Libbie Ray left school at 15 to become an apprentice chef in her father’s restaurant.

Today she is co-owner of AV24/7 and a mentor to young women in event technology.

Join Libbie on her journey from growing up on the Hawkesbury River, via restaurants and venues, to television studios and then into the event industry.

Darryl Lovegrove is a singer and an entrepreneur.  His singing career started in the school choir – he featured as a soloist on a recording made by the choir.

Darryl went on to be a pop singer and appeared in many musical theatre productions. 

When his flatmate (photographer and opera singer Mark Bradley) was asked to put together a piece for a corporate event he asked Darryl if he knew any opera, Darryl had actually learned one piece for a play he had unsuccessfully auditioned for. This time he passed the audition.

The gig was at an event managed by Romaine Pereira and involved posing as waiters and occasionally breaking into song. That gig led to the formation of the most successful corporate entertainment act in the world – The Three Waiters.

But this is not just the story of The Three Waiters.  Darryl eventually sold his share in that business and launched out on his own, creating new corporate entertainment and launching the career of his daughter, Harmony.

When COVID hit, all work in the events industry dried up so Darryl went back to his teaching degree for financial support and started writing a book about his life, The Three Waiters and being an entrepreneur. 

Why haven’t I heard of you? By Darryl Lovegrove is available as a hard copy or e-book

Ruth is an organiser.  She became one of Australia’s first In-house PCOs through her work as a Practice Manager for a group of doctors then went on to manage a number of medical associations.

Ruth went on to run numerous medical meetings on her own before joining ICMS Australia and then Pharma Events.

But Ruth is also a traveller and a journalist – these, and many more attributes, she shares in our chat.

From the archive: 2007 presentation by Nick Eltis

In 2007 the ISES Melbourne chapter hosted a breakfast where Peter Jones introduced guest speaker Nick Eltis  

Nick is one of Australia’s leading Technical Directors and he spoke about the challenges involved in the Melbourne Commonwealth Games – like flying a tram into the MCG. 

Nick refers to number of images during his talk which can be viewed here 

In the second half of this interview Sandy reflects on the highlights of the Sydney Olympics (including that heart stopping cauldron moment).

Post Olympics, Sandy kept in touch with the event industry as a head of the judging panel for the Australian Event Awards and has maintained his passion for indigenous issues and indigenous arts in particular.

To wrap up the interview Sandy shares his thoughts on the recovery process for the arts and events industries over the next few years.

During his career in the Australian Public Service, Sandy served in the DFAT in postings as diverse as Pakistan, Germany, Canada and USA.  As PM Bob Hawke’s Chief of Staff he was at the centre of one of the most progressive times of Australian political life.

Headhunted to lead the SOCOG team, Sandy takes us behind the scenes of the build up to the Sydney Olympics.

Di Henry’s first parade involved 1000 sheep and a bullock train trundling through the Sydney CBD to promote the Royal Easter Show, and she brought out Robosauraus to the RES.

From that she went on to Mardi Gras parades and then the 2000 Sydney Olympic torch relay followed by a dozen more Olympics, Commonwealth and Asian Games relays.

Di spent 2012 in England organising events for the City of London including a royal wedding, and the London Olympics city activations.

Then back to the Sydney RES for another stint followed by the Paramasala Festival in Parramatta.

Currently Di is trying to work out how to get back to Alice Springs for the Parrtjima Festival in September and creating embroidered artworks for sale via urbanembroidery.shop

In part two of this interview Andrew takes us on a journey behind the scenes of the Athens Olympics in 2004, the Melbourne Commonwealth Games of 2006, White Night Melbourne, then back to Athens for the Special Olympics and finally we find out what took Andrew back to rural Victoria and what he is up to now.