Outback Songman: My Life

Outback Songman: My Life

Outback Songman: My Life

Outback Songman: My Life

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Overview

Ted is the quintessential bush storyteller, he has rubbed shoulders with some of the best-known and least-known of his countrymen and women, and in Outback Songman, Ted Egan recounts the story of his rich and extraordinary life.

Born to a working-class family in Melbourne's Coburg, he has never had a music lesson. Nonetheless, he has composed some of the first original songs about Australian history and ethos, many of which are now classics.  

Through his stories of growing up during World War II, teaching in a bush school, working with Aboriginal people in the Gulf Country and performing in Alice Springs and around the country, Ted Egan brings to life an Australia that has largely disappeared. His encounters offer insights into national politics and everyday life over the past eight decades. His generosity of spirit and his deep understanding of his country shine in every chapter.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780655690726
Publisher: Bolinda Audio
Publication date: 10/15/2020
Edition description: Unabridged
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ted Egan AO is an Australian legend and one of the great bush musicians. He played to hundreds of thousands in the Ted Egan Outback Show in Alice Springs over 30 years; he was the presenter of the acclaimed TV series This Land Australia, and later The Great Outdoors. He is an inaugural Life Member of the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame and has a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Golden Guitar Awards. He served as the Administrator of the Northern Territory 2003-2007.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

THE COLDEST DAY

My mum always said, 'Teddy, you were born on the coldest day for 30 years.' When I eventually looked up the newspapers of that day, 6 July 1932, it was described as a 'normal Melbourne winter's day' — early-morning frosts and fogs, rain later. Things haven't changed!

I guess life seemed somewhat bitter to Grace, my ma, having her fourth baby — first boy — in the middle of winter, during the worst financial depression Australia and the world had known. I was born at home, 4 Higinbotham Street, Coburg; Nurse Regan was the midwife. I weighed in at a fairly hefty 12 pounds (five and a half kilograms).

For my first five years, my dad — I always called him Pop — was out of permanent work, due to the Depression. He rode his bike into the city every day, seeking jobs at the Labour Office, but was often 'on the dole'. Our house was mortgaged to the State Savings Bank of Victoria, where Pop had managed to do a deal: he'd pay off a mere sixpence each week, just to 'keep in touch'.

When I came into the world, I had three sisters: Patricia (Pat), aged nine, whose birthday was St Patrick's Day; Margaret (Peg), who was seven; and Shirley (Sal), who was almost two. Mum was Grace Brennan, born at Banyena, in western Victoria, on 8 March 1901, the daughter of Peter Brennan, an Irish-born farmer who'd married Martha Williams, a 'native' of Australia, as white people born in this country were then classified. My dad, Joe Egan, was born at Timboon, in western Victoria, on 26 January 1898. Throughout his life he thought his parents were John Egan — born in Tipperary, Ireland — and Ellen Hogan, another 'native'; years later we learned otherwise.

Our neat little suburban house was built of weatherboard, with a galvanised-iron roof. It had two bedrooms, a lounge room and a dining room — which was, in fact, a spare bedroom for the many relatives who visited regularly. There was a bathroom, but we didn't have reticulated hot water; when it was bath night we would carry buckets of hot water from the washhouse, where Mum had a wood-fired copper. We had a good-sized kitchen, with first a wood stove, and later a gas one. We didn't even have an ice chest until 1941. There was a dresser for storing foodstuffs, and a Coolgardie safe with wet hessian walls, where butter and meat were kept cool.

For all of my childhood I slept on the back porch, adjacent to the washhouse. In the backyard was a lavatory, fortunatelysewered. We had many country relatives whose houses still had the old dunny can, and we city-ites used to dread going to 'the lav' when we visited them. (When did we start to use words like 'toilet' and 'the loo'?) In the spacious backyard we had a clothes line, a cricket pitch, a big plum tree and, from time to time, chooks and vegetable beds.

My first memory is of starting school at St Paul's in 1936, aged three. I don't know why Grace sent me to school so early, but it was a handicap for my entire school life. I was always the youngest in my class, which turned me into an absolute smart-arse, convinced I could get away with murder. I never had problems with lessons or passing exams, but I gave some fine teachers hell and didn't grasp the fundamentals of anything, in real terms.

We lived a narrow, xenophobic lifestyle. As Irish Catholics, we felt very free to ridicule anybody who was not just like us. If we weren't having a party (which was not a lavish affair but singing and dancing in the lounge room), there was constant political consideration of 'what the English did to the Irish'. Or there were card games. Two Irish priests, Fathers Lynch and Duggan, were regular visitors for a game called Forty-Fives, and the table shook as players trumped one another's cards.

Our family delights in recalling a night when, at 11.30 p.m., Father Lynch recalled that he hadn't finished saying his office for the day, the Latin panegyric all priests had to recite aloud. He retired briefly from the game, knelt in the corner of the room and rattled off the remainder of his office. He then returned to the table, saying, 'Right, now, who led that bloody ace?'

The Sisters of Mercy who taught us at school wore long black habits with thick leather belts and long rosary beads that rattled ominously at their waists. Starched white coifs framed their faces and gave them awe-inspiring countenances. Very occasionally a wisp of hair was erotically exposed, but the most striking thing was that they had no ears!

There were two long-term lay teachers, Miss White in Grade Five and 'Cocky' Reardon, who taught Grade Three. Cocky's nickname derived from her high-pitched voice, but she was a great favourite and an excellent teacher, much loved for her mannerisms, her beautiful copperplate handwriting and her unforgettable teaching methods.

I have only a few specific memories before 1939, when war broke out. I do remember vividly, though, how few cars there were. The residents of Higinbotham Street were all working-class people, and only two or three families had cars. That left the street clear for horse-drawn vehicles.

The milkie came with his four-wheel cart in the early hours and filled the billycan we left on the front verandah. His horse moved slowly from house to house. The bread man had a different turnout altogether. His was a light, two-wheeled jinker, with a breadbox at the back of a precariously high seat. He came midmorning, travelling at a brisk trot, coming to absolute stops, whereupon he would run to about six houses at a time, carrying a basket, calling 'Baker!' as he delivered the lovely hot, crusty, high-tin loaves and accepted his cash payments.

Mr Howlett delivered wood in the winter and ice in the summer to those lucky enough to have ice chests. He was akind man who always chipped us kids a piece of ice, which we wrapped in our hankies to make it last longer. Mr Howlett's wagon was pulled by two Shetland ponies, and we loved to pat those sturdy little animals. Mr Howlett's beautiful daughter Glenys was stricken with infantile paralysis in the awful polio epidemic of the late 1930s. Her classmates wheeled her to school in a long flat pram.

The dustman — lesser Sydneysiders called him the garbo — came twice a week with a dray pulled by a big Clydesdale draught horse. As the driver emptied the rubbish tins onto his dray, the huge horse would stand to attention, never moving an inch, but we always tried to be around, hoping to get some horse manure for the garden. We were fascinated whenever the horse disdainfully lifted its tail and had a chaffy, steaming shit.

Occasionally there would be a fish man, or a fruit man, but fruit, vegetables and meat were available at the nearby shops in O'Hea Street. Fish and chips — vital to Catholics, who were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays — were purchased at the shop near the railway line that ran from Coburg to the city, five miles (eight kilometres) away. There was also a very efficient Number 19 tram service to the city.

The postman came twice a day! It is sobering to reflect that, in those times, a letter posted in Geelong in the late afternoon would be delivered in suburban Melbourne by 10 a.m. the next day.

Given the absence of cars, games in the street were great fun, especially in summer. Boys and girls played together, with parents sitting on their front verandahs or patches of lawn, supervising. There would be cricket, footy, hide-and-seek, release, hoppo bumpo, branders, Simon says. We kids would perch in the trees, conducting spelling bees. Oh, the fun of it.

I sometimes go back to Higinbotham Street, but there are no trees there now. You just can't imagine how all those games were played on such a grand scale. It's the cars! They have displaced the trees and stopped the games. I feel so sorry for kids these days. Even with all their smartphones, video games and electronic toys, they are constantly bored. Never once was I bored as a child. Never once.

CHAPTER 2

SO MUCH HAPPENED IN '39

It was a long time before I knew anything about the 'facts of life', so I was absolutely amazed when, on New Year's Day in 1939, my brother came into the world, weighing a massive seven kilograms (fifteen pounds). My sisters and I had been sent off to Ballarat, on the train, to spend the day with our old uncle J.P. Williams. When we returned, Grace was sitting up in bed. We had a new brother. Easy as that.

'What's his name?' I asked.

'Francis Geoffrey. He'll be called Geoffrey.'

We never knew why she chose those names!

So the year 1939 got off to a good start, but that soon changed. Black Friday, 13 January 1939, saw bushfires raging all over Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Seventy-one Victorians were burned to death that day. The nation was in a state of shock.

And then Germany invaded Poland in September. Nobody was surprised, really. Even though there were stark reminders of the horrors of World War I, in the shape of the thousands of wounded old diggers still in our midst, nobody demurred when the new prime minister, Robert Menzies, took us into the war on the side of Mother England. Get it over and done with, most said. Good for the economy, others reckoned.

Grace just shook her head and said, 'They'll never learn, will they?'

Most young men and some women rushed to enlist. What amazed me was the speed with which sleepy Australia mobilised. Who made those uniforms so quickly? The badges? The boots? The hats? The guns? The bullets? The aeroplanes, even? The paradox with war is that the armourers always seem to have it planned in advance.

The starkest reminders of World War I were the sad old veterans who manned the lifts in all the big city stores and offices in Melbourne. They sat on their stools, with one or no legs, their crutches beside them. What are you thinking now, I wondered when I saw them. You wasted that leg, didn't you? It's on again.

Even though we were 12,000 miles (19,000 kilometres) away from the action, Melbourne was buzzing with excitement from the outset. The wharves at Port Melbourne rang out with 'Waltzing Matilda' and 'The Maori's Farewell' as the wild colonial boys again sailed off to war.

My sisters Pat and Peg were both teenagers, and got jobs at the Royal Arcade Hotel in the city. Pat was a bar attendant in the ladies' bar, and Peg was a secretary/typist. In their different ways, they participated in the hectic social life that swirled around all the servicemen and women. They both took up smoking, which was novel for women but de rigueur for young men. Peg loved dancing, while Pat was not so keen, but together they attended socials and dance parties, commanding the attention of many young swains, as they were both good-looking and very smart dressers.

The cigarette companies had us all by the throat. The people promoting smoking on the wireless and in posters were, ironically, the world's leading singers. They assured us that the 'smoothness' of the cigarettes was the reason they sang so beautifully. Smoking was permitted in cinemas; I found it fascinating that every time Spencer Tracy lit a cigarette for Katharine Hepburn, the audience would all light up and puff and cough in unison. Later, soldiers became the models in cigarette advertising, telling us to pack Craven A fags in their ACF (Australian Comforts Fund) parcels.

I began to compile quite comprehensive 'war books' based on the daily wireless reports and the movements of our many cousins who joined the armed services. That knowledge was given a boost when, late in 1941, I began, at age nine, to sell evening newspapers. My stand was on the corner of Bell Street and Sydney Road, Coburg, in front of Brown's Pub, right at the Coburg tram terminus — always a busy spot, but teeming with people now that the war was in full swing.

I would cross from the pub to attend each departing and arriving tram. I became expert at swinging from one tram to another, on the wrong side, risking a kick in the bum from the conductor each time. I threaded through the crowds of men in the public bar — no women allowed — and witnessed the barbarity of the six o'clock swill, when blokes drank as many beers as they could before the pubs closed, peremptorily, at 6 p.m. and then staggered onto the street, leaving the bar staff to hose down the premises.

Most of my school holidays were spent at Dennington, near Warrnambool, in western Victoria, where Mum's brother, Bob Brennan, his wife, Rita, and their large family had a small farm. It is fascinating to recall, today, that my mother would take me to Spencer Street Railway Station in the city, purchase my ticket, open a carriage door and ask: 'Anybody here going to Warrnambool?'

Invariably someone was.

'Look after this boy, please,' Mum said as she bundled me into the carriage.

What fun! I would be asked: 'Can you play cards? Do you like singing? How about some fruit cake?' And, after a six-hour trip on the train, there would be my beloved Uncle Bob and a few of his kids — my cousins — in their little car, ready to take me to the farm.

Uncle Bob made me feel ever so important, as he plied me with various questions. I realised later in life that he was a latterday Socrates, for he'd had such an eventful life himself, yet cleverly brought out the best in those he met. Prior to WorldWar I, he had travelled all over Australia and New Zealand as a shearer. He joined the AIF in World War I and spent three horrible years on the Western Front. He was wounded in 1918 and evacuated, but his ship back to Australia was torpedoed; he lost all his possessions and spent three days on a raft. Fortunately, he made it home, met and married Rita Toogood and took up a soldier-settler farm block.

Mary MacKillop wasn't Australia's first saint — Auntie Rita was! She had ten children with Bob, but she was always smiling, relaxed, in control, exuding love and compassion. She spoiled me rotten. My every wish was anticipated. But her own children were never neglected in the process. I got on so well with them all.

The Dennington Brennans milked Jersey cows and grew potatoes and onions on the rich volcanic soil in the Tower Hill country between Warrnambool and Port Fairy. There were lots of other relatives in the region, including Uncle Bill Brennan at Warrnambool, whose wife, Auntie Bess, had a cake shop! I visited all the rellies.

Back in Melbourne, there were two other very important relations. Uncle Martin, Mum's handsome brother, had enlisted in the Light Horse and served at Gallipoli and in the Middle East, where — for a short time — he was a prisoner-of-war of the Turks. He escaped and rejoined his regiment. Sadly, though, he returned to Australia a shattered man —'shell-shocked' was the term applied to the many chaps like him. Uncle Martin spent much of the rest of his life at the Bundoora Military Hospital, where any unexpected noise sent him into a frenzy.

Mum would pounce on people who laughed at him when this happened. 'That's the reward my brother gets for fighting for you and his country,' she would snap.

Auntie Nora — Nornie, as we called her — was always prominent in our lives. We knew her as one of the 'three maiden aunts' who had a fascinating terrace house in Neill Street, Carlton. We visited them regularly, as they were all so fond of my dad, Joe — and, indeed, of all of us. When we visited the aunts at Carlton, the adults played cards and we kids would explore their twostorey house, with all its exciting features: cupboards, verandahs, inside toilets! Then we'd all have supper and sing.

Nornie had given our family a piano, and Pat and Peg taught themselves to play. Shirley had piano lessons with the nuns, but could never emulate Pat and Peg, who could hear a song on the wireless, go straight to the piano and play and sing it. If Mum approved, she would say: 'Put it in the repertoire, girls.' They had typed lists of hundreds of songs that they and we knew. I can still sing most of the hits of the 1940s.

Whenever Nornie visited us at Coburg, usually on a Sunday for lunch and dinner, she and Pop would talk about the football — we all barracked for Richmond — as they cut up the fruit salad that we had on Sunday evenings. They got on beautifully together. Nornie was undoubtedly Joe's favourite sister.

And yet she wasn't. In 1972, eighteen years after Nornie's death, Joe established that Nora was in fact his mother.

In the state of Victoria, you can establish your date of birth by two means. There is an 'entry of birth', which simply gives a name, date and place of birth. Then there is a birth certificate, which lists parentage and many other details. Joe had never travelled outside Australia, so he never had a passport. But at age 74 he applied for the age pension and was required to produce a birth certificate.

The shock was profound. He immediately developed the shakes and became distressed. We, his children, were thrilled to bits. Our wonderful Auntie Nora was our grandmother! We laughed as we reminisced about the happy times we'd spent together. All Mum said was: 'Best-kept secret in the Western District.' She had known all along!

But it was the end of Pop. He died a couple of years later; the doctors diagnosed it as Parkinson's, but there was much more to it than that. I know the intense level to which my father would have reviewed every event in his life and the lives of his various family members. Having met them, I also know the extent to which Joe was loved by the people he thought were his brothers and sisters, all of whom would have been sworn to secrecy — with the dire Catholic warning that to break their oaths would send them spiralling into the Eternal Flames of Hell.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Outback Songman"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Ted Egan.
Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

1 The Coldest Day 1

2 So Much Happened in '39 7

3 Timoshenko and the Yanks 16

4 Puberty 20

5 Off to Queensland 26

6 Brazil Nuts 33

7 The Flying Chinaman 37

8 Darwin Footy 42

9 Off to the Loo 52

10 The Inugwamba 63

11 The Desert Rat 68

12 Sweet and Sour Bustard 75

13 This You Island? 82

14 Gold Nugget 86

15 I Hereby Resign 93

16 Gold Albums: Golden Days 102

17 Characters of the Outback 118

18 Birdsville Races: I'll Walk Beside You 140

19 The Faces of Australia 146

20 Turning Points 157

21 Recording in Perth: The Overlanders 168

22 The UK, Tamworth and Lagu 2 174

23 Greenhouse and the Shearers 182

24 Anzacs and Aboriginals 192

25 The Convicts 203

26 Marree: Inspiration for Songs 209

27 Sinkatinny Downs 219

28 A Busy Bicentenary Year 226

29 The Longyard: A New Tamworth Perspective 230

30 The Film Industry 235

31 The Independent Filmmaker 246

32 Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 253

33 The Land Down Under 260

34 Land of Her Fathers 264

35 Queensland Opera 270

36 It's What They Deserve 281

37 Different Audiences, Different Shows 301

38 Hang on a Minute 311

39 A Geriatric Fairytale 313

40 Aftermath: Bring It On! 333

Acknowledgements 337

Index 341

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