In the late 80s I got some tips for my hair and was instantly hooked on the blonde locks - a fad which lasted a few years.

On the occasion of this pic I was the Best Man for my mate Russell's wedding in 1992. Since then I've been a Best Man on four different occasions and I still own the tuxedo!

The annoying thing is I owned this great Shocktrooper suit but never had the helmet nor the rifle to complete the look. Fortunately I was finally able to address this in 2009 when I got a completely new outfit.

Believe it or not I wore this costume to a Star Trek convention in 1993 and told everyone as a joke it was from the as yet unreleased Deep Space Nine third episode ... and everyone believe me!

As of today this cloak still exists and I still wear it from time to time at parties and events.

The walking stick was given to me as a 21st birthday gift as a joke and I still have it.

During the visit we got to check out the Disney Archives which had on display the world's first Mickey Mouse watch!

During the visit I got to hold an actual Academy Award (for a film I can't remember). As a budding film maker myself, this is probably the closest I'll ever get to one of these - by the way they're actually quite heavy so no wonder the winners hold on to them so tightly.

At one point I was issued an Akubra hat as part of my uniform (see a pic of it further down) so some of the staff put together a home made star shaped badge with the slogan "Sheriff of Toyota County" to compliment the look. It was very cute.

Alas that prediction turned out to be 100% true, but I'm OK with it because I know that in my day I partied to the max!

Geoffro lives in Ballarat these days so we don't see each other as often but our strong connection will always be there, plus he's been a huge supporter of my Con 9, Con 70 and Con 80 conventions.

One of things I enjoy about MPS is his sense of humour which can be quite evil (in a good way) and geez he knows how to crack me up.

The car was my old Datsun 1200 which I was forced to drive because all my money was being spent on Batman collectables - as evidenced by the Batman sticker in the back window. You can also see my desire for blonde hair was still in vogue at this point.

Apparently the car was a rare one as it was uncommon for the roof AND boot to be covered in vinyl. Funnily enough every couple of years I'll see a 1200 on the road, but certainly none with this roof style.

In 1989 when I was 22 I moved out of home into a house with my girlfriend, suddenly I discovered the harsh reality of living without my mum who used to do everything for me.

Needless to say the relationship didn't last and after two years we separated. As I couldn't stay in the house on my own, I then moved into a two bedroom unit in Brunswick and from here I learned both independence and how to fend for myself - except for cooking which I still can't do.

So here's the pic of me as a self supporting Dag. As of 2019 I still own the waistcoat and the boots.

You'll note if there is ever an outdoor picture of myself I'll always have sunglasses on regardless if it's sunny or overcast. I can't get by without my sunnies (aka cools) because I find natural daylight is too bright for my eyes to handle.

The unexpected benefit of this is even in my early 50s I still didn't have crows feet around my eyes.

In this photo I hosted four panels at the 2010 world science fiction convention held in Melbourne and boy did I have plenty to say. By the way I got The Thing T-shirt from a collector in Canada and it's a genuine 1982 issue which was still brand new, so I was pretty rapt about that.

In this photo I was working on the feature film Damned by Dawn and was the stand-in for the old lady in the bed. It was the first time on the shoot I got to slack off while watching everyone else work hard to set up the scene.

From L to R (using nicknames). Ads, Chezzie, Vivsta, The Vile, me, Darryl, Lady J and Sully. As I mentioned earlier, it was important to accept all invitations to parties especially as they've become less and less common as the years have gone by. This is a good example of why they were all worth it.

The Batman shirt I bought in Las Vegas in 1993 and the vest was a Christmas gift back in 1992. Considering both are irreplaceable I rarely wear either of them, however, since MPS is a big Batman fan I just knew this was the best choice for the night, especially as I was the best man for his wedding.

What's that? Who's the girl? MPS's sister Suzie.

From L to R (once again using nicknames). Spankin', Vivsta, Uncle Darth, MPS, Sully, Me, Clare, Lynne and The Robster. It's funny because when you get into your 40s and beyond 21st birthday parties occur so rarely, though ironically at this party us oldies made up the vast majority of the attendees.

On this occasion it was the Return of the Jedi 20th Anniversary Banquet in 2003 and it was a dance number based on Simply Irresistable where Han Solo sings and dances in front of all these Leias.

Although it was really entertaining for the audience I simply couldn't bare to watch it on video and to this day have still not seen it.

By the way I actually made the Millennium Falcon guitar which turned out better than I expected.

Geoffro and I performed a number of live acts in our time and this was one of the more creative ones. We did a choreographed rendition of 'The Monster Mash' with Geoffro as the Scientist and myself as Igor.

We followed this up with our 'Thirteen Days of Halloween' song which was like 'Twelve Days of Christmas' but with a sci-fi theme.

Truth be known our live acts were really quite dodgy, but we certainly had fun doing them.

The episode turned out so good that it apparently got repeated a number of times on TV. What most people don't realise is we all had to audition for our place in the team, so it wasn't just handed to us.

Geez it was a blast of a good time and a stack of fun.

You'll note my shirt is green which is a colour I never seem to wear. This came about when I was invited to a New Years Eve party in 1992 and the theme was "green". Now I didn't own anything in that colour so I bought the cheapest green shirt I could get my hands on thinking I'd only wear it once.

As it turned out I ended up really liking it and wore it so often it eventually faded and fell apart.

What's particularly funny is that in my 20s and 30s parties seemed to happen all the time, but now that I'm in my 50s I'm lucky to attend one a year.

Fortunately a couple of the parties from the early 1990s were captured on video camera which makes for great historical viewing. In fact one of the party videos not only featured myself, but I couldn't remember where it occurred or when the video was taken!

The sad side to these videos is seeing people you don't see anymore and have no idea what happened to them. Even worse is seeing people who have since passed away.

Back in the late 90s I was a serious gym junkie and remained that way off and on until 2006. I exercised a lot but unfortunately when I lose weight it goes from my face which in turn makes me look sunken and gaunt.

I never thought this was an issue until I saw a pic of myself taken in 2004 where I looked terrible (see the pic here), even though in actuality I was quite fit and healthy.

Now admittedly I wasn't overly keen on attending the concert, being more interested in the race, but I've gotta say it was pretty good. I did hear later it was the exact same concert in terms of layout and style they've always performed, still if the formula works then why change it. A good fun day all 'round.

Going from left to right. First we have "me old mate Kenneth" who I've known since 1984. We were great mates during the 80s and hung out a fair bit in our late teenage years. These days we really only catch up when The Lenny is in town.

Next to Kenneth is George who I've known since high school. George is a nice guy who is a fantastic artist, painter and model maker, but he's also an introvert and home recluse which has only gotten worse with age - in fact just getting him to this event where this pic was taken was a major effort in itself. It's a very sad story for sure.

Next to George is The Lenny and next to him is Shane. I've known Shane since 1983 and we were best mates for a really long time due to our interest in Star Wars. Shane founded Star Walking Inc. in 1987, and I followed him every step of the way as the club grew. He retired from Star Walking in 1999 but has since returned.

It's worth noting I lost a baby tooth in 2002 and the adult tooth behind it never grew through, which means I have a big gap in my chops. For this reason I taught myself never smile in photos where my teeth are shown (unless I can hide the gap) as evidenced by the pic to the right of this one.

In the end I finally visited the Dentist in October 2015 and had a bridge put in so that gap is now gonskis! The trouble is I now have to re train myself to smile in photos once more.

In the Star Wars universe I am a big fan of the Imperial Empire and Star Destroyers are my all time favourite space ship from any sci-fi genre.

My character was called Igor who was the leader of the team. This promo pic features a vacuum cleaner hose and cardboard box from an electric blanket on my back. At some point my black overalls went missing so I had to switch to blue ones which needless to say created an obvious continuity error, not that we cared about such things.

The film involved a lot of people from the fan community and is a great time capsule showcasing how we all looked (and acted) during this early 1990s era.

One of the best things about running these events is seeing how everyone is keen to dress up for the occasion, so when Geoffro turned up as Magnum PI, I just cracked up big time.

Considering he and I had been doing silly dress up gags since at least 1989, this was another fine pic to add to that long list.

Oh and in case you're wondering my clothes weren't mine, I hired them.

In terms of truly great memories with Geoffro and Russell (who's behind the camera), I'd have to say that this was the best of them all.

In around 1995 Russell was making a video for the Doctor Who 30th Anniversary Banquet called Geoff's World, a take off of Wayne's World, and it was the ultimate in pure crazy fun!

As was traditional with fan videos of this type, we would receive a dodgy looking script on the day and just went from there. Fortunately for me Geoffro had far more dialogue than I did which is why he's reading the script here, honestly I'm amazed we ever got through it.

The real irony though is I'm not a much of a Doctor Who fan so I didn't get many of the references, but hey that didn't matter as I got to ham it up big time.

Believe it or not it wasn't until 2011, more than 15 years after this was filmed, when I finally got a copy of Geoff's World including some of the raw footage.

"GEOFF'S WORLD, PARTY TIME, EXCELLENT!!!" Mega groovy!

As for the GC itself, honestly it's so big your eyes can't deal with the scale. Funnily enough I took some sunset pics with a panorama camera and all of them made the GC look like a painting.

By the way don't you just love the stonewash jeans, they were my favourites in fact.

As for driving left hand drive cars, it's certainly a weird experience as you have a tendancy to drift to the right hand side of the lane, and when you're on a road with no other cars around you can forget which side you're meant to be on.

With that in mind we were coming home from Skywalker Ranch one night and were driving up a hill by ourselves in San Francisco laughing and having a good time, when all of a sudden we heard someone call out "you're on the wrong side of the road!" We then thought "are they talking to us?" just as a whole bunch of headlights came over the hill in our lane. Ooops, lucky I can laugh about it now.

What caused us the most grief in our trip is the Aussie dollar was like 50 cents to the US one so everything cost us twice as much which was a pain, for this reason we didn't tip very often which didn't make us very popular. To highlight this problem further, one of our guys brought a credit card with him and with the AU dollar dropping while we were in the US it actually went over its allotted limit before he'd even used it!

Still with some good budgeting in place, I managed to come home with a dollar and some cents.

As you can see to the right my Batman collection was starting to take shape ... and yes that is a coffin in the picture but don't worry it's a fake one (it's a long story). I still have the hat too.

We 'sailed' onto the stage area then began firing at each other using our cannon party poppers and I was the ship that sunk. Not only was it a blast to do but we won first prize, what a mega top night.

In the time I owned my Galant I once had the entire dashboard removed so I literally drove around with nothing but wires hanging out (great at night time - not); the wipers had to be replaced so for a time I didn't even have any; the brake pedal used to go to the floor and needed pumping to even work; the tyres once wore down to the steel belts to a point where bits of flailing rubber was banging on the bodywork; my indicators used to turn off whenever I touched the brake pedal; the horn never worked; it used to backfire; I had to remove the grill after a prang; it once had a faulty accelerator cable put in so the pedal stayed down even when I took my foot off it; the spare wheel was the wrong size and in time both front panels got bashed in from me kicking them when the thing wouldn't start. I also had to replace the driver's door with one that didn't fit properly which meant the lock didn't work - this occurred when I smashed the window after slamming the original door in anger once again when the car wouldn't start ... a common occurence as you can tell - and on top of that the window knob was missing so I couldn't even wind it up or down! Yep this car spent most time at the repair shop than at home.

The funniest story though is when Carlton were in the grand final in 1987 and I hung these really long blue and white crepe paper streamers from the aerial which looked really great ... until the following morning when I discovered these long blue dye streaks all over the bonnet that couldn't be washed off.

Then a year later when it came time to return it I decided to buy it, even though my friends constantly made jokes about its small size for years afterwards. I eventually sold The Darth in 2012 and she ended up up in Western Australia of all places - and there's a funny story regarding its trip over which I'll share with you one day.

The SITH number plates were a real 'planets in alignment' scenario as I'd seen them on a car years and years ago and then one day to my complete surprise there they were on eBay! Unfortunately the price was WAY too high so I lamented in sorrow how I'd never get them even though they were RIGHT THERE for the taking. Sure enough I checked again some time later and found the price had dropped significantly, seeing this as an omen I bought them without hesitation and they became worth more to me than the car they were attached too.

After leaving Toyota at the end of 2017 I always knew I wanted a convertible, but the problem was Toyota don't MAKE any so that option came to an abrupt end! So I started looking around at other car models with the criteria being it had to have back seats - so unfortunately a Mazda MX 5 which I really love was off the cards - it had to be able to carry a lot of bags and video camera equipment, it had to have a GPS as I can't read a Melway anymore and it had to fit in the garage meaning it couldn't be too long.

Well my first instinct was to look at a VW Golf cabriolet but the storage space was nowhere near big enough for what I needed. I then turned to Holden Astras but then discovered they weren't being built anymore so the models which were available were quite old. Finally out of frustration I started looking at Audi and though the price even for a 2015 model was LOT higher than I had wanted to spend, upon seeing it for the first time in the flesh I was instantly hooked - especially as it met ALL my criteria.

What's funny is I picked it up with Lynne in early March 2018 and we started driving down Beach Road with the roof off on a beautiful Autumn night. Half way down the road she turned to me and asked "are we snobs?"

Also you have to admit, the SITH plates really DO suit it.

Sure I'm behind the wheel of a Ferrari F430 ... but only because I had just returned from going on a drive. The whole scenario and how it came about was totally unexpected and I admit I was packing bricks when I was given the opportunity.

Driving a Ferrari (and convertible to boot) was beyond just being a magical moment and I was just fortunate the car had an Auto mode.

Ironically driving a Ferrari was never on my 'bucket list' simply because I never, ever expected it to become a reality.

Fortunately I've been invited to a few toga parties over the years so this outfit has had repeat value.

Even though it was only made from cardboard and other assorted oddments, it still cost a bit of money to make and most of it was constructed in my bedroom at home.

Ironically it can't be approved by the 501st because it's technically the wrong colour, but during our costume promoting days in the mid 90s it had Lucasfilm Ltd approval which holds a far higher status. I tell you, nothing is more fun than wearing your favourite Star Wars costume to a big event and being paid for it - and it's all completely legit!

The only annoying thing is I bought all this gear when the Aussie dollar was about 70 cents to the US dollar so everything was far more expensive than it should've been - especially the rifle which cost a fortune! Still I was rapt that after 25 years I finally had a complete V shocktrooper costume.

The funny part is I wore it to a big pop culture expo here in Melbourne, and even though none of my friends knew I had this gear some of them still recognised me ... from my jaw line! Can ya believe that!

I remember this night well as we had a lot of fun and it helps Dave really knows how to have a good time.

I was on the committee of this club for 23 years before I finally retired at the end of 2011 only to return in 2013 thanks to the Disney take over of Lucasfilm and the announcement of the new Star Wars films, but then I left again at the end of 2017.

If you're wondering about my T shirt it says "Werewolf Vodka" with the slogan "you won't remember last night". I only got it because of the wolf.

This was taken at our rego desk with Geoffro and myself at the back with The Vile, Clare and Lynne at the front.

Despite the convention have fewer attendees than Con 9 two years earlier (around 135), the energy and enthusiasm was great and I personally loved the fact everyone had such a good time.

Fortunately Con 70 was successful enough for us to mount Con 80 which occurred in March 2017.

As evidenced from the many pics above, I've been doing the costuming thing since the mid 1980s so this was just another day at the office as far as I was concerned, but it was Lynne's very first time wearing a sci-fi costume anywhere! So not only did she have a great time but she was definitely the best looking Trekker there.

This pic was taken after we had set up our table but before the doors opened, so we had absolutely no idea whether we would attract any interest at all or whether we'd just be sitting there for two days twiddling our thumbs. As it turns out we generated a LOT of interest for the con which was hugely encouraging, plus it meant Con 9 did in fact have a chance of succeeding - which it did in spades!

This pic was taken in 2013 on our two week cruise to New Zealand where one night was classed as a formal occasion.

Being my first ever cruise, and something I did want to tick off my bucket list, we had a great time and I definitely got the bug to do it again because two years later we set sail on another trip aloing with others we've completed since then.