A look back on Toowoomba’s Bon Amici open mic nights
Bon Amici open mic nights were part of Toowoomba culture which shaped a generation coming-of-age at the turn of the century. We take a look back at what made those nights.
Entertainment
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Before I started as a reporter at The Chronicle in February this year, I went to pay my respects to a former workplace of mine – Bon Amici Cafe, which ironically was located in the Chronicle Building.
It’s been more than 15 years since I worked at the cafe, and for that matter, even lived in Toowoomba, but to my surprise the Bon Amici signage remained over an empty shop front.
It seems it was never taken down despite being replaced as Bon Amici Wine Bar and Restaurant and most recently, Cork & Lever, who now have the space next door.
During my first year studying at the University of Southern Queensland I worked at Bons, or Bonnos, as it was affectionately called, morning, days and nights.
Here I found another world within the starkly conservative Toowoomba I had known during my school years.
It was a place where the misfits found home, you could smoke inside, a toilet key with a fish CD stacker would etch in gossip of the town on the staircase wall up to the bathroom on the second floor, the lounges would let you sink into them and the staff would never hurry you on.
“I never understood why it was called Bon Amici – it’s two different languages,” said James Burgoyne, who bought the cafe off Michelle Alroe in 2001, and sold it onto Michael Cook in 2006.
It was under the ownership of James with his partner, Minna, when Bon Amici earned its fame, most notably in the Tuesday night open mic nights, where musicians, actors, artists and anyone with a creative bent would take the mic and express themselves.
The store was open from 7am until late, seven days a week, and 249 days of the year, James and Minna would turn up at around 6.30am, open the doors, start up the coffee machine, turn on Norah Jones on repeat and finally head home midafternoon, leaving the place to two of their some five staff members.
It was one of their staff that suggested they run the open mic night, and the first act set the scene.
“It was a guy who played the William Tell overture on his head and set the tone for many years,” Mr Burgoyne said.
Mick Burns, Michael Cook, and Danny Ford had their time hosting the event, and the small space would often have attempts at being a live music venue, often packing out, especially when it was taken over by Michael Cook in 2007.
“We made a name for ourselves as a small venue who took great care of bands, and because of that acts that were way too ‘big’ for a rom that ‘small’ just kept coming,” Mr Cook said.
In his five years owning the space he managed to get bands like Bob Evans, Tim Rogers, Cloud Control and Megan Washington.
The iconic two-storey Chronicle Building is all too familiar to me, with its two granite pillars, and an European-inspired mini arcade and a tiled floor with arched doorways.
When it was opened in November 1928 it was described by the Brisbane Courier as “probably the most imposing and up-to-date newspaper office in Queensland outside the metropolis”.
Marking the occasion of the new editorial, business and mechanical home of the Toowoomba Chronicle, a “very large number of people” were invited to watch a “special issue of the Chronicle” be printed at the new location.
And just as the Chronicle has moved into four different offices over the past hundred years, other tenants also have come and gone, with mainstays being Clewett, Corser and Drummond (now still trading as Clewett Lawyers), since the 1930s and Bon Amici Cafe since the early 2000s.
More than a decade has passed since then, and while only empty since late last year, the cafe feels like it is a sign of the times, where cost-of-living is making it harder to run a profitable hospitality businesses, and long-established live music venues, such as the Zoo in Brisbane, are shutting down.
Whatever comes in the next decade, whether that’s offline or online, I only hope people continue to find spaces in this city that are as accepting of the strange and eccentric as Bon Amici was.
What are your memories of Bon Amici? Tell us in the comments below.
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