All of us from somewhere else, chasing dreams, telling tall stories and playing games. All of us well and truly under the spell of Joan Pollock.
Kath Presdee The Hume Highway, NSW, various Sunday nights, 1997 - 1998My tape version will always stick in my memory. It was incomplete, with Paul Kelly rudely cut off mid-phrase. No swelling final lines, no plaintive recollections. Just a whirr.
Zoë Krukpa Cleaning my bedroom window, Canberra, 1982My ear was burning in the sun, and my nose, which I had just recently pierced with the aid of a needle sterilized with a match and a handy bit of raw potato, was throbbing softly. The window rag smelled of this new stuff, eucalyptus oil, which I wanted to drown the world in I loved it so much, and my music box was precariously perched on a stool.
Fiona Price Family room, New Year's Day, January 1987As midnight struck, I stepped onto the patio and breathed in 1987. The tiles were still warm beneath my fourteen-year-old feet, but the New Year's air had the simmering cool of night after a hot summer's day.
John Harms Murtoa, winter, 2014A huge cold front is whipping through and the sideways rain is hitting the windows and the roof. It’s the night they’ve turned the new ground lights on.
Billy Miller Recording studio, 1977The last song I sing at nearly every gig is Joe’s version of Help From My Friends. It nearly kills me, because I, and most of my peers, don’t achieve that beautiful raspy tone of Joe’s easily.
Steph Payne Somers Camp, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. January, 1990Bev was leading by example. She was way outside the suburban comfort zone of her daily life and that was the whole point.
Earl O’Neill Leichardt, Sydney, 1985What if something happened and I was at home watching telly? That’d never do. Sex, drugs and rock and roll were too important for a young fellow.
Debbie Lee Warrnambool, Victoria, January 1994"It's okay, love, no-one thought you would get a first-round uni offer". The weird thing is, you know Dad means well.
Vin Maskell Christmas Hills, Victoria, 16 December 1979It took two hot hours to get to Christmas Hills but Grub didn’t mind. He loved driving and he loved music. He could hear music in the hum of an engine.