MOUNT Isa mining engineer Harry Mounsey, 24, could not believe the national reaction when he broke the news of the location for Triple J’s One Night Stand by video.
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He never thought he could get more attention than he did last year by winning Australia’s best butt competition at the Dirt N Dust festival in Julia Creek. It was a competition attracting the attention and criticism of the New York Post. But Mr Mounsey was wrong.
“It has actually been insane. My phone has been bloody going completely banana sandwich. It’s been going off,” he said.
“To get any work done I had to put my phone on silent and put it in my bag. On Facebook the friends requests and notifications have been a constant stream at the moment.”
But he loved the attention.
Mr Mounsey comes from Moogerah in south east Queensland. He worked in Mount Isa during university holidays and loved the lifestyle so much he took on a full-time position almost three years ago. He’s been active in the local sporting scene; from playing in the Cloncurry rugby union team, and is currently the vice-president of the local Tigers AFL club.
The first Mr Mounsey knew about One Night Stand was when ABC North West staff, including Harriet Tatham, approached him to ask if he wanted to be in a video. “They didn’t tell me the truth at first. They said we’re just going to make a video of Mount Isa to suss out if I was interested,” he said.
“I’d just met them recently. They knew I won the best butt at Julia Creek and they needed someone they could trust not to let out the secret. They said ‘you’re funny and a bit confident, let’s do it!’.
“I said ‘hell yeah, I love the camera, get me in front of it’ and they eventually had to tell me what it was for. I was just over the moon.”
Mr Mounsey and ABC staff recently camped out over several weekends to film the footage needed but he had not seen the final product until it was published. “Harriet did all the leg work really. I was just the face in front of the camera,” he said. A colleague of Ms Tatham had praised her for how she showcased the North West.
“A couple of the interviews were golden,” Mr Mounsey said. “I just met that man who said the line ‘the weather’s hot and so are the women and the men are hard as the rocks they blast,’ and I thought ‘oh my god, that is brilliant.”
Mr Mounsey was relieved that the secret was now out. “It was nearly killing me,” Mr Mounsey said. “People were wondering where it was going, saying ‘I hope it comes to Mount Isa.’ I would say ‘of course not, it wouldn’t be coming here’, but secretly thinking ‘God dammit.’”
He was excited to be able to watch Tash Sultana.
He had already seen her perform live when he camped at the last Woodford Folk Festival.