ROUGH As Guts (RAGS) is getting together this Friday (August 2) for one of their regular reunions.
RAGS was the social club that orchestrated parties and ‘having fun’ in Airlie Beach, during the late 1970s and through the 1980s.
‘Booze cruises’, music ‘extravaganzas’ and general merriment were all on the agenda in a town that was just starting to grow, with the only social hangouts at the time being the Village, Wanderers Resort and the Airlie Beach Hotel.
Organised every five years (they used to be annual), the Rags Reunions have become almost as legendary as the group’s antics all those years ago!
“We had booze cruises on Bacchus D [yacht], we joined in Fun Races, we had touch football competitions, and music extravaganzas as we called them,” reunion organiser Ashely Kennedy said.
“Sometimes we would have between a thousand and one-and-a-half-thousand people in the pub.
“I became RAGs president in 1979, as I was working at the Airlie Beach Hotel at the time, but the club started a couple of years before that.”
All the money raised from the social events went to local charities and organisations, including the ambos.
“We would get a group together and fix up people’s houses if they were in need – there were a lot of tradies and builders in town then.
“It was the kick-start of the Airlie Beach expansion.”
Mr Kennedy is now retired and has come back from Western Australia for the reunion.
As well as partying when he lived in Airlie Beach, he was also very involved with the burgeoning sports scene, including touch football and outrigging, and he was on the committee of the [new] sports park, in Jubilee Pocket.
In 2000, Mr Kennedy and local sports stalwart Peter Chengody carried the Olympic Torch from the sports park to Airlie Beach, with the flame remaining in Airlie overnight.
“We put on a big event for everyone in the evening,” Mr Kennedy said.
The RAGs Reunion will be held at the Airlie Beach Hotel, on Friday, August 2, 2024 – ‘out the back’ by the pool – and everyone is welcome.
“If you were around ‘back then’ come and say hi to some old faces,” Mr Kennedy, who has had 50 RAGs Reunion t-shirts printed for the occasion, said.
The event runs from 1pm to 8pm.
