At the 25th Rotary Cartoon Awards, held next door to the Bunker Cartoon Gallery (the Bridge Club) on the Friday night on October 25th, the winners were:
Australian Section:
Best Cartoon, Political: David Pope
Best Cartoon, Open: Mark Lynch
Best Cartoon, Sports: David Rowe
Best Comic Strip: Jules Faber
Best Caricature of a well-known person: Eric Lobbecke
Special Topic ('Joy of Aging'): Phil Judd
International Section:
Winner (with the theme of 'Cycling'): Buzhkov Miroslav
Cartoon of the Year: David Rowe
At the Australian Cartoonists' Association Awards (announced on the Saturday night on October 26th at the Novotel Coff Harbour), the winners were:
Illustrator: Anton Emdin
Comic Strip Artist: Gary Clark
Gary also won a Special Award commemorating his reaching 10,000 daily 'Swamp' strips: an astonishing achievement, and a well-deserved Award!
Single Gag Cartoonist: Glen Le Lievre
Caricaturist: Greg Rowe
Editorial/Political Cartoonist: Mark Knight
Comic Book Artist: Anton Emdin
Best Cartoon on the Night (with "Where's Roger?" as the theme): Grant Brown
Cartoonist of the Year: Anton Emdin

Rather than living it up at the Hotel Novotel with most of the other cartoonists, I booked a share bed at the local Youth Hostel -- it was closer to the city centre and allowed for a bit of independence from the other gang. Before I had chance to book in, however, Carlene gave me a phone call with the wonderful news that Lora had given birth to her second child. DUSTIN TOBY was born at 1601hrs in Bendigo (Victoria) on the same day as his auntie PJ! He was 35.5cm long and 3.3kgs in weight*....
*My thanks to Peter Hill for converting my imperial measurements!
The girls were all due to leave the following morning, and I returned home from the Rotary Awards quite late (all were asleep at the time). The following morning, I took my shower (early at 0630 a.m.), only to discover I had left my room key in the room. The Office was not open until 9 a.m., the time the Australian Cartoonists' Association workshops were to get underway. I don't think I impressed my room-mates with my repeated knocking to seek to gain access to the room: a most disgrunted face opened the door!