Inflation 1986: Girls’ Night On the Town

It’s 1986, and Birdie is in her mid twenties. It’s the era of big hair, and big shoulder pads. Never one to hide her light under a bushel, Birdie sports both, with her hair wrapped in a high Madonna-style ponytail, and shoulders clad in a massive leopard print coat. “I loved that coat,” Birdie says. It came from Clarence Chai, an ‘amazing’ shop in Collins St, Melbourne. Her girlfriend Louise made her earrings from black resin and rhinestones. (Big earrings were big then too.)

It’s a girls’ night out on the town, and Birdie is at Inflation nightclub with three friends. Two of them – Zan and Sherine, sisters – were singers in hot bands: Zan in funk-rock band I’m Talking, and Sherine in the seven-piece pop/rock band Big Pig. It was Zan’s big night: she was recording a film clip for the song Trust Me, a current hit – hence the enormous sequinned stars! Her other friend Jasmine, Birdie adds, always sported a great pillbox hat. All are wearing that other Eighties staple: frosty eyeshadow.

Birdie herself was staying at the Regency Hotel with her friend who was a music reporter for the National Times. She was on the road with Cyndi Lauper, so she and Birdie were hanging out in an all-expenses-paid hotel room waiting to chat to Cyndi. Ah, good times.