old camry or 'the ute' as we used to call it and did the old reverse ringies, it was basically a mini summernats twice a year.  Then after a few years of using the paddocks we graduated to the little lean to shed on the property and used that as a burnout slab, we had every man and his dog backing their cars in to have a go.  It wasn't until breakfast time that I realised no one moved the BBQ out of the lean to before the burnouts commenced, that took some cleaning before bacon and eggs the next morning.  There was one party where one of the "unprepared" people that I talked about earlier called the cops on us all and said we were being dangerous and what not, the police came out and said "at least it's not on the roads, in traffic, if anything this should be condoned" we egged them on a bit and they did a burnout up the road as they left.  It was a good place to get all of that utter nonsense out of our systems in a safe...ish environment and not on the roads where we could injure people.

I don't think I ever threw up at any of the gun club parties, but there were many that did, some were even unaware that they did and blamed others for their indiscretions.  Which is where I'm headed with this story.  Two of my good friends who are now married, slept in their car after drinking far to much one night, he got up first and was stumbling around looking for something to drink, I looked over and noticed something on his shoulder, I got up to get a closer look... It was fucking spaghetti.  I lost my shit, "someone was a little sick last night" I said.  He goes "aww she fucking spewed on me" I was in absolute stitches as was every one else who was awake.  She wakes up and was adamant that it wasn't her, regardless he wasn't having it and was sure it was her, it wasn't until much later when he remembered waking up in the night to throw up, panicking because he couldn't get out of the car because they had the back seats layed down and the doors were child locked for some reason, so he just had to spew and so he did... on himself... and his future wife.

So this is the end of part 1 of The Gun Club... be sure to stay tuned for part 2, I'm saving the best stories until last.

Vikinghammer Out.