I followed her gaze to the back but couldn’t make him out among the sea of colourful characters.

‘Poor Dan,’ Gail said, ‘first his wife leaves him, then his family can’t even find space for him to sit with them.’

‘Poor Dan?’ Cassie rolled her eyes and reached for her drink. ‘I heard Tessa left him because he beat her.’

Gail blew air through her lips. ‘Those rumours are absolute piffle. I don’t know why she left, but Dan worshipped the ground she walked on. No way he would have ever laid a finger on her.’

‘You never know what’s happening in someone’s relationship and Dan does seem the odd one out in his family,’ said Cassie. ‘My mum always said it was the quiet ones you had to watch out for.’

I desperately wanted to hear more about these rumours and also about this island group, but B1 boomed into the mic and the conversation died. ‘Good evening everyone. Are you ready for some good Aussie fun?’

The crowd roared various versions of ‘yes’.

In reply, B1 and B2 introduced themselves as Sharon and Garry from the pub and explained how the evening would progress—eight rounds of trivia with some other fun games in between. ‘Remember, tables can win good points for the games so it’s a way to stay afloat if your general knowledge isn’t up to par,’ Garry advised.

While B1 (Sharon) went through a few housekeeping items, B2 (Garry) made sure that every table had a notepad and pens, then the first round of questions kicked off. ‘How ocker are you?’ was about decoding Aussie slang and Gail and Jim were both very good at it.

‘What is a bushman’s clock?’ Sharon asked.

Jim leaned over towards Jedda who’d been given the task of scribe. ‘It’s a Kookaburra laughing.’

‘Question two,’ Sharon said. ‘What does it mean if someone is driving a Toorak tractor?’

‘A fancy four-wheel drive that’s never been off road,’ Gail said smugly, before taking a sip of her rum and Coke.

I laughed—I knew a fair few women in the city who drove such cars, Melissa Diamond being one of them.

After a couple more rounds of questions—Aussie politics and famous Australians—Garry pressed a button and Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sanh’ blasted from the speakers and carnage erupted as people exploded from their seats, shoving others out of the way in a mad dash to get to the front.

‘What’s going on?’ I whispered to Jedda.

‘You’ll see.’

There were four blow-up electric guitars in front of the stage, and these appeared to have inspired the hysteria. They were snatched up on a first come, first served basis, and two people embarked on a tug of war to claim the fourth. The loser reluctantly returned to her seat and those remaining entered into an air guitar contest—the prize twenty points for their table.