Ulan-based musician Bob Campbell has written his memoir, a story of music, politics, and growing up.
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Well known as a local musician, running Gulgong’s fortnightly folk sessions and leading the legendary Home Rule band, Mr Campbell comes from a long line of Irish fiddlers.
As well as that, he says, “I’ve had about ten lives,” from a juvenile delinquent to a trade union organiser, from a radical communist to a teacher in Gulgong,
Giants Leap: An Activist Folk Singer’s Memoir takes its name from the mountain at Sandy Hollow, where Mr Campbell’s grandparents settled at a time when the Hunter was the world’s fifth most fertile alluvial river valley.
Working conditions he experienced on the railroads led him to join the trade union movement, while his rage at the Vietnam War led him to join the Australian Communist Party, the only party then opposing the war.
He became a radical activist and was arrested a few times – once, while protesting the South African rugby team’s tour during apartheid, he found himself sharing a cell with the leader of the Australian Nazi Party, who had come to show his support for racial segregation.
Through it all, he said music was the strongest theme running through his life’s various trials and tribulations.
As he grew older, Mr Campbell saw the ideals he had supported twisted into the tyranny of Stalin and Pol Pot, and his priorities changed.
“Once you mature, you realise the problems haven’t gone away,” he said.
“The only two things that are really important are having a planet to live on and treating each other better.”
The book ends with a “Ulan Epilogue” written from Mr Campbell’s 21st century perspective as he looks at the damage wrought on the village by mining, with the one-time radical communist now sharing a fenceline with mining land owned by the communist Chinese government and not at all pleased with the situation.
The memoir had its origins in Berlin in the 1990s, when fellow musician Matthew Gaudry told Mr Campbell he should write down the stories he told in the car as the duo toured Germany.
The project stalled as Mr Campbell returned to Australia and spent 10 years as principal of Gulgong’s Red Hill school and formed the Home Rule band.
Last year he returned to Europe and to his memoir, with some unexpected help from ASIO, which had compiled an extensive dossier on Mr Campbell’s political activities .
Recalling the famous line, ‘If you remember the 60s, you weren’t really there,’ Mr Campbell said, “I was there and ASIO remembered them for me.”
Quotes from ASIO’s files form what Mr Campbell describes as a “Greek chorus” throughout the book, which is also “peppered with poetry” in the form of Mr Campbell’s song lyrics.
Mr Campbell has brought together a six-member band to record an album of songs to accompany the book – the group will perform this weekend at Kiama’s Folk by the Sea music festival before returning for a gig at Mudgee Brewery on October 6.
The band includes Sharon Frost from Home Rule, Gulgong’s Jake Fahy and Jesse Grover, Roger Hargraves, Bruce Cameron and Jim McWhinnie from Bathurst.
Mr Campbell will hold launches for the book around the Hunter, at January’s Illawarra Folk Festival, at a Maitland Library event, and in Mudgee towards the end of the year.
