The Crew.

Coolangatta. Where the whole thing started.

The oldest one on record: December 2017, a Rancho Relaxo in a Coolangatta apartment, back when we were still The Raiders. Christmas in summer, Santa hats, an elf suit, the loudest shirts on the Gold Coast, and a Secret Santa that produced a Weber iGrill and a meat cookbook. Everything since traces back to this room.

The year the signage got its run.

Late 2018, still pre-Neighbourhood, Trav still signing off as Managing Director of The Raiders. The "Rancho Relaxo" signage got printed (the order is still in the archive), the tradition rolling on from Coolangatta the year before. Gold Coast: an electric-bike pub crawl, a beach F45 session, go-karting at Kingston Park Raceway, and surf lessons to round it out.

The one where the tradition stuck.

December 17-19. End-of-year retreat, all about planning the year ahead. Hannah ran the show. Dom designed the retreat doc. Around this time The Raiders became Neighbourhood. Crew of the day: Trav, Dom, Geordie, Liv, Hannah. Topgolf, a proper whiteboard planning session, and the usual Christmas-in-summer kit.

• Hannah's retreat doc, Dom on design duty.
• End-of-year planning, the Rancho way.
• The Raiders, becoming Neighbourhood.

The one we kept at home. In Noosa.

December 15-18. Borders were shut, so we stayed domestic: Noosa. Surf lessons, actual workshops in "Workshop Room 1", and Geordie ran the bar. Hannah billed it as the best Rancho to date. We came out the other end planning 2021. Crew: Trav, Hannah, Dom, Geordie, Ruby, Grace, Liv.

• Geordie's cocktail menu: Amaretto Sour, Bloody 'Ell Mary, Spritzy Boi, Margy Party.
• Hannah's verdict: best Rancho yet. Hard to argue.
• Planning for 2021, the year it became Summer Camp.

Hamilton Island. Yacht Club Villa 33 ("Serenity").

December 19-22. The Rancho Relaxo years were behind us. New name, new format, proper villa. Flew BNE to Hammo, got picked up, that was it. The "mullet schedule" was born here: business in the front (workshops, planning 2022), party in the back (everything after lunch). Nine of us, give or take.

• The mullet schedule: invented this year, never left.
• Hawaiian theme night and Secret Santa.
• Barna's scavenger hunt: water, hat, sunblock, $20, go.
• The Whitehaven Beach boat tour. Stinger suits and all.

Who came: Trav, Barna, Maddie, Geordie, Dom, Liv, Cam, Jacinta.

Seminyak. Five days, one villa, the workshops that still run the place.

December 6-10. Flight VA47. "Heavy thinking, not heavy drinking" mornings: Proposals, Customer Success, Kick-offs, QBRs, Cancellations. The templates that came out of it are still in use. We came home saying "Terima Kasih". Naturally, we're going back.

• "Terima Kasih": the sign-off that stuck (and the reason 2026 exists).
• Tie-dye theme night. Bad Santa, $50 cap.
• The Bintangs. The whole lot of them.
• Team-building at Mrs Sippy; the wrap-up at Finns.
• GoJek will deliver anything, anywhere, for nothing.

Who came: Trav, Geordie, Barna, Dom, Jacinta, Ben, Tyla, Jen & Lutsy!

Four nights on the Carnival Luminosa. Brisbane to Airlie Beach and back.

December 10-14, billed as the "Neighbourhood End of Year Trip." No villa, no workshops. A cruise ship, twin cabins on Deck 5, a day in Airlie Beach, and a buffet that did not stop. Eight of us, paired up by cabin.

• The ship. The buffet. The ship's buffet.
• Airlie Beach day, then back out to sea.
• The team swam with sharks. Nobody was warned in advance.

Who came: Trav, Geordie, Dom, Brie, Natalia, Sophie, Harry & David.

Noosa Hinterlands, July 8-12. The year camp moved to winter.

The cadence flipped (December to July) and so did the focus: from sales and marketing to actually delivering the work. Geordie's "More Chilli" framework, the "Doing Things By The Book" template overhaul (a straight line from the Bali workshops), and yes, we went horse riding.

• "We're going riding." We did. Horses, in the hinterlands.
• "More Chilli" / the GROBDOG framework: add 10% more spice to everything.
• "60% experience, 40% guessing": how a template actually gets made.
• Being dissatisfied with satisfactory became a company line.

Who came: Trav, Barna, Geordie, Dom, Harry, Brie, Sophie, Natalia.