The Big Group: meet the power couple behind Australia’s most unforgettable parties
Bruce and Chyka Keebaugh of The Big Group talk memorable parties, their move into Sydney and creating a sanctuary at home.
For decades rock stars, royalty and billionaires have enlisted elite event planners Bruce and Chyka Keebaugh’s The Big Group to host their opulent parties. Anyone who’s anyone will have been to an epic private party, corporate function or large-scale special event conceived and expertly executed by the dynamic team.
The Big Group has long been the go-to planner and caterer for Melbourne’s social set, corporate giants and A-list events, such as the F1 Grand Prix and Melbourne Cup Carnival. It is now cementing its signature style in Sydney with striking new venues at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Ilumina at 1 Elizabeth CBD precinct.
It’s a long way from the Keebaughs’ humble beginnings: the entrepreneurial and energetic young couple started the business with just $500 in 1990.
“Chyks was the Cordon Bleu-trained chef and the Constance Spry florist, and I was the dumb waiter, and we went out and built a business in boardrooms. We’d get up at four in the morning, go to the market, fill my Ford EA wagon with food and stuff, come back, cook it in Chyks’s mum’s kitchen, then go off and do one boardroom lunch for six people,” Bruce says.
One lunch a day grew to two, and before long, they were in demand for events at the top advertising agencies in town. But the turning point came in 1992 when they were asked to manage the lavish launch of the Southgate precinct opposite Flinders Street Station with 7500 guests.
“I’ll never forget they gave the cheque to us. And I think in those days, it was probably about $600,000, which would be $3 million or $4 million now,” Bruce says.
Chyka recalls: “It was an amazing event. We got all our friends, cousins, aunties, sisters, everybody (involved).
“Bruce’s mother got on the Singer sewing machine and made us all the cravats for 700 staff. We spent all our money on branded aprons and business cards.”
While they have led events in Sydney for decades, their move to managing more permanent venues was prompted by forced reflection during covid, Bruce says.
“We learned a lot about ourselves and about the hospitality industry. Standing down 1400 staff overnight was not the easiest thing. I thought, ‘We’re not going to let that define us and be the swan song of 30-plus years of a really incredible business’. We had been asked to go to Sydney for so many years, we thought it was absolutely the right time.”
Covid also presented the opportunity to reflect on the enormity and diversity of the projects delivered by The Big Group over the years. It inspired a coffee-table book, By Invitation Only, to be released in March.
“Money’s one thing, but your emotional connection to what you’ve done and built is a totally different thing. That was a really big line in the sand for me, and that was one of the reasons I’ve done this book, which is a retrospective of all the major international and national work we’ve done in the private wealth sector,” Bruce says.
“It was a very emotional journey for me to look back and curate the images and the stories of these incredible events that nobody really ever gets to see. We work in the world of the temporary and often say to our creative team, ‘If we were architects, there’d be a building left there’. Unfortunately, so much of what we do at a very high level globally is built and experienced by a very rarefied few for a very rare amount of time, and then it goes away.”
For many years The Big Group has masterfully executed extravagant private functions behind the gilded gates of Toorak and Bellevue Hill and throughout the UAE, orchestrating events for royal families.
“A big part of The Big Group is corporate, but this private world is a very interesting landscape. For all the millions and millions of dollars that are spent on these beautiful events, nothing’s left on Monday,” Bruce says.
“We walk away, and the only thing we leave them with is the memory of the experience leading up to and what happened that night. And that’s a really important obligation to get right, but that’s what makes us work really hard and brings me joy.”
Among some of the most incredible concepts they have brought to life is a 1.5-kilometre dessert buffet created for the royal family of Abu Dhabi.
“They had their own airline, so the plane would basically land in Tullamarine. Our chefs would have been baking, cooking, creating. The truck would go to the back of the plane with hundreds and hundreds of cakes and, 12 hours later, land in Abu Dhabi. Then, we created this 1.5-kilometre-long buffet of desserts. It started at pale pink and went through to the deepest pink ombré all the way through,” Bruce says.
One of his favourite events was for the wedding of a Melbourne family, which required organising an elephant on which the bride and groom would leave.
“I’ve gotten on the walkie-talkie and said, ‘Where’s the elephant? The bride’s ready to go’. And they said, ‘Um, you mean the elephants?’ And I said, ‘No, I mean the elephant. We want one’. They said, ‘Well, there’s not one, there are six because the whole family has to come together.’ You can’t just have one, or they get upset,” he says.
While they love to create magical moments for their clients, Bruce and Chyka say their most treasured memories come from the private parties they host at their magnificent Main Ridge weekender, Greenacre.
They purchased the property in the exclusive Mornington Peninsula enclave 10 years ago. They have renovated and added to it multiple times since, most recently including a glass conservatory overlooking their spectacular garden designed by landscape architect and friend, Paul Bangay.
“We live a very busy and international life; we rarely stop. We both have very dynamic individual businesses. It’s only when we get to our beloved Greenacre that we stop. Stop to pick from the veggie gardens, stop to read, stop to enjoy the sunshine or the fireplace, stop to spend time with the people we love the most,” Bruce says.
“We have had so many parties at Greenacre, but for Chyka and me, it is Christmas when our children and their partners return from abroad, and we are together as a family for a moment, that means the most. Chyks loves Christmas, and we have multiple trees, scary matching PJs for all our family and house guests, and then a very big, long lazy luncheon with great mates, Christmas orphans and family.”
While they have dedicated decades to their business, they say their greatest achievements are their two children, daughter Francesca (Chessie, 30) and son Benjamin (BJ, 28).
“One of the proudest things in my life is that we have two children that, as they grew up, had to come to every event with us, where they would fold napkins, put on chair covers, unpack plates, all the rest of it,” Chyka says. “I had huge guilt thinking, ‘This is so unfair on a Saturday; this is what we’re dragging them off to do’. But now both have the most unbelievable work ethic and are both leaders in their own fields.”
BJ recently became engaged to his partner Abbi, and the Keebaughs have set to work planning their engagement party and wedding.
“Let me tell you, that is probably the most exciting thing because we’ve worked on everybody else’s kids’ weddings and now we get to do it for us,” she says. “It’s full circle for The Big Group.”
This story is from the December issue of WISH.
