Bundaberg Paint and Sip Recap at The Waves Sports Club: Whales, Wails and Pink Skies

Bundaberg, you brought the lungs, the leg warmers and a lot of pink paint. The Waves Sports Club filled up with over a hundred painters, a horizon full of humpbacks and an 80s and 90s singalong that ran loud enough to be heard from Hervey Bay to the Burnett. Lotti Rem hit the mic. The Waves opened the private bar and kept the room well lubricated. We were painting Whale, a humpback breaching out of a moody ocean with a wild sky going up in flames behind her. Trent jumped on the stage to walk the room through every stroke. James grabbed the second mic and ran the room with the kind of dad jokes that should not work and somehow always do. Maybe the audience was laughing at him. Maybe they were laughing with him. Honestly, nobody knows. The result either way was the same. Brushes moving. Hips moving. Bar moving. Whales breaching. A bloody cracker of a Bundaberg night, and we got the loudest bits on camera.

The Waves wound up the welcome wagon

The Waves Sports Club sits right in the heart of Bundaberg and is one of the biggest function venues we visit on the Wide Bay Burnett run. Over a hundred easels lined up. A massive stage at one end. A private bar at the other. Just enough room in between to lose yourself in the best way. The Waves team had the bar built, stocked and humming before the first guest pushed through the doors, kept the drinks moving all night, and worked alongside our crew like they had been running paint and sip in Bundaberg with us for years.

There is something about a full house of a hundred plus painters that does not just lift a night. It puts a roof on it. The room walks in, chatters into the chairs in groups of four and six, leans over to greet the table next door, and by the time the first brush hits the first palette, the noise has shifted from chatter to laughter. Then Lotti hits the mic and the laughter shifts to singing. Then the singing shifts to belting. The Waves staff stayed close to the bar and even closer to the room. The Bundaberg Ginger Beer cans were stacking up on the tables before the moon was properly up.

The dress code did not need much encouragement. Bundaberg arrived in colour. Pink tutus, neon leg warmers, leopard-print bows, headbands in every shade off the colour wheel, fanny packs strapped on for the dance moves nobody wanted to admit they were planning. Half the room came styled like they were heading back to a school disco in 1987, and the other half came determined to outdress them by midnight. They both won. The senior couples who came along just to paint and have a glass of red ended up with the best seats in the house for the whole production.

Whales, wails and a wild old sky

The painting on the easel for the night was called Whale, and Whale she was. A humpback breaching out of a wild ocean, splashes flying, a moody sunset going up in flames behind her. Sounds simple. Then you sit down with a blank canvas and a thrashing sea to tackle, remember that the last time you painted anything with a tail on it was a Year 4 worksheet, and the easel starts to look a bit like a trick.

This is the bit we love about how Paint Juicy runs a session. We hang Trent's example works around the room before the night starts. A pink whale on one wall. A blue and black whale on another. A few more besides. The brief is simple. We will show you how to put a whale together stroke by stroke. The colours are entirely up to you. Express yourself. Pick the palette that matches the mood you arrived in, not the mood of the example on the easel. The blue ones are gorgeous. The pink ones are unreal. The black ones are moodier than a Tuesday. None of them are the wrong answer.

Bundaberg took the brief and ran with it. Look around the room at the end of the night and you would have seen whales in every colour imaginable. Pink whales surfing pink sunsets. Purple whales breaking through purple waves. Classic blue humpbacks rising into the kind of moody sky that puts you straight back on a Fraser Coast headland watching the real migration go past. One painter dropped a pod of smaller whales into the foreground to keep her big one company. Plenty signed off with a little flourish in the corner that turned a copy of the reference into something of their very own.

There is no right answer with this painting, only the answer the painter brings to it. That is part of the reason we run it this way. Beginners arrive nervous, convinced they are about to spend the night making something they will be embarrassed by. Then they put down the first wash, the room hits the first chorus of the night, and the canvas slowly stops being a test. By the time the whale itself goes on, painters have stopped checking the reference. By the time the splashes go on, they are committing. By the time it is signed, every canvas in the room belongs to its painter and to no one else. Not a single canvas walked out looking like it had no right to hang above a fireplace.

Lotti led, the room followed, the leg warmers held

Here is the truth about 80s and 90s singalong nights in Bundaberg. The town remembers every word. Lotti Rem hit the first track and the entire Waves Sports Club confirmed it inside thirty seconds. Loudly. Mostly in tune. Glasses going up, brushes going down, every chorus coming back around like an old friend who never left. The room got loud. Then it got louder. Then someone hit a note nobody saw coming and the rest of the room rose to meet it.

Then came the karaoke moment. Mums and daughters sharing the same mic. Groups of gal pals taking the stage two and three at a time, leg warmers up, tutus up, voices up. We do not know how many of those duets had ever happened before the night, and we do not really care. They all went down like the room had been waiting years for them. Some of those mum and daughter mic moments are going to outlast the canvases on the wall.

Trent jumped up on the stage with Lotti for the painting demos to walk the room through every step. Stand a metre back, get the proportions, layer the dark first, bring the light back at the end, and the splashes are the bit nobody overdoes, so go big. Then he handed the mic back. Lotti's setlist swung the room from anthem to anthem. Whitney for the warm-up. Bonnie Tyler when the brushes needed steadying. A song or two that nobody saw coming, and a few that the whole room had been waiting for. We will not name every track that made the cut. Some things are sacred. But you can guess.

This is the part our guests bring up again and again, long after the paint has dried. The canvas is the souvenir you take home. The singalong is the bit you actually came for, even if you did not know it before you sat down.

Brushes down, dance floor up

By the back half of the night, the easels had done what easels do. The whales were dry. The blue aprons came off. The Waves function room turned itself into a dance floor without anyone needing to call the change. That is the bit that always tells you a paint and sip has actually landed. No one needs to be talked into the dancing. The painting carries the first half. The music carries the rest.

The crowd was every Paint Juicy demographic dropped in one room. Mums with daughters. Sisters with sisters. A handful of partners who got dragged along and quietly loved it. Senior gal pals running the room like they always do. A few blokes who came along for the ride and stayed for the singalong. What really made the night though was the number of faces we recognised from previous Bundaberg sessions. Plenty of returning regulars in that room. Paint Juicy gets a lot of repeat guests in general, and Bundaberg in particular has a returning crew that books the next one before the paint on the last one has finished drying. Long may that continue.

Have a look for yourself.

Massive thanks to everyone who came along, and to The Waves Sports Club for having us. Bundaberg sits right on the humpback migration route at the top end of the Wide Bay Burnett, with Hervey Bay paint and sip just south of you and Gladstone paint and sip up the highway to the north, so there is almost always another Paint Juicy night warming up close by. We run paint and sip across Queensland and a packed event calendar through the Bundaberg region year-round, including singalong nights from Bargara to Elliott Heads when a venue does us a favour. If you would rather have the whole night to yourselves, a private paint and sip session sorts a hens do, a milestone birthday, a work crew or a family get-together without the stress of herding everyone into a public booking.

See you at the next one. Trent & James.