ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE tricks is to tell a punter to go for a walk around the block, or to come back in an hour.
He says seeing the look on someone’s face when you tell them they’re not coming in will never get old.
You could walk around the block until the sun comes up and he reckons you’d still struggle to get through the door. There’s debate whether answering his questions honestly will better your chances at getting past him, others agree that lying to his face about how many drinks and drugs you’ve consumed is the way to go.
Despite all these things, local bouncer Tarquin Hargraves says he doesn’t have a God complex – but that’s not what the average reveller thinks.
Guarding the entrance to North Betoota’s famous Sinning Pit Nitespot, the 24-year-old Brazillian Ju-Jitsu instructor cuts an imposing figure to anybody trying to slip past him and onto what’s known as the stickiest dance floor in the Eromanga basin.
“I’m just here to make sure everybody has a safe night out, which means if I think you’ll cause me headaches later on, I won’t be letting you in,” he said.
“And if you cause trouble in my Sinning Pit, I will fold you like a director’s chair and throw you out on your arse,”
“We tolerate lewd acts, but only in the darker corners of the premises. If me, or any of my staff catch you key-banging ket and you don’t have any for us, we’ll put you to sleep and leave you out the back beside the dumpsters,”
“I don’t see myself as a God, more of a King’s Knight. The owner is the King around here.”
However, the general Betootanese opinion surrounding Mr Hargraves is that he’s a bag of shit with a God complex.
He shot to local fame in 2006 after attempting to remove local pastoralist Jack H. Pearson from the venue during his son’s 21st birthday party. After asking Mr Pearson numerous times to leave, he instructed bar staff not to serve the 76-year-old, which was when things got hairy.
Grabbing Pearson by the arm, Hargraves’s efforts to subdue the career cattleman were met with a violent blow to the head, after requesting the dumb bushie recite The Man From Snowy River backwards while hopping on one foot to prove he wasn’t intoxicated.
A court later heard that the security professional was punched so hard in the forehead that he lost the ability to blink on his own accord for over a week.
Pearson was found not guilty on grounds that it was in the town’s best interests that he remain free.
