Winter is ( mercifully) coming

North Tamworth, NSW - 25 5 2024

This is my favourite time of the year. Some may complain about the frosty mornings, but Australia just isn’t a cold place. It’s the complete opposite. No matter how chilly things might seem for a couple of months, the deathrays of our summers are only moments away. I feel like doing things in winter, and you can do these things without having to be wreathed in a glaze of sweat. Some events I’m looking forward to are the last leg of the Gravel Road film tour, this time taking in my own town of Tamworth as the kick-off, then moving up to the still flood-recovering Lismore where I attended four fun-filled years at uni. From there it’s to the city I’ll think I’ll never understand, that being Brisbane, then onto the Gold Coast, that place where residential towers are sunken in to the shifting sands. It’s happening this time not only as the film + Q & A followed by a performance from the Desert Stars, but also including my band of 22 years, the blessed Re-mains. The documentary was of course based on the pairing of our eastern-state sensibilities crashing headlong with that of those traditional fellas from the ultra-remote Spinifex Lands of WA. We’ll doubtless have a time of it. After that, I’m flying out to the Ilkurlka Roadhouse to meet up with the Desert Stars again, but this time to begin pre-production of their third album. It’s a four boarding pass mission to get out there - three domestic carrier routes and one charter leg. 1000’s of Ks. I aim to swag it on the red sands and emerge every morning to the frost-encrusted grit meeting the sharp tussocks of pale green. And to the profound quiet. To be hundreds of miles from anywhere is a treat. Once it gets under your fingers, it’s near impossible to scrape it out. It’s at odds with the my apparent polar DNA, but you can’t argue with your own emotions. It’s strange to consider it, but that image above I’ve been looking at since i was born. Some things dont change much. But AI can write a song and you can listen to it, although Sarah Carroll released a hymn this week that a plagarism bot can’t even pretend it dreamt of it. Meta AI told me that I was an original member of the Screaming Jets till I injected the words “steel guitar” into the equation. It then told me who I really was. Man, that was a relief.