First of all - a big thank you to Adele and Brian Carr for organising this con! Great job, guys! I've never had a con run pretty much on time before!

From the moment I heard about this con around 4 or 5 months ago, I knew that I had to go. Mira Furlan! Josh Cox! Woo hoo! Two of my faves! (No offense to Michael O'Hare fans or to Sandy Bruckner).

Well, I flew from Melbourne to Sydney (you die hard fans take note that Oz fans have to go a long way to see their "idols" - my 1600km round trip was not the longest by any means!) and staggered around carrying my 15 kilos of luggage, walking an extra 2km or so by not understanding that when the airport bus driver waved his hand and said go that way, he meant go 50m that way then turn left....still, I eventually found my goal - the Southern Cross Hotel, Sydney. There the cocktail party was to be held.

This was a somewhat less formal event than many held in Melbourne, but I was darn well going to wear the gold dress I had been lugging around for half the day. So anyone who was there and wondered who the remarkably overdressed woman in the gold dress was - that was me :-)

Anyway, I am standing chatting to a new acquaintance Sue, who had looked as lost as I felt - I didn't recognise any fans from Melbourne, though there were a few of us there. Sue starts waving her hands strangely. Eventually I got what she meant and looked sideways. A woman was standing beside me, turned slightly away from me. I caught a glimpse of long dark, wavy hair, then turned back to Sue, then did a classic double take. Mira!

She was taller than I expected - with my high heels on, I am close to six foot tall. I had expected a tiny dainty bird-like creature, but (with her heels on) Mira was taller and less fragile than I had thought she would be. Having met Claudia Christian, who is so slim she looks like she would break if you touched her, I thought that Mira would be smaller cos Claudia looks bigger on tv/film than Mira, but it was not the case.

Mira looked wonderful. She has a presence that makes my knees start quivering. She isn't classically beautiful but has this amazing charisma.

That glow that we have often talked about on the J&D forum - that is what Mira exudes. It turns a strikingly pretty woman into a stunner. She looks different somehow on film than she does in person - the camera loves her face.

Josh was also there. Things I noticed: a) he smokes. Blurgh. b) He is looks just like he does on tv and is quite tall with a thinnish good bod (but more on that later). c) His voice is deeper than Corwin's. Bizarre. d) He wears some very unCorwin-like earrings. I have a web page for Corwin which Josh found out about nearly two weeks ago. He emailed me and I told him I would be at this con. When I finally wormed my way into the circle surrounding Josh and introduced myself "G'day, Josh, I'm Lynne." "Lynne..."he says trying to figure it out - "Lynne! You're Lynne? That Lynne?" He looked around - "This is the person with the web page for Corwin!"

Michael O'Hare also smokes. Blurgh. He is a bit bigger around the middle than he used to be, but was looking chipper and happy. More on that later.

After a while the cigarette smoke had gotten to me (most places indoors and some outdoor venues in Oz have banned smoking) and I decided to leave. I had pictures of me with Mira, me with Michael and me with Josh (this was to prove to my gym instructor that I had actually talked to Josh). To whomever reported that Mira doesn't like flash photography - thank you. That saved my bacon (or at least got me a couple of shots with her).

I was at the con bright and early the next morning (well, 8:45am _felt_ nice and early). The weather was foul - it hardly stopped raining all weekend. People whinge about Melbourne weather - this was far worse! At least it doesn't rain non-stop in Melbourne for three days. Still, all the day's events were in the one place, and I didn't need to go outside. What follows is a mishmash of the two talks/question and answer sessions the actors had.

Delenn is in some ways very much like Mira, and in other ways, Mira is clearly not Delenn. I'm not just talking the bone and the lack of eyebrows here. Mira smiles a lot - whether this is the result of having 300 pairs of ears hanging on your every word is beside the point. She has a big smile. She is serious, but laughs a lot. She doesn't like to dwell on the past. Mira gives me the impression of being of strong character and the strength we see in Delenn is Mira's. She said that she was feeling down because of the end of filming of Babylon - she was exhausted and needed a break. She has made good friends with Billy, Peter (Jurasik) and Andreas (I thought it curious that she didn't mention Bruce) and will stay in contact with them, she thinks.

What was it like to kiss Bruce? (hello to a fellow J&D forumite - you know who you are, but I don't!) "It was great" (and she burst into a big grin. She has a very big grin, as I said before ;-). Bruce and Mira could not come from more different backgrounds, and Mira thinks this is part of the chemistry between their characters. The J&D romance was a "side effect" of two powerful leaders working side by side (and may I add two extremely attractive leaders too :). Mira loved working with Bruce - he is giving actor, a very gentle actor. I think it was Mira who said that Bruce hates getting his lines wrong, which is apparently why he featurers in the bloopers so often - he reacts badly to stuffing his lines. It was "pure, pure pleasure" working with him. Kissing Bruce? "I'll miss that too."

Mira never felt humiliated, never felt insulted, never felt abused by what jms wrote for Delenn (the implication here is that some of the work available in Yugoslavia and America would make her feel degraded. Sexy kitten stuff she described it as. Yugoslavia was very macho, as is Australia, apparently. I hadn't noticed that). She didn't like some of the cute bits ("Joe, why is Delenn so *cute*?"), but they were part of Delenn. Delenn is many things. Delenn has affected Mira in ways that she could not describe - Delenn was all about questions. At one stage she tried to persuade jms to let Delenn have eyebrows. "Delenn could go to Franklin and have some plastic surgery." jms' response was "a Minbari with eyebrows?????"

Delenn never got those eyebrows...

Mira on acting: it's like a little god playing - letting emotions run and then pulling them back. Sometimes "another level" is reached, something "else" is achieved. Andreas, (Peter J?) and Bruce draw this out of you and you lose yourself in it. If you achieve that a couple of times in your lifetime you can be happy.

Mira compared the role of Earth/B5 in the Narn-Centauri war to that of the United Nations in her homeland - will they/won't they help? The loss of identity of her homeland, having to call it the former Yugoslavia, this was reflected in Delenn. She spoke about the difficulty of leaving her homeland - don't do it unless you have to - and starting from zero in a totally different culture. She finds America very different to her homeland and hates having to sell herself. She does not feel terrible nostalgia because the things she is nostalgic for do not exist any more.

Andreas is Mira's (on set) hero. He never complained about his costume, unlike Mira. He was totally covered (and she drew her hand over her face and indicated her body). His makeup was the hardest to endure. When Mira asked him how he coped, Andreas would reply along the lines of "It's like the old ladies in black back in the Old Country. You sweat and get wet and it cools you down." Mira thought this most distasteful.

Mira's makeup was the most finnicky - the small appliances were the hardest to blend. Her hair was puffed up in the morning and as it flattened over the course of the day, her bone would slip down and have to be propped back up. Mira loved the silks and design of Delenn's clothing, and also the way Delenn's quarters were decorated - "very romantic". BTW, apparently the sets have been pulled down and everything is gone. The set crew/dressers were apparently very upset.

Mira's CD is nearly ready for release. She would have brought it with her but the printer stuffed up the cover. D'oh - we missed out badly! The music is of many different styles and links in with some interactive software and games and things.

Little tidbits: Babylon is subversive - it makes you question everything. The actors made the show what it is. Mira thinks that jms is very tricky. She admires him for creating this amazing web of interconnecting storylines and foreshadowings ("Wonderful story"). Mira loved working with Brad Dourif - his intensity spoke to her and she found him very exciting to work with. Babylon has allowed her to eat and be financially stable for up to the next two years. Her favourite colour? Purple. Food? "Floating islands" (she called this genenochale or something similar). Play? Chekov's "Three Sisters." Book and film? She has too many favourites. Holiday spot? Hawaii. Actor? Al Pacino. She is a Virgo. The book she is currently reading is Walter Koenig's "Warped Factors" which she finds very funny and highly recommends. Her hero is her husband, Goran. She drives a Ford Explorer (here part of the parochial crowd, like me, waved fists in the air and squawked "Fords rule!"). If she could be anywhere in the world, she would like to be in Hawaii (now can you see why Josh's replies about his non-existent shaggin wagon had the audience in hysterics? Where would you like to be? What is your favourite holiday spot?). She and Goran used to have a cat called Ugi, an intellectual boy cat. He disappeared when they moved to the hills. Then a girl cat moved in and settled down. As cats do. They referred to her as 'the cat' (Machka). Over time, 'the cat' became Machaka (sp?), which is Spanish for 'stew' - a play on words. They never intended to give Machaka a name, but it somehow happened without Mira and Goran being consulted. Machaka is a fierce little hunter (she sounds more like a Narn than a cat ;-) and brings home rabbits to eat on the bed in the middle of the night. Mira makes her go outside, where Goran has to deal with the remains the next morning. "Horrible."

Mira was an only child. Her mother died much, much, much too young. I think she said that her grandmother played some goodly role in her upbringing and instilled a love of language in Mira. Mira can speak Spanish, German, French and I believe Italian. Everyone around Mira was a professor - she was surrounded by love, care, books and culture. She only has her father left. She started learning English at elementary school, then went to a school where all the lessons were supposed to be in English. Most of the teachers could not cope with that and the concept failed. There was an ex-Oxford scholar, David Jolly, at her high school. She and her friends adored him. She sang madrigals (so do I - would have been good to try a duet!) and motets, learned the recorder and played Renaissance music. Then they did a play in which all the guys were alcoholics and all the girls prostitutes. She had terrible stage fright, but then she realised that she was ruling the stage and that acting was for her. David got in trouble for choosing that play, and Mira and her friends sat in his apartment and plotted about ways to keep him on at her school.

It was a great con. It was fabulous to meet Josh and actually talk to him. I also got several, well many, photos autographed by him supposedly for my web page, but mainly so I could drool. Mira was less accessible, simply because more people wanted to meet her. Her autograph queue was always very long, and I only got one chance to get her autograph. Still, one chance was all I really needed. Mira was very gracious about the volume of wellwishers and autograph seekers. MOH's queue was intermediate in length and getting his autograph was not very difficult. Apart from the signatures, my most valued prize was a stand-up of G'Kar (who is my very favourite B5 character). Walking around Sydney with G'Kar was very amusing - many people thought me very strange (which is probably not far from the truth). He had to be transported in the cabin of the plane on the way back. The air attendants variously called him a very ugly man and a monster. *Pout* They can't see that he is gorgeous? He is now gracing(?) the corner of the loungeroom, where I can happily drool at him. So far, he has managed to scare every one of my friends who has visited me. :-) They don't expect a Narn to be lurking in the loungeroom.

Thanks for reading this rather lengthy and rambling screed. I've forgotten a lot of stuff, particularly about MOH. Can't be helped - my brain was full. I'll get some pictures scanned and put on my website over the weekend.