Cam Scott

He paid me in beer. 

It was always the same scenario. ‘I need a deck, and I can’t afford it. How can I get it built?’ My thirtieth was coming up, so we arranged a beer barter. ‘You pay for the materials and I’ll build the deck.’ Everything was slapped together. There was no time. If you wanted to build something, you had to do it quickly. When Jerome asked me to put the laserlite on the frame I said, ‘yes, but I can’t work with people under it’. Of course, when I arrived there were 20 people sitting right under it. I’ve got nail guns going, and drop saws, and Jerome’s moving them around. ‘Do you mind moving over there? Cam’s got to cut some timber.’ Meanwhile, I’m worried about a nail ricocheting and killing someone. That deck was the only thing that didn’t fall apart in that place. We broke into Myer to some scrounge some materials. It was where the SMC skate shop used to be, so it had all the railings and timber we needed.

I got 100 people to the bar for my thirtieth and Monkey DJ’d behind the air-conditioning unit that was where the sewerage system used to go. The sewage came from a squatter in the building upstairs and ran directly into the drain. It stank constantly. I covered it with silicone and glass before my birthday because I couldn’t have it stinking like shit in there. We looked at that air-conditioning unit so many times trying to figure out where we could move it, but eventually things just got built around it.

When Lounge was renovating we were grabbing their castoffs out of the dumpster. Jerome was in one of the dumpsters when one of the smackies still living in the laneway, Les, came up and started doing a crazy dance because we were taking things out of the trash. Then he jumped in and started grabbing stuff out for himself.

Part of the deal was that I would literally work for nothing and Jerome would tell me everything he knew to help me start Blue Tile Lounge. One day, I had the shits with the world. I had no money. I couldn’t even borrow money because I was a single dad and I’d spent it all on legal fees. So I rang up Jerome and said, ‘right, I’m coming in, time to put it all down on paper.’ I took in my diary, and wrote down every coffee contact, every beer contact, and every phone number. I’ve still got that diary at home. That same day I ran into Johnny who told me about a carpentry job across the road. He knew I’d be there because if you ever needed to find anyone, they were at St Jerome’s. You wouldn’t use phones, you’d just rock up. I got all the chick’s details off of Johnny, gave her a call and ended up having to do the quote on a Saturday. 

My daughter was 18 months old at the time, so when I wasn’t working during the week, I always had her. I went in with my daughter and met this girl. She was cool with the baby so on the second day of work I thought I’d ask her out on a date. If you were involved in St Jerome’s in the early days, it was handy. She held out for a couple of days, but then we went and had a drink at St Jerome’s. That was our first date. Now I’m married to her. We’ve got two other children and we started Blue Tile Lounge together.

When the guys from the Avalanches played, there was a queue both ways down the laneway and you literally couldn’t move. I remember going to the footy with Jerome, and afterwards we went to get a drink at his bar. We were standing out the front and he said, ‘lets go somewhere else for a drink’, because we literally couldn’t get in.

Towards the end, when the generators were running, my wife Jess and I went in to try and have a beer and a chat. The music was up so loud to dry drown out the generators. But there were still be people everywhere, sitting around, reading a book, or on their computer. They just didn’t care.