Last week was mayhem with the annual Diggers and Dealers Mining Forum on in Kalgoorlie for three days. The conference finishes with a gala dinner on the Wednesday night and is lots of fun, has great food and pretty great entertainment.

My friend Em is really talented with applying makeup (unlike me) so she very kindly came over and applied a dramatic look to my eyes. Being so inept with eyeshadow, I never usually wear it, so it was fun to try something different. You can read all about how Em worked her magic on Em’s blog here.

You’ll have to excuse my grainy photos. I wore the Petra Vanessie lace dress I bought last year after modelling it in a fashion show.

Housemate Bec and I

When we arrived at the marquee (which is magically transformed from a conference hall with booths to a dinner venue in three short hours) we found our designated media table and sipped 2004 Moet.

Cheers

Bec and Jordan

Out of nowhere a Freddie Mercury lookalike appeared on the stage singing ‘We Are the Champions’ for no particular reason?! Who are the champions? The mining industry? Anyway he was pretty fabulous and very spot on, and then with a final blast of fireworks he disppeared and was never mentioned again…

Hey Freddie

We then had a message from Tony:

The Australian Prime Minister… No comment.

Entree was an Asian Tasting Plate with peking duck, BBQ pork steam bun, sesame salmon and a prawn dumpling with wasabi mayo.

Entree

After entree we were wowed with a magic show by magician Tim Ellis. Who did crazy unbelievable things like this:

Sideways levitating assistant!

And the classic ‘have a $50 note disappear and turn up inside a banana’ gag. Bizarre. But amazing!

Grainy selfie.

Then onto main course, fillet of beef wellington, broccolini, grilled mini roma tomato, fondant potato and red wine jus.

It was unbelievably good.

For a meal that had to be reproduced for 1400 patrons (that’s seriously how many people attend this dinner, it’s crazy!) it was delicious.

After that a bunch of mining companies won awards. I did actually take notice because Northern Star won the Dealers award and that’s the company my boyfriend works for… But I won’t bore you with the details.

Dessert was pretty good, at this point we had mostly left our tables and were off mingling. I couldn’t tell what anything was but according to the menu we had miniature desserts served on tiffany stands: saffron poached pears and frangipane tarts, maple chocolate creams with strawberries and honeycomb, potted vanilla milk with quince and hazelnuts and orange and ginger yogurt cake with Turkish delight.

That small ramekin on the left has the chocolate maple thing in it, yummy.

The evening ended (as most good evenings do) with cheese.

Jindi double cream brie, Emmental Swiss and ‘Shadows of Blue’ (wankiest name for cheese ever? probably)

Another whirlwind Diggers and Dealers over in a flash! If you want to see what 24 hours of the madness looks like, check out the story I did here.

Sorry for the retrospective blogging, I spent all weekend moving house, what a dream! Glad it’s done though. How was your weekend?