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Port Pirie is the City of Friendly People and it was good citizens like Des Parker who made it so. I joined The Recorder in 1979 and was too shy to say anything for six months because I was working with pillars of the community Hazel Penny, Roslyn Hisgrove, Peter Holt, Terry Price and Helen Magor. One bloke stood out. He could suck on a … Continue reading Des Parker: Once a newspaper man, always a newspaper man
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When I was 14 years old I worked for Ken Madigan Sports Store in Port Pirie. I was shy and hid behind the goggles and flippers to avoid customers. Dad sent me out the back to blow up netballs and stack boxes of trampolines. I spent my whole wage on Fanta from the Coke machine and gingerbread men from Angie’s Cake Shop. We delivered toys … Continue reading Midnight Mayhem
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Every Friday night in 1985 half of Port Pirie crammed into the saloon bar of the Family Hotel down the road from the lead smelter. Old Malvern Stars leaned against the heritage listed lime-green tiles out the front, bags of pomegranates, Brylcreem and legs of lamb hanging from the handlebars. Loyal border collies slept on the footpath with one eye open, snapping at the odd … Continue reading Friday night at the Family Hotel
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On Boxing Day in 1988 Dad and I rode our pushbikes from Port Pirie to Broken Hill. It was a father-son bonding thing. I paid my rent two weeks in advance and bought $200 worth of spare parts including tubes and tyres that Dad hung over my shoulder. It was 41 degrees which melted the tar on the road. No helmet, just a Greg Chappell … Continue reading Broken Hill broke our hearts
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Whenever I’m behind a slow caravan on the highway I think of hairy soap and thongs in the shower. And not-enough-veggies noises in the next cubicle. So I wasn’t in a happy holiday mood when I sat in my deck chair to taste Grey Nomad Sauvignon Blanc 2010, left in the bottom of my esky by a ‘mate’. It brought back memories of arriving at … Continue reading The caravan of love
The tears I’ve cried since 1962 have been evenly shared between family and the Port Adelaide Football Club. I started barracking for the Magpies when I was nine. My sister Sharon kept Port scrapbooks and I copied her. I cut out photos from The News including headshots of Jack Cahill from his used-car ads and stuck them in my book with Clag. On Fridays I … Continue reading From a backyard in Port Pirie to Shanghai
A young lawyer drinks a whole-bunch Pinot at a hipster wine bar in Adelaide while an old grapegrower getting by on an oily rag can only glance at the wine list in the window and keep walking. Dairy-farmers are doing it tough but grapegrowers have had 10 years of it. Twenty-five years ago my sister Elizabeth married Michael in the backyard of our cream-brick home … Continue reading The canvas can do miracles
Kay Brothers Amery Vineyards launched its book, The First 125 Years, in the ‘heritage cask room’ that went up 17 years before the Titanic went down. Kindly folk shuffled into the dimly-lit cellar from the midday sun to sip cool, fizzy Shiraz. It was a Saturday but felt like a Sunday with a solemn congregation of true Kay believers. There were whole tables of 80-year-old ladies … Continue reading Kay Syrah Syrah, whatever will be, will be
