YOU CAN'T TRIPLE-STAMP A DOUBLE STAMP!

Ok so this is going to be long, I think.

Anyway, lainy122 has done a photo post and covered all the pertinent bits, and melinda_goodin has already written up a couple of panels excellently. Also, docbrite's reactions (and her bird-related squeeing) are great. So probably this is all redundant :-D

Right, well, first up, I adored Melbourne. ( Melbourne; Meagan; fabulous purchases )

Sad farewells to Meagan, and then we started trying to make our way to the Hilton, which is where the con was at. I left the map at the hostel and got us totally lost and poor Lainy had to walk about 2k out of the way with a busted knee.

( Vampire panel; Blankety-blanks; first-time con-goer panel )

That night was the Great Debate, which had us all laughing our bleached anuses off. ( Great Debate )

( martial arts panel; slashgirl parTAY )

Saturday morning we began with the Moving out of Genre panel with Jack, Neil, Poppy and Fiona, and it was really interesting. ( Neil and Poppy stuff, mostly )

( Neil's GOH speech, Mirrormask, Dave McKean )

The forensics panel, like everything else, was interesting. ( More on this )

( Fantasy and Fairytale panel )

Somewhere in there we had a great Chinese dinner with a lovely old-school fan and slasher named Donna (if you're reading this, Donna, drop us a comment!) and hooked up with Jess from Perth (who kindly allowed us to stash our stuff in her room, and whose lj name I have no idea of) to watch an episode of Firefly ("Arial") and the bloopers (hee!) and the Serentity trailer (eee!). Then at night it was the masked ball, which Lainy and I didn't exactly prepare for, like, at all. But a cool dude was making balloon hats and he gave us one each! The costumes were absolutely amazing. There were any number of gothy outfits, some furries, Danny Oz and his wife and someone else as the Joker, Harley and Ivy, a Jack Sparrow, a TV's Frank (I think! But he didn't have the right hair), and so on. Amazing work by some people. Also somewhere in there we went to Neil's and Poppy's signings (squee!) and melinda_goodin made a Harry Potter run, being nice enough to grab me one at the same time :-D

Sunday morning we got up ridiculously early for the first panel, Myths of Warfare. ( More on this )

The Australian Folklore and Fairytales panel was extremely interesting and I was really looking forward to it (Lainy went to the Stephen King panel at this time, so ask her for info about that). It began with the panellists noting that they had a really interesting experience going to Europe, where mythology and history are tied directly to place and especially nature, and how this is not their experience within Australia. Of course this segued into Indigenous mythology and the Australian landscape, and the bulk of the discussion was about how appropriate it is to use Aboriginal mythology in fiction if you're a non-Indigenous Australian. ( More on this )

Not having read any of her work, and having had the impression throughout the con that she didn't really want to be there, I was not expecting to enjoy Robin Hobb's Guest of Honour speech quite as much as I did. ( on writing and having children; Important Lessons Jessie Learnt from Robin Hobb )

( LOTR in the style of... panel )

During the lunch break we watched Neil's A Short Film About John Bolton, a funny mock documentary about a vampire-obsessed artist. It managed to be both completely predictable and extremely entertaining.

Then was Poppy's GOH speech in which she was the cutest thing ever. ( Witness: )

( Gods and Monsters panel; Neil being amusing; Research and Methodology panel; blogging panel )

( Slash panel! )

Then there was the closing ceremony, then Melinda gave us a ride back to our hostel, then I ate an extremely nice Chinese meal, then we caught the train, then I read HBP, then we got home, the end. My god!