LISMORE’S FAMOUS TROPICAL FRUITS NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY ATTRACTS A FRIENDLY CROWD… VERY FRIENDLY, DISCOVERED JACK LADD.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARKHAM LANE.

REVELLERS AT THE 2017 NEW YEAR’S EVE TROPICAL FRUITS PARTY.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS ACCOMPANYING THIS STORY ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT THE PEOPLE OR EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THE TEXT, WHICH IS A WORK OF FICTION BY JACK LADD.

WE ALL HAVE firsts. First jobs, first pets, first homes. First dates, first boyfriends, first kisses, first times. Whatever the first, that rush of something new is exhilarating.

Nothing like popping a cherry.

For me, one particularly sumptuous pop, was Tropical Fruits, the New Year’s festival in Lismore on the north coast of New South Wales. It’s way out of the city, but filled with sights and sounds more mesmerising than any I’d see on a regular day down Oxford Street. I’d contemplated going for years, but didn’t have a tent or the means to drive up. That fateful year, however, a friend had a spare seat in his car so I bit the bullet.

Over four nights I savoured many firsts, like the joy of a job well done: setting up camp under the blazing NSW sun, sweaty and exhausted from a ten-hour drive from Sydney. Drinking by firelight, mingling under a dazzling star show, not to mention a head-swimming spin on an openair dancefloor as fireworks ignited the sky into a kaleidoscopic explosion of colour and sound and scent, fabulously ushering in another year.

But it’s not those moments that linger in my heart. They’re fantastic memories, sure, but it was what happened on the first night. A night I’ve fantasised over ever since, longing to be back at Fruits. It began with a smile.