Lorraine and I recently had the opportunity to travel from our home town Gayndah to Eidsvold, another small town in the North Burnett region of Queensland to visit what we think of as the R M Williams Bush Learning Centre. Most Australians think of him as R M Williams but around Eidsvold he is Reginald Murray. More about R M in a minute but first a little about our actually making the trip to Eidsvold.
A couple of weeks ago we took delivery of a BEV, a battery electric car. Most electric cars in Australia are owned by people who live close to the coast which is where most of the fast chargers are situated. No fast chargers out this way, in fact none within a two hour drive. So we have to slow charge at home with hopefully much of the electricity coming from our solar panels. So in order to make the 160K trip to Eidsvold, we had to make sure our battery had a high enough state of charge (SOC) to get there and back.
Eidsvold’s Bush Learning Centre was built in memory of R M Williams who spent the latter part of his life on his Eidsvold area cattle property called “Rockybar” which is also his final resting place. He spent much of his early life in South Australia and moved to Eidsvold after disagreements with the S A Government. His name is probably best known to Australians through his R M Williams range of clothing and footwear which reflects the style of the Australian Country. There are probably not too many Australian farmers who have not owned a pair of iconic R M Williams boots at some time in their life.
But it was not the R M Williams Centre which attracted us to Eidsvold this time. Australia’s photographer to the country music industry, John Elliott was setting up an exhibition of some of his extensive country music photo library in the centre. As well, five time Golden Guitar winner Dean Perrett had agreed to come along and present a couple of what he specialises in, bush ballads to John’s supporters.
John Elliott (if you Google “John Elliott” you will probably be referred to several famous Australians with that name – this one is the photographer) grew up in Blackall, real outback Queensland. After some years in the radio/TV industry, he branched out to earn his own living by documenting Australian bush culture and the music that went/goes with it.
John became Slim Dusty’s “preferred photographer” and that connection is probably best known for his photo of Slim Dusty with Dame Edna Everage.
In 2004, John was featured in the National Portrait Gallery in Australia’s Capital City, Canberra. He titled the Exhibition “1000 Mile Stare” and is highly rated by those associated with the Gallery. We visited the exhibition when we were in Canberra that year and remember it well. The Slim and Dame Edna photo held pride of place in the display. According to the Director of the National Portrait Gallery at the time Andrew Sayers, “The irrepressible vitality of this portrait has set the tone for the NPG ever since”.
But back to Eidsvold. John reports that he was driving through the area some months ago when he noticed the Bush Learning Centre, called in, and was immediately impressed with the display areas in the building which were totally suitable for him to mount an exhibition of his own images associated with country music. The result was that on October 7th, he drove to Eidsvold to attach his images to the walls in the centre in preparation for the opening on the 8th.
John had photographed Dean Perrett a number of time, including for the cover images of some of his albums. Dean lives and works his property in the area (about 2 hours drive so that is in the area) and volunteered to travel to Eidsvold to add to the morning’s festivities. According to his bio, Dean writes and sings things he knows and having be born on, raised on and still working on the family cattle property, his ballads ooze country soul. Below is an except from one of his favourites, “Where Country Is”.
The display of John’s images will stay at the R M Williams Centre for some time to come, giving a wide range of people the opportunity os seeing it. It is worth the visit.
