Chief Minister Andrew Barr arrived to the now familiar chant at ACT Labor election night shindigs.
"Four more years! Four more years!"
Mr Barr claimed victory after results showed a crossbench of five would lean progressive. They were people Labor would be able to work with, he said.
The Chief Minister thanked his supporters, who had been roused from their earlier doldrums when the first results had shown a swing against ACT Labor.
Could a beer make its way up to the stage? Mr Barr asked at the end of his speech. Party secretary Ash van Dijk was on hand to bring forth the required glass.
And - after an embrace and kiss with his husband Anthony Toms, the kind that usually "attracted a bit of national attention" - Mr Barr took a long sip from his schooner.
No skolling - Mr Barr offered a kind of apology for not doing a Bob Hawke - but it was a campaign image that would sit in stark contrast to Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee's middle finger to a journalist.
Labor had clung on. Its party faithful relieved and excited. And again left to wonder when the music will stop.
Earlier in the night, Mick Gentleman had sat near the front of the room, looking very glum.
The fact was starting to set in: the veteran minister was on track to lose his seat in Brindabella.
Labor insiders were quick to tout the party's success in mostly holding its primary vote. A swing of 3.6 per cent against the party which has been in power longer than many in the room can even remember was not so bad, they said.
Nervous energy hung in the air as Labor faithful filed into the room, with a view over Lake Ginninderra.
There is a sense in the party that their luck will have to run out eventually. The question is always whether this will be the election their lucky streak will come to an end.
"I feel sick," one member said in that waiting zone between the time polls close and the early voting information trickles out of Elections ACT.
There were no cheers when the early results arrived. Tired campaigners, beers in hand, stood in front of large screens showing the ABC's broadcast trying to comprehend the results after standing outside polling booths all day.
A swing against the party. The Liberals had picked up more votes. A decent showing for the independents. And the Greens were going backwards.
"This is good for us," one insider said. But if you have to say so, it does not always feel like it.
Then attention quickly turned to the battles within battles. Hare-Clark is like that: candidates are trying to out campaign each other at every turn, even if their T-shirts are the same shade of red.
Marina Talevski, the factionally non-aligned candidate in Kurrajong, was outpolling the right's Martin Greenwood and the left's Aggi Court. That might be its own kind of victory if Chief Minister Andrew Barr quits sometime this term and a count back is triggered.
"I think if you ask most 50-, 51-year-olds 'Are you ready to retire?' they'd probably say 'no'," Mr Barr said in an interview with The Canberra Times before the election. He later added the idea of retiring at that age was "absurd".
The Chief Minister also said before election night: "Clearly for us to be able to form a government, the crossbench will need to remain progressive. But there might be different avenues to achieve a pathway to be able to deliver an agenda that we will have taken to the election."
That sentiment was giving Labor members confidence on Saturday night.
With mixed results, Labor members don't like to talk in terms of winning and losing. But while some in the party enjoyed their own victories, others started to nurse wounds from a campaign that did not go their way.
But they were thinking about the future: what the next term of government would look like if they cobbled together the support required. How would it be working with independents in the Assembly, with the real business of governing?
There was no doubt a sense in the room, high above Belconnen and awash with the thrill of a win, that Labor was closer to the end of an era than the start.
