One week before the Mardi Gras Parade I was approached by National Geographic to be a feature story on the TV show "Taboo". For those who have not witnessed this program, they deal with anything that is considered a taboo by western culture by presenting it in High Definition and in your face. Previous episodes of Taboo have featured body modification, tribal rituals and sex change surgeries.

The program producer wanted to film interviews with me and follow me with The Dykes on Bikes as we burned along the Mardi Gras Parade route. I was pretty excited to be asked to appear on the show and jumped straight on in without much hesitation. I felt it would be a great chance for worldwide exposure and the chance to publicly express my views on everything transgender.

After a mad struggle the day before the parade to secure media passes for the crew and myself for the parade all was in readiness for the chaos that was sure to follow parade day. I awoke Saturday morning very excited and a little nervous as I still had not received confirmation that I would in fact have a secure seat on the back of one of the bikes for the parade. It was a mad rush to get my hair cut, eye brows waxed and get back home to prepare for the camera crew which was due @ 1pm on parade day but somehow I managed it.

I have never experienced a full camera crew rocking up around my house to film me going about my business and the nerves were beginning to build. The crew rolled in right on time and began to set up. There were huge lights, a sound guy with a boom, 1 camera operator, another doing odd jobs and the producer. After a quick reshuffle of the apartment and organizing the best vantage point to shoot the initial shots.

The crew had asked me to get a hold of some photos of me as a baby, through my childhood as a boy till just before I transitioned. This was quite hard to experience looking back at a person who I'd seemed to have almost forgotten. My partner Erik was involved in the shoots and as we looked through the photos the producer asked me questions on how seeing the pics made me feel. Quite a full on experience being filmed at your most vulnerable, but well worth the effort hopefully.

After several shots were filmed I then jumped into the shower to prepare for the parade. The show wanted to film me getting ready. It was quite a candid shoot. Seeing an entire film crew squashed into my bathroom was hilarious. Lighting and sound guy squashed into my shower, the camera man in my bathtub and the producer on my toilet as they captured the raw footage of me dressing from scratch and doing my makeup. Once again I did not realize how full on it would be to expose oneself in front of an entire camera crew, let alone when the episode is released on TV.

Thankfully around 3pm I received a call from The Dykes on Bikes to say they had organized my ride for the parade. I was totally stoked! To be given the opportunity to ride in such a special 30th birthday parade with one of the biggest women's groups zooming down the centre of Oxford St was more than I could have ever hoped for. Plus it was all going to be filmed for a TV show. Whoever was writing my scripts deserved to be handsomely rewarded.

Once the filming of me getting ready had wrapped up it was time to head on into the parade. This year's parade started at the end of the route at Horden. Upon arriving and seeing 250 plus motorbikes lined up in a sea of rainbow flags, leather and beautiful women my knees went weak. The camera crew split into 2 groups, one headed to the start of the parade whilst the producers remained with Erik and myself to conduct interviews with some of the girls from DOB and myself.

I was lucky enough to get a ride with the beautiful Cas. I was right up the front of the pack, fourth from the front. As the time crept closer to take off my heart was beating so fast I thought it would explode from my chest. We took off and hit he parade route. OMFG so many people screaming, waving flags. It was overwhelming. I locked my legs tight around Cas and waved my arms like there was no tomorrow. The adrenalin rush was fucking amazing, the roar of the bike, the cheers as we zoomed up the strip with my boobs hanging out for all to see.

Once we made it to the start of the parade the Nat Geo crew swooped on me to place a mic and power pack on me so they could capture my screams as we did the return trip back up the strip. The engines roared and horns beeped as the girls prepared to take off. Before long we were back to tearing up the parade route, leading what was to be an onslaught of float entrants for the 30th birthday celebrations. Imagine 300,000 people screaming along a huge route. I guess that's what it's like to be a true rock star. Totally addictive and humbling at the same time.

Once we reached the end of the parade all of the 250 bikes parked and it was a sea of women embracing in jubilation of what had just been experienced. No matter if it's your first MG parade or your 15th, the feeling is indescribable. I then met up with the Nat Geo producer and the filming once again began. Interviews about how it felt to be a part of the madness. We then strolled back along the parade route as I had a media pass and met up with Erik and the rest of the film crew. Not long after the crew left and it was time to party on into the night watching the end of the parade before heading over to the Mardi Gras Party to cover the event for Samesame.

Unfortunately I became quite ill after this huge weekend and took the week off work to recover. The following week the Nat Geo crew once again hooked up at our place to wrap up the story. They arrived at the house around 7pm on Wed night and once again began to rearrange the apartment to get that perfect shot. They used a painting of Erik's as a background and then began some of the most confronting and hard-hitting questions I've ever faced. The interview went near 2 hours, the questions were very personal and hopefully the result is completely honest and absorbing as it was to be involved within it.

Once the final interview wrapped up we all scurried to get things packed into the car as the crew then followed me into Enmore to The Sly Fox Hotel as it was ladies night and I was going to perform a drag king show. Unfortunately by band "DreadCircus" had wrapped up our shows for Mardi Gras and are now on a 2-month break so the closest thing Nat Geo could record of me performing live was doing Drag King.

Yeah I hear you thinking "A transsexual woma doing drag king?" To be honest doing drag king is quite a full on thing for me. To actually try to turn myself back into a male after living in the gender for most of my life and hating it, only to transition and work so hard to become a woman and now go back IS full on. My drag king persona "Davo" is also actually my original name as a male, so you can imagine this whole event is normally very confronting. We rolled up to The Sly Fox with a full camera crew, late unfortunately so I missed my first show. Luckily we had time in the second set of performances to double up my shows as a finale, which suited the crew from Nat Geo.

My show starts out with me as a male heavy metal dude miming to some death metal before I tear off all of my clothes unleashing the female within and I perform a live solo version on acoustic guitar of "Freak". The crowd were awesome. You could hear a pin drop and the cheers afterward were really amazing. The camera crew then proceeded to head outside with all of the female crowd who are now banished to smoke outside the venue and began conducting interviews with the crowd members asking how they enjoyed my show.

Wow what a mad experience! To actually have a television crew follow you around documenting your life is quite intense. I have done many intense things in my short life but this is definitely one of the more memorable ones.

The episode of Taboo is called "Challenging Gender" and will be screened on National Geographic Channel sometime midyear. Please keep an eye out for it as the show is very nice to watch. Full high definition, mad sound and a really thoroughly well put together program with a team of people who are amazing.