#NerdsUnite: A story about the time I attempted to crash Russell Crowe's wedding

Jul 10

<editorsnote> HAHAHAAHA it's funny, I put up a section on the site reaching out to readers for cool stories, or if anyone is looking to write for us ... hahahaha omg, did I just get a cool story. Nerds meet Sally ... she's got a story for you, gather round. </editorsnote>

Hiya Jen,

(procrastinating so decided to write you, I figure since I read about so many of your adventures I can return the favour)

It's freezing as I sit here at my computer tonight procrastinating BIG time, I have a psych assessment report to write and an assessment due for uni but I can't seem to get motivated... seriously avoiding. I have a bad habit of doing things last minute, and can still do remarkably well, which frustrates my friends to no end. I tell them I am thinking all the time, piecing things together in my mind, formulating, arranging and generally on overdrive. But I can't put things down into something tangible until I have what I call an "A-Ha! Moment". They don't get it.

But back to me procrastinating, I thought I'd write you about the time my room-mates and I attempted to crash Russell Crowe's wedding and I called Angela Bishop, Sandra Sully by mistake.

It was 2003, I was 18 and it was a year of firsts. I had moved away from my home town of Sydney to live on the mid-north coast in a small beach/tourist town called Coffs Harbour, best known for the big banana, oh yes it is what it sounds like. A big banana. I had begun my first year of uni studying psychology, and I was now old enough to legally drink. I lived on campus which was A-mazing for someone who was particularly shy, needless to say I hadn't put my first moving box down before I hear an American voice yell out "hey man, you had breakfast? want some cereal?" I put my box down and wandered over to eat cereal with a funny exchange student from the States, we sat on his balcony for the rest of the day welcoming other newbies, by midday I had a full pose of new friends. Drunken adventures and complete crazy fun ensued.

We would often try and find things to do, Coffs Harbour is a small town so the night life is limited to local pubs, one or two nightclubs, and local raves in the surrounding valleys. We would go on road trips for no reason and just generally get up to mischief on campus or around town. We would film our adventures with a friends handheld cam. This boring Monday afternoon we had heard that Russell Crowe was getting married at his farm in Nana Glen, not far from Coffs. So a group of five of us crammed into a tiny second-hand car with the handheld cam and decided to go on a road trip to Nana Glen (this footage still exists but alas it is lost in storage somewhere, I will endeavour to find it). Needless to say we got epically lost. It got dark and we almost gave up. Just as we were about to turn around we decided to drive ten minutes further. To our delight we saw a cavalcade of media set up on the side of the road (the main TV Channels at the time 7, 9, and 10) along with the entrance to the Crowe farm heavily guarded with security. We took one look at the security and decided not to test our luck. Instead we decided to interview the media. We approached channel 7 first, they were happy to be interviewed and quickly told us that they had the ONLY footage SUPER exclusive! We proceeded to interview channel 9, they are just as boring as the channel itself, and didn't really want to talk instead they asked what on earth we were doing. "We're bored uni students!" DUH!!! Then came channel 10. We approached them video camera armed, there was a lady with blonde hair busying herself in a car so we approached her. I tapped her on the shoulder and said "Hey were interviewing the media because we're bored, can we intervi...." I didn't get to finish my sentence because she turned around and there standing in front of me was a well know Australian entertainment news broadcaster Angela Bishop (see her interviewing Sacha Barron Cohen).

Only I didn't think that.... I straight away say "OMG hey it's Sandra Sully" (a much more famous Australian news reader with blonde hair). Oooops!! Angela Bishop immediately says "No, she's the pretty one, I'm Angela Bishop" LOL we were in stitches. She was awesome about it though and still agreed to be interviewed, we told her that the channel 7 crew had exclusive footage and she laughed. "We are the ones with the exclusive footage!" (as a side note it turns out that they all had the footage because Russell Crowe was being super secretive about paparazzi at the wedding and only released his own stuff to the media). But at this time Angela Bishop was adamant that they had the super hot footage, and she was willing to show proof, they had a van set up with everything all rigged up and ready to beam footage to the world. They let us film them beaming the first shots of the wedding to the world on Channel 10s late night news (it was about 10pm by now). We were having so much fun by this stage we decided to approach security, to interview them, we had interviewed everyone else, why not them?

We slowly begin to walk up the small incline of the dirt driveway and we get about 5 metres before a giant spotlight is directed at us and a security guy speaks through a loud speaker "DO NOT COME ANY FURTHER!" laughing we yell back "we just want to interview you!". They were not pleased, they just continued to say if we came any closer they would call police. We were cold by then and wanted to go home and watch the footage and have tequila shots so we called it a night. A successfully fun one at that.

Haha such a fun time, such craaaazy adventures we had in the early days of uni!