“Don't drink the Banana Wine...”
My worst NYE was also my first NYE, when I was about 15. My mum let my sister and I go to this Corey Worthington-esque rager at this giant house on the condition that we only drank the two alcopops that she gave us.
I was super pumped and had bought this little tuxedo from Oxfam. I looked the biz. We got there and I drank my two passion pops, but that only gave me a taste for more liquor. I managed to bum a few drinks until I just went rogue and started drinking whatever dregs of alcohol I could find.
Eventually, I found this bottle full of yellowy liquid that was labelled "Banana Wine". It tasted fucking vile but I began chugging away about half a litre of it until one of the older guys yelled "Dude stop! That's the bong water!" I went from mildly buzzed to totally catatonic in about five minutes, spewed all over my second-hand tux. The take away from this: don't drink the Banana Wine.
“I thought there were ghosts...”
I was out in the city somewhere, and I'd had a pretty hectic cocktail of – let's just say, "substances" – that ended up being pretty speedy and pretty hallucinogen-y at the same time. At the end of the night, with the sun coming up, I got lost inside a big abandoned school, and because I was still so mashed I thought there were ghosts haunting the place.
So I was wandering around with a fire extinguisher trying to cover the ghosts with foam to spook 'em out of there. I was absolutely head-to-toe doused in all this fire retardant dust when I walked out onto the street to continue my odyssey home.
Still quite worse for wear, I started talking to this dude who I eventually realised was a priest. Had a lovely conversation but didn't realise that I had followed him straight into a church and taken a seat in the front row of a service. I left after two minutes.
“I told my mum that my friend had gotten the dog stoned...”
I was at my parent's place and my dear friend had been sneaking off the whole night to go and have a cheeky one behind their shed. He came back and our little Border Collie had obviously stayed up way too late with the rest of us so the poor little thing's eyes were super red. He kept falling asleep with us until eventually he jumped up and my mum noticed his bloodshot eyes.
So for some reason, I told my mum that my friend had gotten the dog stoned, which is definitely not the happiest way to celebrate the New Year seeing as how mad my mum got. It's been probably about four years now and my mum will not believe the truth. On some deep level, I think she's still carrying a very heavy grudge against him for something he didn't even do.
“I was really just pushing vomit into the carpet”
I was probably 19 and I was working that night at a Woolworths bottle shop. I finished my shift at 11 pm and then got changed and rushed over to a party. I got there and everyone was definitely already drunk. So I thought "I gotta play catch-up!" and I smashed six cans of Smirnoff Double Black in a row very quickly and I still wasn't drunk. But then I was really drunk.
The rest of the night was a blur. I recall passing out on a front lawn – someone's front lawn, no idea whose – and sleeping on a trampoline for a bit. I got home and it was early morning, so I went to my bedroom to crash but ended up throwing up all over the floor. I tried to clean it up until mum came in and found me and just said: "Go to bed, you're making it worse." I was really just pushing vomit into the carpet.
“Crowd-surfing to Africa by Toto”
A local DJ called CC Disco, who I'm really good friends with, was having a crazy house party one year in a backyard. Loads of people there and the theme was "Neon And Glitter". So lots of people were covered head to toe in glitter wearing neon yellows and pinks and purples. Very intense. A good friend of mine was crowd-surfing to Africa by Toto.
Was quite a big night but eventually, we realised there were only five of us left at the party and we didn't know whose house it was. Then at ten in the morning, we also remembered that we had tickets to the Summer Days festival which started at 11.
We left said party covered in glitter, in neon colours and without any sleep and went to Summer Days at ten in the morning and carried on New Year’s well into the midnight of that night. The longest 48 hours of my fucking life.
