Coffs Harbour 2013

First of all, for those with little time, I announce all the Winners in all of  the Cartooning Awards, all held in the beautiful city of Coffs Harbour in the last week in October....

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

Dustin meets his proud sister Lollie.

Now for those who have a little more time, let me tell you some of the background excitement behind the scenes. It was a difficult decision to go this year. For those of you who have been reading this Blog for a while will recall, I missed the  Stanley Awards last year because our daughter Lora married. And this year the Rotary Awards were held on another daughter (PJ)'s 29th birthday. But with some encouragement from Carlene, I was packed and sent off to enjoy the Australian Cartooning Events of the Year. Mind you, I had hoped to have had a book or two to Launch or sell, but alas it was not meant to be....
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!

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A Picture of the Publisher and writer of this Blog, Nat Karmichael, celebrating being a grand-dad for the 10th time!!

Rob Feldman in front of his short-listed, Nominated cartoon. Both photos courtesy of Steve Little.

A couple of funny things happened during the course of the stay that I shall share with you...   FIrstly, the bookings to stay at the YHA venue was done (by myself) on the internet. Imagine my surprise to discover, on arrival, that I had been booked into a room of girls!  Obviously, they had assumed that "Nat" was female in gender!  There was a bit of "creative manovering" by the reception staff (who were good about it), but as the Hostel was all booked out... I actually did have to bunk down with three girls!! 
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!