 We're going to start right at the very beginning, Dawn. So tell us a bit about your early life and your circumstances. Oh, well, I was born in 1967, a flower power child to my mom and dad in Melbourne, Victoria. I lived there until I was about 21, 22. Then moved to Queensland for a little bit. Then moved to Sydney and back up here over 15 years ago. So this is where I'm now based in sunny downtown Brisbane. So tell us a little bit about your family, though. What did your family do for a living? I come from a broken family. I was actually adopted by my grandparents. My mother, my biological mother, was a fashion model and was back in the 60s. And she also did catwalk modeling and everything like that. And my father was an army brat and a boiler maker. And that marriage didn't like, it was a marriage convenience because it was the 60s and my family were very strict Catholics. And condoms was never an issue. And in our family or any sort of contraceptives, and I was sitting in my mom's tom in the pew and the priest was giving the big lecture about premarital sex and then my grandmother just took us all out of the Catholic church and just said, never ever again. And that's how it was. And she divorced my biological father, ran overseas, and had a most amazing life in the 60s because it was 69, 60, yeah, 69, 70, she lived in London. And I was being raised by my grandparents and eventually at the age of 12, I got officially adopted by my grandparents. OK, OK. Well, tell us a little bit about your coming out. How were you introduced to the leather community? Well, the leather community, actually, I had got my car at 21, it was on my 21st birthday. And I lived in a suburb called Lower Plenty, what is about 35, 40 minutes outside of the center of Melbourne. There was no public transport where I was, so I had to drive to the train station and I worked at a minor department store in the record department in my Melbourne. And I came home, I was driving home from the train station and I'd just got my license, I was still on my P plate. And driving from Hodelberg station to my residence in Lower Plenty, it's a very whiny road and it was all country then. There was lots of parts of it was country. So, you know, there was not that many houses and it was a whiny road. And I was tearing down the road. It was probably only, you probably did 60, I was doing like 110. I don't know, I was flying down this road. And the next minute I know was this motorcycle cop behind me was following me and he pulled me over. Now, I was going to lose my license. A, I didn't have the P plates on the car and it was only probably 60 and I was probably doing about 100 maybe a bit more. I couldn't tell you what the speed exactly was. This tree trunk of a man that was, he was about, it was tall than I was. He said he would have been at least six foot two, six foot three. In full police motorcycle leather from head to toe, it was mid-summer. So it was probably around about unusually hot for Melbourne. It was probably in its 30s. And he crouched down to the car and says, hello son, you've just lost your license. Like this and I went, oh shit. And the smell when he crouched down and the smell of the sweat, the leather and the fact is he was a motorcycle cop and he was in full leather. I just went, oh shit. And I said to him, I said, well, I'm so sorry officer. I didn't know what speed it is. I didn't know what speed I was going and everything. And then he turned around and he said to me, he said, well, you don't even have your P plates on the car. That's another fine. So you're probably looking about $2,000 fine at least and you've lost your license. And I said to go, I'll do anything. I'll do anything. Don't lose my license because I needed the car. You know, so he said, you do anything? And I went, yes, officer, I would. And they didn't wear like little cameras or anything. So there was no footage of, you know, so he could say anything to me. He said, okay, follow me. And cause it was a country lane. We went around the corner. I thought he was going to bash his shit out of me. However, it was bashing of a different sword and it was the most amazing sex I've ever, ever had. He busted my cherry. I had, it was just outrageous. For six months, I sped like an idiot down that road and I never ever saw this guy ever again. And that was my foray into the leather community. And that's when I joined, I joined for a very small time, the Jackaroos down in Melbourne. Hope you to see this policeman was there but never ever saw him ever again. That's quite a fantasy. I mean, how many of us would kill or die to have that? I know. It was just like, oh my God, I can't believe this. And still to this day, I still get very hot when I think about it cause it was a sexual fantasy. That was my first, I knew I was gay. I always knew I was gay, but that was my first real foray into leather sex. I mean, I was always attracted to guys and leather, but actually anything with a pulse it was when I was younger. But it was, I was always attracted to leather men always. So yeah. Well, with your late partner, Mark, you became a medical treatment advocate. Please tell us about that. Well, my partner, Mark and I, I met Mark when I was 26, he was 36. And it was about 93 when I met him. And that was the height. And I'm gonna use the terms we use now, the terms that we use then. It was the height of the epidemic where everyone was dying. And that's the fact. I met Mark for a contact magazine. I lived in Brisbane. His family lived in Brisbane. Oh, sorry, on the Gold Coast actually. And I moved in with him. I knew from the word go that I didn't have a very long time with him. And this person in the audience may remember Mark as few people that probably would. Mark was a guy that was very outspoken, but to me, but we always believed in fighting the good fight. So what we did was that anytime we heard anything new that was happening over the states, we would deliberately go out of our way to see if we could bring the medication here to Australia. So there was a particular drug that came out that was doing extremely wonderfully well to people with long-term HIV, was 3TC, what was a triple combination therapy. With our doctor, Dr. Colin McLeod at RPA Hospital in Sydney, we started lobbying the government to try and bring these drugs over here because Australia takes about three to four extra years before they'll lease them on the market here or even let them do the trials. So we were pushing that sort of thing. So that's what we did. We were advocating and going out there writing letters to Dr. Ref Shorgie who was our house minister at the time and saying we need these drugs now, not in four or five years time because there was lots of people passing away at that time. But it paved the way for much of today's modern treatments. You also had a lot of TV coverage. Yeah, well, Mark and I, we never shied away from the camera. Mark and myself, we were a positive-negative relationship. Mark was positive, obviously I wasn't. We did a lot of documentaries on German television about our lifestyle, about the BDSM lifestyle. Also too is, you know, like today, what was it, the today program in Sydney talked about Mark started doing the at-home care where the nurses, he wouldn't go into hospital. The nurses would come to him and do his treatment for him. So people that had high-powered jobs, that's the sort of thing that would come into your home to do the treatments instead of taking him to the hospital. It didn't last very long. But we were the guinea pigs for that. So yeah, so that was quite an interesting time. I had to learn how to sterilize a kitchen to the inch of its life because we were doing drip treatments for CV retinitis because there was no tablets for that. It was a portacath that he had in his chest that delivered his drugs. So everything had to be sterile. So that's the sort of stuff that we were doing at home. And we were the guinea pigs for that, him and me. How did that come about? How do I put this delicately? I don't believe in sitting on my fat ass. I believe in getting out there and pushing it. And if I could possibly make my partner's life and my life a little bit easier, I would say, how about this? How about that? It got to the stage where the doctor would say, oh, we're making an appointment for Mark, but could you stay home? Because I was like, what about this? Oh, we thought about this. Can we do this? What about we do this at home? So it was the, it wasn't, by the way, it wasn't just us. It was other people as well pushing this envelope as well. So we really needed to get things done because there was people dying left, right and center and back in the early and late 90s. But I've never really heard of extensive treatments at home. It didn't last very long because the sterile procedures, and this is what we were told, and actually Mark fell victim to that as well. The sterile procedures were, you had to be so sterile when we didn't have an animal because we lived in an apartment block, so about one slip up and because his immune system was so compromised, he would get really sick and we had an accident and I didn't realize what had happened and he got really sick. So they realized it was not going to be the way that it could do any further. And also too is it did tie up a lot of the nurses going out the community and took them off the ward. So that was another reason why. It was an experiment to see if they could possibly make the hospitals around Sydney a little bit smaller, but it just never worked. You mentioned you had coverage in the German TV ads, but what about here? There was a few things that we did. There was, God, let me see. Well, I've had many other careers besides being, you know, I've been a DJ, I've been a radio personality. So I'm looking at my friend over there, who we work with, and a drag queen as well, as well as being a very outspoken leather guy. So in the whole gambit of my whole entire life, I tend to attract a lot of attention because I'm always the largest, always the loudest and never shave my facial hair off. And I was a slut. That was the name of the drag group, the Recycle Sluts. So people would obviously talk about our life. We did, Mark bought our apartment in Campadown. It was the first warehouse apartment. And we were always at the right place at the right time. So they always interviewed him. We always were the first person to try to get things done like we would, you know, like at home treatment, the stuff that I did on radio, Mark was always there. He was all my, you know, he would hold the cameras for me and things like that. So we did a lot of that sort of stuff as well. But because we were so proud about who we were as gay men and how we like to live our life, people could pick up on that. And we would never shy away from any of the issues. So there's probably quite a few. I can't remember because I know we're spoken about some of them. I've gone completely blank. It's okay. But how did you see the HIV epidemic impact the Australian sea? Decimate, destroy, decimate. We've lost some bloody great people. Sad, we've lost some really, really fantastic people that were taken too soon in their life. My partner, Mark, was a person that was very, very quiet. I was a great talker and I'm the pushy one. He was the quiet one. He just got stuff done. He was the one that I went to. And I would say to him, can we do this? Like, he set up, what's a nice segue? Mark set up Sydney Leather Pride with two other friends, Chris Ross and, oh, what's his name? Ray Hobbs. Please forgive me if I've got his name wrong. But he was, there were three of them got Sydney Leather Pride together. I wasn't around there, may I add. But he was the sort of person that believed that the leather community in general needed to be more inclusive and wanted to pull the tribes together. You know, we had the jet, we had, in Sydney we had the Dolphins Motor Club and we also had the SPMC. And he wanted to bring all those clubs together. And there was also the Bears Clubs. There was a Harbour City Bears as well. I think they were very, they were very new at that stage. And he wanted to bring everyone together and also bring the girls in too as well to bring our sisters in. That looked after a lot of us guys. What was the Grim Reaper campaign? Oh, Christ. Okay. Grim Reaper campaign was done by an ad agency here in Australia. And it was shown on 60 Minutes at there. I would have been about 16, 17, so I would have been in around 1986. And it was a fantastic campaign that wasn't just skewed towards gay men. It was talking about AIDS affects everyone, not just gay guys, not just hemophiliacs. It affected anyone that had blood transfusion and it affected young kids and everything. And that's what the message was. The Grim Reaper campaign was showing that and the byline was AIDS affects all of us. But wasn't it a bit controversial? Oh, it was hugely controversial. How so? Huge, the backlash from the Christian groups and this is a gay disease. It's nothing to do with Mr. and Mrs. Flow down the road. It's no, it's a gay disease and that's how they were. And it ran, 60 Minutes put it on. That was the first time I saw it ever on our news program, 60 Minutes. And I think it got showed once or twice and it affected Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average so much that they pulled it off TV. Cause it scared everyone. Cause HOV doesn't discriminate. It just went through the community, everyone. It just affects everyone. Do you think it was a positive campaign or negative campaign? I think it made everyone a little bit more wary. I think it made everyone more aware. You know, I had a sister at the particular point in time that was very young and she was, you know, and as she got older, she was having unprotected sex. And I just said, hey, you know, there's no, you know, you can get HOV as well, you know, stop. I'm on the pillow. I get pregnant. It's not about being pregnant. It's about catching other things as well. So it did have, I think it did skew. It made people think about generally the whole population in Australia. It made them think for a little bit about what they're doing sexually, just that little bit. You were also a hospital buddy. Tell us a little bit about that. I, around the same time they were talking there was infectious diseases hospital in Melbourne. And they did a story about young gay men that didn't, that were, you know, affected severely with HOV and their friends abandoned them. Their family members abandoned them because people were terrified. And I was about 16 or 17. Oh, no, probably a little bit older. No, I was a little bit older when I did that because I did have my car. So it must have been, I was in my 20s anyway. And I rocked up and I said, look, I'm here for the buddy program. Is there anyone would like to have a visit from anyone? And there was this young guy. He was exactly the same age as me. And he was, it was, it was quite confronting because there was really no retrovirals. So this guy, I think he had, he had a skin cancer that was rampant and it was, he was by himself. And I made an effort to make sure that he felt like he wasn't alone. I did everything in my power to let him know that, you know, I had to wear the white gown and the gloves and the mask and everything like that. So, you know, I hope it came through my eyes as much as I possibly could, but just to let him know that I was there for him. You know, I only met him three or four times and he passed away and he had no one. And I'm sorry, that shit doesn't happen on my watch. No one deserves to be in their final hours by themselves. That's not right. And he, I mean, I could, I can kind of like understand why people were so scared, but, you know, he just needed someone by his side. And that's what I wanted to do. So, you know, I didn't see him pass away, unfortunately. I went to see him, I saw him about four times and on the fourth time I went to see, I went to his room and he obviously passed away and the nurse just said, oh, he died. I said, did anyone get to meet him or did anyone come for him? No, no, that was it. No family, nothing. And that was a reality at that time. People were shit scared. They were just so, so scared of HIV. They didn't know what, how was, you know, they had, they didn't know how people were being, they were catching this thing. But there was such a, it was, you know, it was such a thing that people were so terrified. They wouldn't drink out of glasses or anything like that. And I did take, because they asked me to wear rubber gloves and I took the rubber glove off and I held his hand at one stage. I said, I'm not gonna get this thing. And that was pretty emotional. And that was a cornerstone of my life. That was one of my cornerstones. How did you even learn about this to be able to do it? Because there was no internet. Talking to, talking to a lot of my friends, ringing the also foundation in Melbourne, because this was all in Melbourne. Yeah, just asking a lot of questions. Being not, you know, reading the gay press, finding out what was going on. That was very important for me to find out what I could do and how to be safe and everything. You know, I was lucky. I'm the product of the ad campaigns that were worth, I'm very fortunate. I took the message early on. So I'm still here to tell my story and to tell everyone else's story that's not here to talk anymore. You mentioned that Sydney Leather Pride was Mark's baby. Tell us more about that. Well, Mark had a great belief about inclusion. He always has. He was a great inclusionist. He believed a good time could be had by everyone and that's what he really wanted to do. He wanted to leave a legacy for our community. And it was so important for him to call the tribes together. Because, you know, Sydney, I love Sydney. Sydney's my hometown. I mean, you know, even I'm a Victorian, I consider Sydney to be where I grew up and, you know, as a gay man, I did all my learning there. But Sydney can be a little bit, you're in that group and you're in that group. We don't want to mix with you. And he said, no, no, no, this is about getting together. Because it was two Leather Clubs. It was the Dolphins Leather Club and there was the SVMC and the SVMC. There's a little splinter group that made the Dolphins and then, you know, the Dolphins were over here. And he believed that we could all get together and be one big inclusion, like one big group of happy leather folk. And he wanted to get the girls in because there was nothing for the girls to do. Ray from JR Leather, who's the other gentleman I was trying to think of, and Chris Ross all said the exactly the same thing. We've got this amazing leather community that has a wealth of knowledge. Why not use it? And he believed in getting them all together. And with the other boys, and it was just amazing. It was a great time in our lives. But we didn't... Mark was sort of a person, because we were... As is the couple was quite funny, you know, I taught a lot of things to Mark. Mark was an ABC watching classical listening guy and here it was this 26-year-old bubble that I was a bubble, I really was, that listened to the Pet Shop Boys and Frankie goes to Hollywood and let's go out and get drunk. Yeah! He was like, no. And I'm going... And then, eventually, I unraveled that thread and then he ended up being more of a party boy than what I was and I used to stay home. And I used to say, are you coming home? It's Tuesday. When are you coming home? And eventually he would come home because I'd already been home the night before. We're talking about Marty Gray here. That's another story for another day, I guess. So when you were coming out into the leather kink scene, tell us what you experienced. What was the scene like in those days? Well, I came out in Melbourne and I went to the Laird Hotel and I went to... I think it was their Mr. Drama competition. And I walked into this bar with another friend of mine and I was clean-shaven and very much about the club kids sort of, you know, had the long hair down the front and the eyeliner on and, you know, that was the... That was the 80s for you and the tight jeans with the ripped and wearing a red hankie that I didn't know what it meant. And around the leg and going... And I walked into the bar and, you know, everyone went, what the hell's this? Because I was very tall and I just watched this leather competition and I'd already had that first experience with that motorcycle cop so I kind of knew what I was getting into, but I didn't know how to dress. And I had this guy, he came up to me and said, you'd be really great looking leatherman if you just did this, this and this. And then he said to me, you know what the red hankie meant? And I said, yeah, you know what the red hankie meant? No. He said, you went to fisting and I went... Fighting and he went, no, fisting. And I went, what's that? And he explained it to me and he said, you know, fist up the bum and I went, oh, oh no, no, no, no, no, like this. So I quickly changed the way I dressed and then learned the hankie code. But it was for me, because I was in such a different demographic, there was a lot of us, I don't know, the community seemed a lot older and I was a so, so young. And I was that person you would avoid in the club, the one that was always 10 octaves higher than everyone else, it's shrill, you know, like everything's fabulous. And so a lot of the older guy would go, so, but I eventually learned my own way. And then I moved to Queensland, so, and that's when I met Mark in Queensland and then I joined Bootco as well. But it was me finding who I was and actually not having to conform to what everyone was and what everyone expected me, my friends were very, very vanilla and then all of a sudden I started buying a leather jacket, I bought the boots and I started growing facial hair and all my friends said, what's this all about? What's all this, you know, what's this? This is who I am, this is me. But what, you know, what's this? And it's a, you know, you try to be one of the village people and I went, yeah, I am, I am one of the village people. And that's how it all started for me, you know. And the community embraced me. They saw the journey. Laurie Lane, who is Melbourne, who is a great mentor of me, great mentor of mine. Laurie is kind of like the person who I've modelled my own life on. If you wanna say, if you can model your life on someone, he was always a man that was everything. And I loved it. I loved that, the fact is, you know, being a gay man in the 80s and now you can be anything you want, you can do anything you want. It's your own limitations, what's in your brain. Tell, elaborate a little bit more about Laurie Lane and his impact upon you. Laurie, Laurie was part of the Jackaroos in Melbourne and I met Laurie from a distance the very first time I saw him and he was the master of ceremonies. He is a very thin man. But has this awesome personality that's huge. And I used to watch him on stage and he was in this little person and he would talk about what was going on with the club. And I went to a club one night called Pokies in St. Kilda. I don't know whether he's gonna kill me if I tell this story or not. But there was this guy that sounded exactly like Laurie Lane and then they said, this is Lois Lane and he was this leather god dressed in drag. And I went, Laurie, I just meant, what? Sorry, Laurie, if you see this, I don't want to tell stories, but he was just amazing. He, fuck it, he said, I'm gonna be anything. I'm gonna do what I want to do. You don't accept me for who I am, fuck you. And I love that and that's my adventure of life. Is that how you're a pushy queen as you've identified yourself? Yeah, I am, yeah. Look, I believe in getting shit done and that's what Laurie is. Laurie's always been that sort of person as well. And I am a pushy queen. I'm trying to reclaim the word poof. I'm a bloody big poof and I love it. And I think that to get things done, we need to start making headway in our lives. I mean, personally, spiritually, physically, and in our community, I think that's, you know, there is times when you need to be that pushy queen that asks the questions all the time, that actually asks the hard questions, or say, I don't agree with that, I don't like that. But you know, I respect your opinions, but you need to respect mine as well. You were a title holder. Yes. What title did you hold? Tell us about that. Mr. Queensland Leather, 2010. I won it by default. I was the second runner up in my title year. And the gentleman that was the winner couldn't fulfill his role. He did it for about three or four months and just said, I'm in love, I'm going, I don't want this anymore, this is not my lifestyle. And I became Mr. Queensland Leather in 2010. I'm very proud that I've got an asterisk against my name, because I wasn't the judge's first choice, but in the end, I was their first choice. I made my reign very powerful. You know, I followed my core beliefs of bringing our community together, calling the tribes together, bringing the old and the new together. So in 2010, the apps and online had slowly started to road away our clubs. I wanted to call people back, bring them back into the clubs, bring them back to the bar, because if we don't support our bars and our clubs, we won't have a Leather community or a community in general. So I was very proud to be 2010 Mr. Queensland Leather. I represented Brisbane with my brother, Johnny, in Mr. Australia Leather in Melbourne, and I did my club down in Marlborough. What are your thoughts about contemporary time at Leather? I think we've still got a long way to go in some areas. I'd like to see more about our Leather community and title holders, about the gentle worry of... You know, I use catchphrases all my life. I've always had, the gentle worry is very important to me. It's about, you know... And this is something I'm still learning. I am a pushy queen, I'm going to try and pull that back, but, you know, getting things done with a finesse and getting it done that you have all the support of the community. Changing people's opinions and having them to come along on a journey with you. And I think that's very, very important. I don't think you need to be this brash over-the-top person to get things done as a title holder. I think you can be the quiet person that doesn't need to bang his chest and say, I've done this, you know, and the guys that are quiet, that are working in the background, that's the new art form we need to learn in our community. That's what we need to learn. And I think that's something I'd like to see a little bit more of, you know, are you up and coming... Up and coming community, the gentle, not just title holders. I think just our whole community. It's about inclusion, not exclusion, you know. That's important. So, Doan, how do you see today's Brisbane scene? It's getting good. It is getting good. And I'm going to use the Bears as well as Bucco. I'm very proud of both my clubs, because I am a Bear member as well. I'm very, very impressed. Bucco has been around, I think we're coming into our 30th anniversary. We've gone from strength to strength. Nothing's going to knock this club out. We've had our issues, like everyone has issues, but boy, oh, boy, when we pull it together, we pull it together, and it's just spectacular. It is, our club is... The membership is growing. We're including new members. We're, you know, we're trying different and new things. We've got a committee that's willing to listen to its members. You know, I got to give a nod to my president who was sitting in the audience. Hi, Seale. He's brilliant president, and we've had some fantastic people before that. We had Pierre Brand, who was my... When I was on the committee here at Bucco, he was just fantastic. You know, I'm very impressed with the brotherhood. And, okay, I know you're in the room, Seale, but I have to say I'm sorry to embarrass you. Sorry he's off camera, but he is a fantastic president who I will follow. And he is a great guy, and I'm willing to follow someone who has got direction and has got, I can't think of the right name, but he's a bloody good guy. There you go. Good on you, Seale. Embarrassed you enough now? Yeah. You worked extensively in radio. Yes. Tell us about that. I started out at a community radio station in Melbourne called 3CR, where I did a kid's program where I learned to work on a mixing desk and a panel. I did a lot of acting in Queensland. I loved the dramatics and I loved theatrical stuff, I'll always have. And when in 1997, there was an ad in the paper for a community gay-based radio station called Free FM. And I applied, and at that particular point in time, I was a drag queen with a drag group called The Recycle Sluts. We did drag on radio. And yes, there was sometimes we did get dressed up to do the radio show, and then I realised one day, why the hell are we doing this? This is radio, it's not TV. But we did some amazing things at that radio station. I was the first and only drag queen ever with my sister, Christelle Chandalia and Lana Lavlips to walk the Sydney Harbour... Yeah, that's right. Lana Lavlips, Christelle Chandalia and myself, Miss Fragile Frida Fri. We walked the Sydney Harbour Bridge in six-inch heels, a feather boa and a sequined gown on the top. It was just after Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, finished. The movie had just finished off the cinema. So we did that. We also went... There's videos... We made world news. It was... The story was played in the UK, and I had friends and family that ran me from the UK saying, we just saw you on TV! And friends from America that saw it as well. But the funny thing is that no one knew was that we went down to the roadside and we nearly caused a six-car pile-up because he was these drag queens with feather boas going, Hi! Hi! And this guy goes, whee! So we were ushered off the bridge very quickly. And then I did commercial radio. I worked at Today FM for a couple of months, and I worked with Jackie O and not Carl Sanderland, but Ugly Phil at one stage, and that was commercial radio as my drag persona. That didn't last very long because I was too gay for radio. And I gave up radio because my partner got sick, and what was more important to me was being with my partner. You had an interesting 9-11 story regarding your radio career as well. Tell us about that. Okay. It was the night before 9-11. I was watching, Mark and I were in Dulles Hill, downtown Dulles Hill, as I always used to call it, in our Palmer Block, and we lived in quite a huge Palmer Block. Our apartment looked internally into a massive big courtyard. And I was doing Rhythm FM, and I did breakfast radio, what was never fun to do because I was a night owl. We were watching a program on ABC, and I remember to this day called Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It was a TV series. It was so boring, and we were in bed, and I said, oh, come on, this is boring, let's go to bed. And it was actually 10 to 10, it was, and we turned the TV off. Now, why I remember the time so, I said, why I remember it so much the time was, I said, oh, look, we're going to bed before it's 10 o'clock, it's 10 minutes, let's do it, so we went to bed. But we had a little portable, you know, little portable color TV, and there was something going along the bottom of the screen, and we didn't bother reading it, and we went to bed. I got up at four o'clock in the morning, and the apartment block is pitch black. You know, there's only lights in the pathways, but there was nothing there. And I looked out the room, I looked out my window, and every single apartment, every single apartment was all lit up, and I could see everyone had their TV on, and I went, you know, like you were just waking up, I said, oh my God, I've slept the whole day away, and I looked at the clock, and I went, no, no, no, it's four in the morning, I've got to go to work, and I got ready, got in the car, and we used to play music at Rhythm FM, I hated the music, so I turned it on to the other station I like, it was today FM, and I listened to it, and they said, oh, we're taking calls from people that, anyone that's feeling quite vulnerable about the disaster that happens in America, and I thought there was an earthquake. So I listened as I was driving, and I was gobsmacked, that there was this terror attack that's happened at the World Trade Center. The two towers had fallen, of course, by then, by four in the morning. There was thinking there was another aircraft circling around going to crash into something, because all the planes had obviously crashed, what was terrible, you know, that loss of life. Um, so, I got into the radio station, and I had to set everything up, it was the most spookiest thing ever to turn on a radio station, in listening to people talk about their stories about the tragedy that was just happening in America, and I just knew the world was never going to be the same ever again. Yeah. I had a news girl that I rang, and she, and I rang her, and I said, her name was Yumi, and I said to Yumi, I said, can you tell me what the hell's going on? She said, haven't you been watching the news? She said, no, I've been watching it all night. She said, America is under attack, and we're all going to go to war, and I went, oh, shit, so, I flicked on, I flicked on, I turned the station on, we had, like I said, took the music on, I flicked on my microphone, and the very first thing I ever said was, ladies and gentlemen, as a serious note, because I'm never serious on radio, the world today is never going to be the same ever again, and I proceeded to tell my listeners that we're very much in the same boat as me, because it was six o'clock in the morning that the world had changed, and the switchboard, I was the only one there, so the switchboard lit up, and I kept taking calls. You're joking, this is not true, this is not true, and I virtually broke it to the dance community, well, kind of like I think I did, but broke this story, the biggest news story, to a wider audience that's part of our community, and it was shocking, it was quite sad, quite sad. I'm gonna loop back over to your relationship with Mark and what you both accomplished regarding HIV treatments here in Australia, awareness here in Australia, and undoubtedly that must have reverberated even further out. Given what we have now, the advancements in treatment, PrEP, whatever else, just new different attitudes, more knowledge, what have you to say to Mark now? What would I say to Mark now? Well, I gotta say is, if Mark was still here, I think, well, I gotta say, Doug, I don't know whether he would be still here, even I can't think that way. Why do I say that is because, look, I wouldn't change a single thing that I did with Mark and Mark wouldn't change a single thing that we did together as a couple. When Mark passed away in September the 30th, 2008, he was at that time one of the longest surviving people with HIV in Australia. I don't, I was gonna use the word, I'm gonna have to because can't give a better word. I don't like using the word guinea pig because that's not true. We wouldn't, I think a guinea pig goes, hasn't got a choice, but Mark wanted and so did I, because it was a mutual thing. We both wanted to cure this bloody, disgusting thing. We wanted to cure it. We didn't wanna make people's lives. We wanted to get rid of it out of the system. Mark did every single thing that we possibly could. We applied for every single trial that we could possibly could. And as his partner, I supported him on that. And we were a fantastic couple together. That the fact is that I held his hand and he held my hand. It was always a two-way street. We, you know, anything that we could, anything that we here could eradicate this disease. And I know these words are very confronting because that's the world that I was living in. And I still, you know, I know it's awful to say to people, but at that time, he was living with a disease and we didn't use terms. And when I did a couple of years ago, actually two years ago, I did the World AIDS Day speech and I did the World AIDS Day speech and I wrote a story about me and Mark. I said to everyone, I'm sorry for the words I'm using. You know, I am sorry for the fact is that I'm saying these words that are not PC. But, you know, when he had it, there was no fucking hope. There wasn't. There is some hope now. There is now. So what would you say to him knowing that? We did it, babe. We fucking did it. You know. But there's a whole heap of other people behind us that are putting their hand on our shoulders. Yeah. And I'm putting my hand on their shoulders because they're also in the front line as well. Yeah. I mean, you know, on a happier note, you know, we're talking about at work that we did. Mardi Gras Party, you know, and I'm good. If I ever write a book, it's going to be, I'll meet you in front of the DJ box and the RHI. That's where we always dance. If I had a dollar for every single person that come up to me and Mark when we were totally off our tree, saying, oh, look, look, you know, I've got this boy and he's HIV positive and I'm not HIV positive. Do you think it could work? And we'd go, yes, it could work. But how did you two work? I said, talk. Just talk to each other, you know, be part of what it is. Talk to each other, you know, have boundaries and talk about safe sex and keep on your meds and do the right thing. And, you know, Mark and I used to be Father Confessor for everyone and it always used to be a Mardi Gras and it always used to be after the midnight show and it always was like, we're in the middle of having a ball and someone come up and they needed to talk to you about this series. And we would always say, come on, let's have the talk with them and, you know, I love doing myself stuff. It was good. It was a good time. It was funny. It used to annoy the shit out of me, it was a little thing, you know. So, yeah, it was a good time. What's the biggest misconception about you? I come across as a very knowledgeable, forthright person that has his shit together. Realistically, that hamster's fallen off the wheel so many times. It's quite, you know. I have some of the answers but that's my answers, they're not yours. I like, you know, yeah, I guess that's the only thing is I think people think that I've got my shit together and some days I do and some days I don't. That's fair. Don Balfour, thank you for an amazing fireside chat.