A brief history of Transformal

This article is an edited extract from my upcoming auto-biography  
“My Knight’s Quest”

The TransFormal weekends I organised in Katoomba for nine years were undoubtedly a highlight of my life; the pinnacle of my work as an organizer for the transgender community. The preparation for each event took over half the year; it was a labour of love and I didn’t resent the time I ploughed into perfecting each one. 

By 2009 I had left Seahorse and was enjoying an active social life through my involvement in my TrannyRadio website.  The site membership included a significant number of socialites active in Sydney; we couldn’t organise enough restaurant nights, theatre trips and other events for this group. There was a lot of frustration with Seahorse amongst the Sydney social cohort, many influencers adopted an anti-Seahorse position, a position that I felt was unfair.  There was a marked difference between the members of this TrannyRadio social group who were out most weekends and Seahorse which was still closeted offering a reclusive meeting each month. Sadly, many people in both organisations couldn’t understand that the two groups were addressing different demographics.

The annual Seahorse Ball acted as a focus for anti-Seahorse sentiment even though when it had started, it was a highlight of the transgender calendar in Sydney.  Unfortunately, the Ball was the same every year, it encapsulated the conservative nature of Seahorse where little changes. This was comforting to some, but not to the TrannyRadio agitators. As the main organizer for the group, I started to come under increasing pressure to create our own signature event.

As well as the socialites there was also a smaller but vocal group in TrannyRadio who felt we needed to be involved in serious discussions in the trans space.  Harking back to the early days of Seahorse Australia they felt we needed to organize a conference.  Typically the people who said we needed to have such an event hadn’t the slightest knowledge about how to organise it.  So there was plenty of talking and precious little action.

I didn’t want to upset any more people in Seahorse than I’d already managed to offside in leaving, so  I was looking for a way to satisfy the agitators, without going head-to-head with their Ball. A solution came to us one evening when we were at a party in the Taxi Club. The top floor of the Taxi Club had, by then, been refurbished and was quite comfortable, even the toilets felt safe. I was sitting at a bar table with Caroline, and we were going through all the venues we had looked at and reviewing ideas to create an event that wasn’t a Ball. The light bulb moment …..was a glass of red wine that I had been served. The wine was undrinkable; the bottle must have been opened days before. So whilst we sat there and I pretended to drink, an idea coalesced, the idea of how we could organise something which wasn’t hidden away in a function room, an event that didn’t have a sit-down meal or a theme, an event which included staying overnight somewhere.  As I was only contracting part-time I had the time to see where the idea took us, and a search for wedding venues led me to the Blue Mountains and the historic Carrington Hotel.  I soon realised that this could work because I now had found a venue for a residential weekend, not a one-evening spectacular ball.  And most importantly the conceptual event already had a name thanks to that undrinkable glass of red; it would be TransFormal….. I walked into the Carrington Hotel and talked to the staff about running an event there.  It was the start of an extremely good relationship with the events team at the hotel; to be honest, I think they enjoyed the challenge of putting together something so different from a wedding or a business conference. It was clear after our first meeting that, together, we could develop a unique event.

At the start, I had doubts that we could pull off the first Transformal.  The challenge with event organising is that it costs you a lot of money upfront, the pull-out fees are crippling if you need to cancel, and then you only make a profit on the last few tickets sold.  The Carrington Hotel did a lot to soften the potential financial blow that I faced. It was a fantasy to think that the event would make a little bit of money on the side. Out of the nine TransFormals, only one made any significant profit and I blew that on a dinner for my helpers!  The event was designed so it could be scaled up or back depending on ticket sales. As we sold more tickets I committed to more activities, and so any potential surplus was directly ploughed back into enhancing the guests’ weekend.

Starting small, the first Transformal was planned as just a Saturday night celebration. I created a website, advertised the event, and it sold out virtually straight away.  It turned out that we had created the dream event that people wanted.  I couldn’t add more tickets because the event was constrained by the size of the hotel, and my dislike of large gatherings. I wanted a quality boutique event, not an uncontrollable crowd.  But I could make the event longer; so I added tickets for a meal out on Friday night.  That too sold out! The first Transformal pulled guests from all over Australia (including Perth). At the last TransFormal, there were three guests from Western Australia and one from New Zealand. This was quite an achievement as it would no doubt have been an expensive experience for them.

I looked to add workshops and talks during the day that were more aligned with the interest in hosting a conference.  I’ve always liked discussing the serious side of the transgender experience and despite being immersed for a weekend by guests who were out to have a good party, I knew darker issues were always lurking under the surface. Each year I tried to squeeze some serious topics into Transformal. I would invite a guest to facilitate discussions; we would do Q&A sessions based on the ABC TV program, and run support meetings for partners.  Because the guests were in the hotel all weekend I could arrange parallel threads and they could choose which activities they wanted to be part of – whether they wanted to drink or think.

I’ve never allowed advertising on my websites and this caution about embracing commercial partners extended to Transformal.  I felt that many of the businesses that were targeting trans women were being a bit opportunistic.  Transformal was never a cheap weekend away, it attracted a demographic of cashed-up, middle-aged trans-women who were ready to spend to get the ultimate experience. It was inevitable that the event would attract vendors who saw this captive audience as an opportunity for their business. I tried to engage only those commercial partners who were prepared to put as much into the event as they were going to take away.

It was difficult to strike the right balance between the ticketed events, the serious breakouts, and the appetite for commercial companies to get access to the attendees.  I have to say that the crowd rarely embraced the serious content as much as I would have hoped;  that was a big disappointment for me.  Transformal was never going to morph to be like that early Seahorse conference.  The fun things that we scheduled were always immensely popular such as “How to do Burlesque Dancing”, “How to Paint Nails”, and  “How to Walk the Catwalk”.  The need to find out how to do things was very strong.

The hotel gave us free breakout rooms during the day because they were enamoured with us as a group; they were making good money out of us. The guests consumed a lot of alcohol and I wouldn’t include drinks packages in the ticket (as it discriminates against those who don’t drink). At the end of the day, if you are not particularly happy about where your quest is heading, and you want to have a good weekend celebrating your gender, then many choose alcohol to help get there. Of course, the hotel was only too happy to oblige with a cash bar!

Transformal flourished and grew in a way that a ball couldn’t. The concept of a mass catered meal with a drink package and a band to dance to might still be the norm for a wedding but it was going out of fashion as a social event. With a price tag of over $100 just for an evening, people rightly figured they could spend that money a lot better somewhere else. 

Each year I tried to excel over the previous Transformal.  I used a detailed exit survey from the guests to weed out the aspects of the weekend that were sub-par and introduce new ideas.  The ninth Transformal was just so good!  It went so smoothly that I was on a high all weekend. The hotel even lined up a vintage antique coach from the 1930s for the group.  On Sunday the lucky guests piled into it and headed off to one of the scenic lookouts in the Blue Mountains.  The weather was fine,  the Gods loved us.  A white tablecloth was laid, out came the bubbly and the nibbles, and the guests stood on the lookout admiring the view whilst hotel staff came round and filled up their glasses.  It was so surreal, so good, I mentally went ‘Tick’ – ‘Done That’  – ‘Time to move on’!

…….

For many TransFormal was a life-changing event.  It showed guests that they could have a richer life than being closeted or completely suppressed.  Each year after the event I would get touching emails saying, “Transformal has changed our life completely”.  But if you have a life-changing experience, rule number one is don’t try repeating it.  When you have a fantastic holiday, don’t go back to the same place again, because it is never as good the second time round.  And so I can’t complain that so many happy guests didn’t come back for the next Transformal. I wished them well in their future quest.

………

You have to know when it is time to stop things and start something else.  My life has had a lot of change which I embrace, and I know you can’t change if you don’t stop things and create some space.  In the end, my health forced me to stop and there wasn’t a tenth Transformal. Many people were intensely disappointed. Some people felt they could jump in and replicate it. But the reality is that unless you’ve done organising of this scale, you don’t realise just what a phenomenal amount of work is involved.