My alarm was set at 4am.

So of course I woke up at 2:30 and was completely unable to get back to sleep.

When I finally accepted that there was no way I was getting back to sleep I got up and finished getting ready for the day. Fortunately I’d done most of the preparation the night before (at around 11pm but it was still done)

That did however meant I was Suited, Booted and ready to go a full hour and a half before I had to leave. The answer = Two episodes of The Dead Zone. After all I was meeting Nicole DeBoer that day, it seemed fitting to watch the Dead Zone.

My taxi arrived and we swung past Fez’s place and made our way to the train station.

Fast Forward through an uneventful three hours and we arrive at the venue.

At the bottom of the stairs we were asked “VIP or General Admission?” without missing a step we replied “Press” and the let us straight in where we met the wonderful Sandra (who we can’t thank enough for allowing us to cover the weekend) who showed us around a little and pretty much left us to our own devices.

The first thing we saw upon entering the function room where the stage was set up was the entire back wall and corner being dominated by framed autographs of just about every variety.

This was the crew from millennium-world.com.au who we quickly started chatting with and they are now officially “friends of The Wilderness” (Big Shout out to the cupcake suit!!)

The next thing we noticed was a full scale replica HoloDeck Arch.

This belongs to the guys from the USS Tydirium – the Sydney chapter of “Starfleet international” who can be found at www.thety.org

Their arch had LCARS panels set into each side and was generally awesome.

After that we recorded a quick piece and waited as the attendees all gradually made their way into the room. After a while Convention host extraordinaire Peter Budd took the stage and we were off and running. The day started with the photo shoots with both girls and peter, to his credit and 25 years experience, managed to keep the crowd entertained and engaged throughout a slow process.

It finally came to my turn to get my photo taken with the girls.

First up was Nicole DeBoer (who is TINY by the way) she was lovely and we had a quick chat about our interview later in the day.

Next up was the lady who shall henceforth be known as “Cyclone Terry”

Now the important thing everyone needs to remember is that I was wearing my full Starfleet Nemesis Era Captains dress unirofm…..with my sneakers on. Despite being up and allegedly Suited, Booted and Ready to go at 2:30, I forgot to bring my boots to complete the look.

I was in sneakers and Terry was bare foot, due to being ridiculously tall. She noticed this and made a joke about it and we said we should take a photo of our feet instead, but no one would believe that it was really her feet, so she suggested I use my phone to take a feet photo. Since my uniform doesn’t have pockets (I really need to get them modified so they do) I didn’t have my phone on me. But we did have interview time later so we could do it later.

After that was lunch, I wandered off and found a Subway. On the way passing through what people call “The Matrix Tunnel” – the tunnel the car stopped in towards the start of the first film when it was raining. I love spotting film locations in Sydney.

After lunch Nicole DeBoer took the stage. All we heard of that was her intro and “I’m going to answer this before someone inevitably asks – I always get asked what it was like replacing such a beloved character. I Didn’t REPLACE Jadzia, I was a completely different character”

Then we were ushered upstairs to “the green room” inside which we met Cyclone Terry again.

She had an interview with another lot of guys, the link to which I can’t find, before us. He was very professional and even had a camera man with a really cool rig that went over his shoulder.

Then it was “Wilderness” time. I sat on the couch with her and Fez sat opposite with the Mac between us.

That’s right – I was sitting on a couch with the erstwhile Jadzia Dax. I was internally losing my shit. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be sitting and having a discussion with her.

So we did our interview, available on the “In The Wilderness” page and the iTunes feed and probably somewhere on stitcher.

As we finished I reminded her that she wanted to take photos of our feet. She jumped up and we stood together and took a photo of our feet. From there she then stood ON my feet for a better shot then started doing yoga poses. From there she sat on the floor and intertwined our feet and started taking pictures with Fez’s camera.

Now, the word “Surreal” gets tossed around a lot but up to that point it was the most surreal moment of my life (it’d get surpassed the very next day but more on that later)

After thanking her profusely we headed back to the room where the auction was taking place. There were some interesting items for sale, most of which was covered in the podcast. After the auction Cyclone Terry took the stage and we were taken back up to the Green Room for our interview with Nicole. She is one of the nicest, sweetest people I have ever met.

Much less Cyclonic than terry, but still an amazing experience.

The thing with our Nicole interview was, I was thrown off my game by the fact we had been given an exact time limit and one of the minders actually stood there with a countdown timer in my face.

I don’t begrudge this at all, but it was very distracting.

After our time with Terry it’s perfectly understandable.

Then it was back to the function room to catch the end of Terry’s talk, again recapped in our podcast. Nicole joined her onstage at the end it was just amazing to see them just sitting talking to each other.

The autograph session finished the day…or so we thought.

As we stepped into the elevator  to head up to our room we were joined by Nicole DeBoer for our elevator trip. One final chat and we FINALLY made it to our room for some much needed rest.

Up next – Day two and The Boys from The Dwarf.