When We Was Fab – The Economics Ball

For Australia I went to an upscale university. Sydney is, I think, the oldest one and along with Melbourne, New South and the ANU the most highly regarded

It’s not Oxford or Harvard but the campus is beautiful

The Economics and Law faculties at U of  S are well known for producing PMs and State Premiers – Albanese, Turnbull, Abbott, Howard, and Whitlam came out of there to be PM. State Premiers  like Wran, Greiner, Fahey. Iemma and Baird came up the same route. These are just the ones I remember.

Unlike my more diligent friends doing serious subjects like Engineering, Law and Medicine, Economics was about as slack as it got.

A maximum of 15 hours a week of coursework and tutorials meant there was plenty of time to read, go to the cinema and recover from hangovers. If my parents had got any inkling of how close to the level of doing fuck all I was at they’d have probably had me doing 50 hours a week in the garden or around the house.

To be fair I played a lot of sport and did some part time jobs.

The downside of this state sponsored life of leisure was the reading material. Anyone who has tried to tackle academic books on taxation law or accounting theory will know  it’s not the sort of material that will keep you up into the small hours eager to see how the chapter will finish.

The economics ones were a bit better but again trying to digest fantasies written by Paul Sameulson or Dornbusch and Fischer was a difficult task.  Getting a really good grade required a lot of effort but fortunately just getting through was fairly easy. In hindsight my uni grades were nowhere near as good as my earlier high school ones or subsequent professional qualifications.

To return to the subject at hand though the annual Ball was the highlight of our faculty’s social calendar.

It had to be held somewhere different every year because once we’d been somewhere it was highly unlikely senior management with a job to protect would want to welcome us back.

I don’t quite know how the organising committee managed to do this but we were in at the Sheraton Wentworth ballroom.  A vast area more than capable of holding the entire student body plus anyone else you’d got up the gumption to ask on a date. It was also festooned with a 70s patterned carpet presumably selected so beer and vomit stains didn’t really show in dimmed lighting. I think my grandmother would have thought it was gauche.

Most of us had spent the previous two or three weeks scouring local charity shops for a cheap black tie outfit. While this had the advantage of saving money it didn’t mean you got something that fitted properly. In my own case it was a size too large and my main concern was the trousers falling down every time I stood up. Still I was better off than others who could only find something a size too small

Wandering round a posh venue with your plums hanging tightly constricted either side of the fly area was not a good look. All the girls had something really nice on that wasn’t  covered in unhealthy looking stains.

I guess they were just more grown up than us. I reckon the ladies expenditure on outfits was a good 10-20 times that of the gentlemen

All was going swimmingly until some point in the main course. I went solo but a mate had brought  a girl along who seemed far more interested in me than him.

Then I made my first visit to the bathroom. Back then I could have quite a lot before this became a necessity. Unlike today where I seem to have to zip one out every 20 minutes.

The conveniences were quite posh but lacked the sort of modern toilet monkey who gives you a quick squirt of Joop and an ancient Opal Fruit in exchange for a quid or two. This lack of supervision meant people could more or less get up to what they wanted in there. You might think this meant uninhibited drug taking but this was the mid 80s  and it was actually worse.

A few bright sparks ( I presume it was the rugby lot) had decided that taking a crap in the wall mounted urinals was socially acceptable.  I forced my way into a cubicle to avoid standing for 30 or 40 seconds with the odour of a turd composed of half digested vol-au-vents  wafting into my nostrils.

On returning to the main arena things had started to go downhill

Someone had – understandably – taken umbrage at the nasty carpet and decided to set fire to it. One of the waitresses objected to this but was seen off by having a large beer glass thrown at her. The rozzers were there in 30 seconds and attendance levels immediately reduced by 3 or 4. With the benefit of age and wisdom they were probably sitting outside having been forewarned

About 45 years ago Elvis Costello claimed most songs were about fucking or fighting. There was a fair bit of both going on although hopefully not in the soiled urinals. I don’t think many more people were arrested after the carpet incident but by that stage I was probably too pissed to clearly remember.

Most people seemed incapable of getting off their chair without staggering a few steps sideways and shoulder charging one of the walls.

Me I was having a great time. The aforementioned lady and I sang The Style Council’s “You’re the Best Thing That’s Ever Happened” to each other. I was unconfident at the time and failed to ask her out. I rang a few days later but her Dad answered and cut me off.

Wish I’d tried a bit harder. She was nice, really nice

Getting home was another battle. I got out of a cab that arrived home at about 6am but unfortunately the old man had got up early and started mowing the lawn. With a complexion like a bowl of semolina gone slightly off and clothing that resembled an all toppings pizza I managed stagger into my room without vomiting in a carpeted area. He gave me about 4 hours before dropping a Saturday paper on me. Thing made the Daily Mirror seem like War and Peace.

Can’t do it now but it was a good laugh.
 

© ArthurDaley 2026