|
Meet Peter !
Who is Peter and why is he sitting in his kitchen playing his guitar in the
middle of our trip...
you might well ask ! Well, grab yourself a cuppa and I'll tell you his story !
Back in April of this
year, I received a message in my guestbook...
Very interesting to stumble upon
your site whilst looking for the words of a song which was on the
Australian hit-parade in 1961/62 "One small photograph of
you" by Kevin Sheegog. Then had this strange feeling that you
might have sailed out on the SS Strathnaver too. Well, so did I
only I sailed from Tilbury in April 1961 and arrived in
Fremantle/Perth three weeks later. In November, drove across the
Nullarbor Plain to Melbourne - lived in St Kilda first - learned
to swim on the beach there - moved to Grey Street, East Melbourne.
Bought a guitar in Melbourne and used to play "Click go the
shears" (still do sometimes! )Sailed off to New Zealand in
1963 then came to Cumbria in 1966 and been here ever
since(originally from Manchester)
Enjoyed your very interesting site.
Don't go to any trouble but if you or your family happen to know
the words of "One small photograph" I'd love to have
them.
All the very best wishes,
Peter |
Well, a fellow "Strathnaverian"
!! Always happy to try to help out, I searched around
for the words of the song.
I knew several other Kevin
Shegog songs. He was a Tasmanian singer who sometimes
used to perform at the Sunday afternoon pop concerts Maggi and I used to go to
at
Festival
Hall in Melbourne back in the early 60s. But I couldn't find the lyrics of
that particular song.
I sent out an SOS to my family, and received a reply from Maggi saying I should
ask
Col, her son, since his wife Tam was Kevin Shegog's great-niece. The cry for
help was
relayed on to Tam's Mum, who remembered some of the words, but not all. But as
luck
would have it, she had a tape of Kevin's songs in her car, and when she played
it, "One
Small Photograph" was the first track !
Col was able to record the song onto his computer, and Peter received not only
the
lyrics he'd been searching for, but a recording of the song by the artist
himself !
In the meantime, Peter and I had emailed back and forth a few times, and he'd
sent
me a wonderful account of his adventures while driving across the Nullarbor
Plain
and an explanation of why that song was significant to him...
Hi Tina,
Yes it was a quite amazing coincidence - the power of the web eh! ...and the marvel of synchronicity! (They, (whoever they are), say that we are only six people away from anyone else in the world. I would never have believed that I was less than six people away from Kevin Sheegog, of all people.
I'll tell you a story. I was quite unsettled in 1960. I had quite a good job with the Daily Mail newspaper in Manchester, but I was bored. I used to read a lot and was fond of travel. In August that year I went Youth Hostelling around France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany and when I came back I was even more unsettled. One day in November, at lunchtime, I was in the Central Library in Manchester, and I picked up a book called "Overlanding with Arabella". It was the story of a young couple who bought an old car, cut the back of it off and made a platform of railway sleepers, pitched a tent on it, gave up their jobs in Perth and set off on a six thousand mile journey into the outback. I remember raising my eyes above the book, looking at the rain drizzling down from a grey sky, and seeing the Australian Migration Office across St Peter's Square. I went across and signed up for the Ten Pound Passage!
Six months later I was embarking on the S.S. Strathnaver from Tilbury bound for Freemantle. I lived on St Georges Terrace in Perth. It was very hard finding a job. Eventually I got work, bought a suitable vehicle, an old converted Canadian Field Ambulance, a Ford V8, 1946, with running boards and a big iron starting handle. I bought a spade, a rope, an axe, and a set of spanners from Woolworths, and oh yes, a snake bite kit, filled three 20 gallon drums with petrol, and assorted containers with 23 gallons of fresh water. Just before I set off, I remember that "One small photograph of you" was top of the hit parade and was often played on the radio. I used to play it on my guitar.
Some people thought that we were mad.(my girl friend had joined me by this time) Two days before we set off in late November/early December, a couple were found dead in the South Australian
desert. They had strayed from their vehicle when it broke down, and though the rescuers found the vehicle easily enough, it took several days to find the previous occupants, who had died in the meantime.
It was a great adventure. We set off for Melbourne via
Kalgoorlie, where a mob of Kangaroos came leaping out of the trees and I almost had a panic attack They were jumping over ten feet in the air and landing all around me and if they had landed on the roof of the van heaven knows what the consequences might have been.
At Norseman, I turned left, heading east, and soon the tarmac road ended. The road was a mile wide series of tracks like cable stitch in the sand. It was full of pot holes, some so big that white painted 40 gallon drums had been tipped into them as a warning. I used to see them ahead in the beam of the headlights as I sometimes drove at night to avoid the heat.
One day it was so hot, that the combined heat of the engine and the outside temperature caused the petrol to evaporate before it reached the carb. And the vehicle stopped. Then I would wait for a bit, start again, only to stop again in a hundred yards. (Kangaroo Petrol you might think!) Driving at night solved that particular problem. One day the carb. seemed to be blocked by dust and Doodlebug (as we called her) wouldn't start. I took my spanners and dismantled it only to find that I couldn't for the life of me put it back together.
It might have been hours or days before someone came along but I was lucky. After about two hours we heard the sound of an advancing vehicle and as it rumbled around a rocky corner into view I was amazed to be looking at two Giraffes in the back of a truck. Then another truck with Lions in a van marked DANGER! Lions. The boss of the travelling circus came over to see me. "No problem," he said, "the mechanic drives at the rear of the convoy and he'll be here in about twenty minutes".
The mechanic put it back together, but the engine wouldn't start. "You have a blocked fuel line", he said, cheerfully. Then he took a twenty gallon drum of petrol and put it on the seat beside me, and inserted one end of a plastic tube into the carb. and the other end into the drum and I drove on for a hundred miles until I reached a garage at Cocklebiddy where they blew the dust out of the pipes with compressed air in two minutes - and where I had a shower and got all the red dust out of my hair in about two hours!
Every other day, we would pass the circus (loud tooting of horns) and sometimes they would pass me (more tooting of horns) and sometimes we would even stay at the same place overnight. It was really weird seeing the outline of the giraffes in the moonlight as they were exercised. One night I remember seeing them tethered to a watertank on stilts in the middle of nowhere.
Eventually, after about a month, I remember driving down Collins Street one afternoon. Later we went to St Kilda where we got a flat in Acland Street in a building called Durham manor. Just a few years ago I learnt that the Aclands were a famous family in Australia. One of the family runs the family paper mill in Kendal in the south lakes.
Later we moved to Grey St, East Melbourne but after two years, got itchy feet and went on to New Zealand - that's another story.
Anyway, I used to play One small photograph of you, long after it stopped being a hit song. And for me the song had meaning ... Money isn't everything. Even if you
lose a fortune, no one can take your memories away....and it always reminds of my early adventures in the big land down under.
My original guitar curled up and died through the heat of the desert and I bought the one I still play now, in 1963 in Melbourne. For many years I used to strum folk and blues then stopped in the 70's and only started playing again two years ago when I realised I hadn't got the words of One small photograph - I could remember some snatches, but there were some lines I just couldn't recall. Then one night I decided to do a Google search and there it was One small photograph, by Kevin Sheegog... But no actual words....then I was just browsing when I found myself reading about the Strathnaver and of course I was on your website. Then I put an entry in your Guest Book, not thinking for a second that you might be in anyway connected with Kevin. I thought, you just might know someone who might remember the words! So it seems that, as ever, life is full of surprises.
Take care and have a good journey.
Peter |
I
had mentioned to Peter that we would be in England in July, so he very
kindly invited
us to drop in for "a piece of cake and a cup of tea". But as
fate would have it, when we
arrived in the early afternoon of Friday 14th July, a most delicious aroma
of freshly
baked bread wafted from his kitchen. Peter hadn't received the message I'd
left on his
answering service early that morning, so it was another one of those
wonderful
coincidences that he'd just been removing the bread from the oven when I'd
called
again to say we were almost there !
We enjoyed a good chat, a scrumptious lunch of warm bread and cheese
(Peter and Bill
indulged in a little "fruit of the vine" with theirs) and all
too soon, we were back
on the road (with one of Peter's incredible loaves) to St.
Helens.
After checking in to
our motel
we went looking for the laundromat to which the friendly
young receptionist had given us directions, but by the time we found it,
it was closed.
Oh well, what's one more day with a suitcase full of sweaty socks and
knickers !
We were going to have
dinner and then head off to find the rellies (Maggi was hanging
out for a steak and kidney pudd) but when we phoned them, they insisted we
come over
right away. Geoff said he had a lettuce leaf and a mouldy tomato that he'd
been saving
for me, and they'd throw something on the barby for the carnivores... an
offer too good
to refuse !
Of course, we got lost, and somehow ended up here....
where Mum worked as a secretary
to the big boss before she and Dad were married.
Another phone call put
us back on track, and before we knew it, we were reminiscing
over a hearty repast with Evelyn and Geoff.
(Scroll down the page, there's a few very
early pics of him there.)
Geoff dug out a
collection of ancient B&W photos which I will scan and put up with the
others as soon as I have time. * Update... see them here.
Back Next
|