Long before Blink-182 were filling arenas, they were part of a wild punk night at Alexandra Headland, with Bodyjar and Pennywise tearing through the old Scream / Stewart’s venue near where Blue Bar and the Sebel stand today.
Some Sunshine Coast gig stories survive because someone kept the poster. Others survive because everyone who was there still sounds slightly shocked it happened.
This one has both.
For this edition of Local Lore, we are going back to 1995, when Pennywise, Bodyjar and Blink-182 all rolled through Alexandra Headland as part of a Taylor Steele surf video Australian premiere tour stop.
The memory resurfaced after an old gig poster was shared online, with the original post asking what the Scream venue was like back then. The comments quickly turned into exactly the kind of Sunshine Coast memory pile-on Local Lore was built for: stage dives, stolen hats, packed rooms and people still trying to piece the night together decades later.
The venue was remembered by locals as Scream nightclub, attached to the old Stewart’s Galaxy Hotel, around the site now occupied by Blue Bar and the Sebel.
The 1995 poster that sparked the memory thread, listing Pennywise, Bodyjar and Blink-182 at Alexandra Headland. Image: Facebook
According to locals who were there, Blink-182 played before Bodyjar, followed by Pennywise, in the kind of 1995 touring lineup that now feels almost ridiculous to imagine in a coastal nightclub.
“Absolutely nuts night. Blink played before Bodyjar, then Pennywise. Security were so sick of stage divers.”
Mark Windsor
Mark also remembered Scream / Stewart’s as a serious gig spot for the era, with bands rolling through from Thursday to Sunday.
For anyone who only knows that corner of Alexandra Headland now, it is a strange little portal: a beachside hotel room, a stack of touring punk bands, and a crowd that still remembers the sweat of it.
Stage dives, stolen hats and a room full of locals
The details people kept are the good ones. Not the set times. Not the ticket price. The hat. The stage. The security. The feeling that the room was only just holding together.
“I remember someone stole Jim’s red hat and they stopped the show till they got it back.”
Chris Laliberte
Another local, Troy Jamieson, remembered it as one of his top five Sunshine Coast gigs.
“By the end the stage was full of locals and all I could see from where we were standing was the drummer’s hand and the lead singer.”
Troy Jamieson
That is probably the clearest picture of the night: a stage half-swallowed by the crowd, locals spilling forward, and a touring punk bill turning Alexandra Headland into something much louder than a beachside stopover.
Brad Tobin remembered moshing to Pennywise with the original Blink members beside him. Brad Scouller summed up the lineup simply: “Something like that will probably never be repeated.”
A lost Sunshine Coast room
The old Scream / Stewart’s setup also lives on through the way people describe the room itself.
Karlin Waerea remembered it as “an awesome indoors venue”, attached to the old Alexandra Headland hotel, with the kind of punk, drunk, mosh-heavy energy that belonged to that era of touring music on the Coast.
“Bodyjar ripped it up and the drummers of all three bands played fast, tight sets.”
Karlin Waerea
Other memories are looser, funnier and probably closer to the night itself. Matt Adame remembered drinking with Fletcher from Pennywise after the show and meeting the band. Anthony Day remembered stage diving, moshing and someone grabbing the lead singer’s hat.
None of it reads like a polished history. That is the point. It reads like people remembering a room they were lucky enough to be in, before the Coast changed around it.
Why this one still gets talked about
The Sunshine Coast has lost plenty of rooms, corners and late-night live music spaces over the years. Some venues changed names. Some disappeared. Some were folded into apartments, bars or hotel redevelopments.
But stories like this are a reminder that the Coast was never as quiet as people sometimes make it sound.
Blink-182, Bodyjar and Pennywise in a packed Alexandra Headland nightclub is not just a good “remember when” story. It is local music history, held together by an old poster and the people who were there.
And if you were there, you probably still remember the sweat, the stage dives, the stolen hat and the feeling that, for one night, the Sunshine Coast was right in the middle of it.
We don’t have pictures, just these memories.
Local Lore gathers remembered gigs, venue stories and scene folklore from the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and beyond. Help us preserve Sunshine Coast and Queensland music history. Got a memory that needs to go down in history? Email editor@yelo.live.
