Perth's Proud Awards handed out trophies, shade, and one very tall hairdo

Moesha, Holden Sheppard and a 30-year-old sauna took home awards, Hannah Conda hosted, and some things probably didn't need saying on stage.

Told by Paige Turner · 2 October 2026

Perth handed out its annual Proud Awards on Sunday night and for once the envelope-opening wasn't the most interesting part.

The ceremony at Connections Nightclub, hosted by Hannah Conda — yes, that Hannah Conda, the one who made it onto RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under after years working Perth's Court Hotel and Connections — celebrated the city's performing and creative arts, community work, and the kind of red-carpet fashion that makes you wonder if structural engineering was involved. Moesha took Entertainer of the Year, Cougar Morrison won Variety Performer of the Year, and Lucy Lovegun was named Favourite Burlesque Performer. Fay Rocious, star of Club D'Amour, won both Favourite Drag King or Queen and saw their show take Variety Show of the Year. World Wide Women won Drag Show of the Year, Miss Cara was named Best DJ, Kitten Proper took Best New Drag Talent, and The Sexy Bin Chicken — yes, that's the name — won Mx Congeniality. Donna Kebab won Best of the Ball for a mile-high blonde turret of hair paired with an extreme turtleneck dress inspired by, and I'm quoting the source here, "a galaxy far, far away."

The Hall of Fame induction went to Perth Steam Works, the sauna that turned 30 last weekend and has been significantly transformed under owner Michael Drummond. It's the only award announced ahead of the night — the rest are envelope jobs, kept secret until the moment.

Author Holden Sheppard, whose books Invisible Boys, The Brink, King of Dirt and Yeah The Boys have all found success, won Creative Artist of the Year. Kara Elkes won twice: Outstanding Community Contribution and Favourite LGBT+ Event of the Year, both for For The Dolls, the regular club event that has raised thousands of dollars to help transgender people pay for their gender transition. That's not a vague community-good claim — it's money, for surgery, for hormones, for the bits of transition that Medicare won't cover and most people can't afford. Elkes turned a dance floor into a funding mechanism, and the Proud Awards noticed.

The Proud Awards have been running for eleven years, and certain traditions have held: the red carpet, the performances from Perth's best — Cherry Voltage, World Wide Women, The Sexy Bin Chicken again, Jaxon Coke, Bush Rat and more — and drag queens reading each other, which is to say publicly and creatively insulting one another with wit, timing and a degree of personal knowledge that can make an audience wince. It's a staple of the night. It's also, according to OUTinPerth, a thing that may have gone further than it needed to this year: "There were moments during the lengthy presentation when some audience members may have questioned whether certain stories, remarks and comments needed to be aired on stage." That's polite phrasing for someone said something they shouldn't have and we all had to sit there.

Which raises the question: if you're giving out awards to celebrate a community, at what point does airing grievances on stage stop being part of the tradition and start being the reason people check their phones? Eleven years in, the Proud Awards know how to throw a night. Whether they know when to edit one is apparently still up for debate.