Episode 433 is a live recording of History Hit Parade, the South Australia’s History Festival show in which Steve Davis and Keith Conlon perform ten original songs about South Australian life, history, and community at the Mercury Cinema.
There are episodes of The Adelaide Show, and then there are events. This is one of the latter. Recorded live at the Mercury Cinema as part of South Australia’s History Festival 2026, History Hit Parade brings together broadcaster and journalist Keith Conlon and host Steve Davis for a ninety-minute show that weaves original songwriting with storytelling, historical context, and the kind of warm, unhurried conversation that feels like sitting in a room full of people who actually know where you live. Ten songs. Ten slices of South Australian life. All of them written with pen and paper by Steve, given musical life through his AI-assisted “virtual session band,” and offered here as what he describes as “audition pieces” for real musicians who might one day make them their own.
There is no SA Drink of the Week in this episode.
The entire show is the Musical Pilgrimage. Rather than a single track appended at the end, this episode is the songs, each one set up by Keith’s historical grounding and Steve’s personal connections before the music rolls. Full notes on each song appear in the segment breakdown below.
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Running Sheet: History Hit Parade
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week
There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week.
00:04:07 History Hit Parade
The Mercury Cinema is not a neutral venue for Steve Davis. He was married there on a sweltering 42-degree December day in 2002. He launched Talked About Marketing there. And it is where, on two days in May 2026, he and Keith Conlon performed History Hit Parade to an audience that included Steve’s parents, his former drama teacher, the chair of the History Trust, and the real-life couple immortalised in one of the songs.
The name History Hit Parade, Steve reveals, was Keith’s idea, drawn from his memory of the Harold Wright Hit Parade on 5AD, a Thursday-night ritual of about eight or ten songs in an era before the Top 40 existed. Buddy Holly, Elvis, Perry Como, and Pat Boone: that was your week’s music. The name lands perfectly for a show that does something similar, except every track is an original, and every track is South Australian.
Song 1: Jack and Lil (Up Please, Going Up)
Keith sets the historical scene: John Martins began as Peters and Martin, a drapery store in Rundle Street, until Mr Martin was released from his duties due to what Keith delicately describes as “debauchery.” The Hayward family eventually took the helm, and it was Sir Edward Hayward who, in 1933, looked to Canada for inspiration and brought the Christmas Pageant to Adelaide. He was so nervous before the first one that he hired a biplane, circled the inner suburbs with a megaphone, and personally invited people to come. They did. About 300,000 still do, each year.
The personal thread in this song belongs to Steve’s maternal grandparents, Jack and Lil, whose photograph appeared on the screen behind him. Lil worked in the kitchenware department. Jack was the young engineer installing the new lifts in the building during the 1930s. The rest, as Steve says, is history. The song follows their life together as their family grows, moving floor by floor through what John Martins offered, with the lift ladies’ announcement, “Up please, going up,” as its guiding refrain. Steve thanks Paul Flavell, who has written a book on John Martins, and former John Martin’s planner, Robert Tedstone, who provided a complete floor-by-floor inventory to keep the lyrics accurate.
Song 2: Oh Marion
Marion, the suburb, was surveyed in 1838 by Colonel Light’s private firm after Light had broken with Governor Hindmarsh. The name comes from Marianne, daughter of resident commissioner James Hurtle Fisher, though somewhere along the way Mariannen became Marion. Keith’s own connection is fond: his father learned to drive in the 1950s by heading south into the almond groves and vineyards of Marion, where the long straight roads offered room to practise.
Steve’s Marion is the 1970s version: aerial photographs, numbered landmarks, railway tracks where he’d flatten 20-cent pieces, overpass pile drivers thumping for weeks, and a Coles New World at the Park Holme Shopping Centre. He walked to school at age six, “with my little satchel and my shorts.” One afternoon he left school early, got lost, and found his way to a doctor’s surgery he recognised. They rang his mother. She wasn’t home. The neighbour came to collect him and made him a sandwich. “That was life in Marion back then,” he says, with a fondness that carries no nostalgia for the vineyards his own family’s house helped displace.
Song 3: My Jolly Valentine
This one starts with the Torrens. Keith explains that before the lake arrived, the river in summer was “a series of rather smelly waterholes” until Mayor Sir Edwin Smith, a beer baron with civic ambitions, created the weir. Within a year of the lake’s arrival in 1882, a rowing craze had taken hold, boat sheds lined the banks, and Jolley’s Boathouse was selling milkshakes and pies to rowers who could rent a boat by the hour.
The Palais de Danse gets its moment: a floating ballroom on a barge moored near the Elder Park Rotunda from 1924, with a soda fountain, no grog, and 800 people on opening night. It was gone by 1928, Keith noting, “maybe it was just not well made and sank slowly into the mud.”
Steve’s research for this Valentine’s Day song turned up two details that captured his imagination. First, the Rundle Street Parade: on Saturday nights, young men would walk down one side of the street, young women down the other, window-shopping for company rather than goods. Second, the postage stamp code used in the twice-daily mail service to communicate what couldn’t be written openly: upside-down meant “I love you,” tilted right meant yes, left meant no, sideways meant “let’s stay as friends,” which Steve notes is “a soft no.”
Song 4: Spring Gully Road
Keith traces the geography first: up Third Creek from the Torrens, past the village of Magill, pointing toward Norton Summit. Market gardens that ran through to Tea Tree Gully. One of Steve’s friends, Dominic, remembers his father loading a ute with cucumbers twice a week and driving them across town to Spring Gully. That was not long ago.
The song covers four generations families. Edward McKee began pickling onions after returning from the war. His son-in-law Alan McMillan, stepson Eric Webb, and friend Malcolm Climer formed the second generation. Kevin and Ross Webb steered it through 2013 when a public campaign saved the company. Russell and Tegan Webb were at the helm when cheap imports and cost-of-living pressures finally made it too hard.
Steve played the song to Russell Webb before the performance. Russell’s response: “Our whole family thinks this song should be in the state archives for covering the story so well.” Steve says it with quiet pride, and then lets the song make the case.
Song 5: Away, Away (The PS Canally Crew Song)
Keith tells the founding story of the Murray River trade with the energy of someone who could spend a full hour on it. Governor Sir Henry Fox Young puts up a prize in 1853 for the first boat to take a paddle steamer from Goolwa to Swan Hill and back. Two men are unknowingly racing: Captain William Randell, a flour miller from Gumeracha building the Mary Ann upstream from Mannum, and Captain Francis Cadell, who has a paddle steamer built in New South Wales and sails it through the Murray mouth. They end up racing each other, neither knowing the other was coming. Both get their prize, and instantly the river is transformed: wool that was a month away from market by bullock wagon is now days away by water.
Steve wrote this song aboard the PS Marion, on a three-day cruise, watching jet skis cut through the peace of the river and thinking about the crews who worked these boats without rest. He noted he’d been “a bit passionate” about the contrast. One thing he is proud of: annoying the captain by asking about terminology, which is how he discovered that “larboard” was the original term for port side, changed because “larboard” and “starboard” were too easily confused when shouted across a noisy deck.
Song 6: Shout Your Mates Another Round
This song grew from a drive past the West End Brewery site on Port Road, now demolished. The chimney is gone. Steve felt its absence.
Keith sketches the arc: South Australia once had around 43 breweries. The West End Brewery operated from 1859 through to about 1980, and somewhere in there a Westies supporter working at the brewery persuaded the boss to paint the chimney in the SANFL grand final colours each year. Port Adelaide’s coach Fos Williams asked to be included. The tradition held, moved to a second chimney after the first came down, and now continues on the old brickworks chimney with the help of some “fancy technology.”
The pickaxe long-neck bottle gets its own verse. Those amber glass communal bottles that sat on dinner tables, shared rather than individual. Steve remembers the day his Italian neighbour Nino offered him a sip of Southwark Bitter from one: “It put me off beer for the rest of my life.” He recalls his paternal grandfather worked at the original Hindley Street brewery. A bottle recently turned up on Kangaroo Island. These things accumulate meaning.
Song 7: Tunarama Love Song
Greg and Nicole, Steve’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law, are in the audience. They wave when introduced. Greg is described as “so bashful.”
Keith gives the historical context: Captain Matthew Flinders named Memory Cove after losing eight sailors there when he was 28 years old, 10,000 miles from home. He named Cape Catastrophe, Thistle Island, and Boston Island after those men. Port Lincoln was named, Keith theorises, from homesickness for Lincolnshire. The tuna industry came after the war, when scientists found massive schools in the Bight. Colin Thiele wrote Bluefin there as a high school teacher, which became a film. Tunarama itself began in 1962.
The song’s story is Greg’s: he left Adelaide on a bicycle heading west, eventually reached Port Lincoln, and through mutual friends met Nicole. They came back to Adelaide later that year and were at the Mercury Cinema for Steve and Nardia’s wedding. “Their love story didn’t actually happen at Tunarama,” Steve admits, “but my wife loves her rom-com movies, so I did a bit of rom-com where I just put it against the backdrop.” He also notes that Tunarama won Best Seafood Experience this year, and that “it is okay to call someone a tosser, at Tunarama.”
Song 8: Good Night Don
This one has weight. Every episode of The Adelaide Show signs off with “Good night, Don,” so a song about Don Dunstan was, as Steve puts it, always going to happen. Keith, who lived through the Dunstan decade, tries to give it its due in a few minutes. Decriminalisation of homosexuality. Women’s rights reforms. Aboriginal land rights. The South Australian Film Corporation in 1972. The State Theatre Company in 1974. The Rundle Mall, celebrating its 50th anniversary later in 2026. The week of the performance happened to be the anniversary of the death of Dr George Duncan, thrown into the Torrens in 1972, a murder that accelerated the push for decriminalisation.
Keith acknowledges the controversies too: the Salisbury Affair, the personal challenges, the pajama press conference, and, with particular relish, the day Don stood on the Pier Hotel balcony during the 1976 tidal wave scare and told the crowd that “the only thing that will happen today is that we will all get a bit hotter.”
Steve wrote the song in Brechtian cabaret style, a nod to Don’s close friendship with Robyn Archer. The refrain draws on a George Bernard Shaw quote: “Your life was no brief candle, was a mighty torch that shone.” Steele Hall also gets a verse, recognised for his willingness to equalise the electoral boundaries even when it worked against his own party.
Song 9: Cellar Door Shuffle
Keith went to university with Malcolm Seppelt, “which was pretty helpful,” and takes us back to the first commercial vineyard up Jacob’s Creek, planted by Johann Gramp, one of the early German arrivals. The creek became the name of one of the most recognised wine labels in the world. The doctors follow: Penfold, Hamilton, Angove, Tolley. Keith notes that by the 1960s, 90% of South Australian grapes were going into fortifieds. Barossa Pearl and BenEan Moselle changed that. Keith asks the audience who had a sip of BenEan Moselle as a youngster. Most hands go up.
The song is partly in honour of Joseph, who runs Ballycroft at Greenock. Steve describes him as “the sweet spot of wine tasting because it’s not stuffy with him.” The song delivers two reminders: if your cellar door is making you feel uncomfortable, leave; and you are not there to guzzle.
Song 10: Ben Venuti (The Rostrevor Pizza Bar Song)
The final song is an ode to Gaetano at Rostrevor Pizza Bar, who has stood behind the same counter for 35-plus years.
Keith sets up the context with Don Dunstan’s liquor reforms: the end of the six o’clock swill, and the radical notion of drinking a glass of wine at a footpath cafe. Then the postwar wave of Italian migrants, and how pizza arrived in Adelaide. Keith’s first was in 1962 at a corner of Hindley and Morphett Streets, long since demolished. “In another ten years,” he predicts, “there’ll be Australians who reckon we actually made it.”
Steve moved to Rostrevor in 2006 and spent his evenings stripping 1970s Italian wallpaper off the walls of his new house before heading around the corner to eat Gaetano’s pizza. Gaetano calls his dough “pastry,” starts making it the night before, and has won awards for it. He welcomes every regular by name. He personally refuses to put pineapple on a pizza, but if you want it, he will make it. “The Italians,” Steve says, “they understand the value of the money.” He goes through about a pallet of pineapple a month.
The song is in Italian and close-to-Italian, with the chorus “Benvenuti, come inside” running through it. Steve says you will come along for the ride.
Closing
Steve thanks the audience and invites them to stay in touch with Keith via This Day in South Australia on Facebook and LinkedIn, where Keith posts about South Australian history every day, and via the Wednesday morning bike rides from Bicycle Express in the city at 9am. He then plays the old State Bank ad, which Keith greets with “Oh, dear. Well, I wasn’t actually named at the time, but a lot of people said, ‘I reckon that’s Keith in there.'”
Steve closes by noting that the album from the show, History Hit Parade, is available on Bandcamp.
00:00:00 Musical Pilgrimage
No Musical Pilgrimage this week because the whole show was a Musical Pilgrimage.
Here’s this week’s preview video
There is no video this week.
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.
An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)
433 Transcript
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Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Hello, Steve Davis here. Thanks for joining me for episode 433 of The Adelaide Show podcast. It’s a special episode to mark South Australia’s History Festival 2026. This is the year in which Keith Conlon and I put on two shows at the Mercury Cinema titled History Hit Parade. It was an absolute joy working with Keith because I’ve been writing these songs for my own pleasure, but also for playing on Five Double A with Richard Pascoe, um, in which I delved into different bits of South Australian history and life, often intersecting with my family and my journey.
And so we had these songs, and together with Keith, we handpicked 10 of them to be representative of a way of telling stories about connection in South Australia. We’re gonna give you the whole show. You might hear some references about getting a free download of the album. [00:01:00] That was for our patrons who paid for their tickets to come along and see the show.
The album is available to download at a place called Bandcamp, and I’ll put the link to that in the show notes should you wish to get a copy of these songs for your perpetual use. But this is about capturing this, well, I guess it’s a time capsule of the way we told these stories about life here in South Australia.
I think it will all be fairly self-explanatory. One thing you should note is we did have a heap of historical images behind us on the big screen at the Mercury to help give context and to point out different aspects of the stories we’ve been telling. You won’t have that here, but I think you’ll find the story will carry itself.
Just one word. Normally, we like to have beautiful, uh, microphones nice and close to us to capture the timbre of the voice of our guests. We have little lapel mics at the Mercury, so the [00:02:00] sound when we’re talking is passable. It’s, it’s certainly fine to listen to. It’s just not as rich as it normally is. So if you’ve come here for the first time, this is not the type of show we normally do.
Normally, we find a South Australian who’s engaged in some sort of passionate obsession, and we sit down, and we have a long, meandering chat with them, uh, kicking up pebbles along the way and seeing what’s underneath. But this is the show. Uh, we’ll set up the songs. We’ll play the songs. Enjoy. Probably about ninety minutes, I guess, this episode will run.
Here’s History Hit Parade, myself and Keith Conlon and the people who came to our actual sessions. Thank you so much for risking it to experiment with us in this novel approach to telling stories during the History Festival[00:03:00] [00:04:00]
Thank you. Welcome. Thank you for coming along today. Uh, just before we start, Keith, ’cause you have an acknowledgement to do, Ryder, who’s running the machine at the back, says, [00:05:00] “Ooh, all these people here are our demographic.” He does a special movie season for under 21s. And it’s called Silver Screens. On Tuesdays and Friday, they’re matinees, so please have a look at that afterwards.
Keith Conlon: He kindly didn’t mention silver hair at all. No. Over
Steve Davis: to you.
Keith Conlon: Yes, of course. Uh, uh, welcome to this humble History Festival event, and, uh, we’re of course, uh, on a place where European people have been frothing around for a couple of hundred years. But when it comes to First Nations people, tens of thousands of years, and we know why Colonel Light chose this as a place for the city.
It’s such a beautiful place, as it would’ve been, surely, is today, for the Kaurna people. They called it Tandanya, the place of the red kangaroo, on not the Torrens, but the Karrawirra Pari, the river running through the red gum forest. And little bits of the red gum forest still left today. So we, uh, are, are, are [00:06:00] very appreciative of the support of First Nations people, and our best wishes to Kaurna people-
Steve Davis: So let’s just get our, uh, introductions dealt with.
I’m Steve Davis, and I’d like to, this is a very special moment for me, introduce you to my partner in crime, Keith Conlon. Uh, yes. In fact, Keith, my dad is in the audience. He is a huge fan of yours. Oh,
Keith Conlon: that’s, that’s lovely.
Steve Davis: Followed your career throughout. And in fact, he’s got one of your almanacs. Would you mind signing it?
Keith Conlon: Oh, look, thanks very much, Steve, but, uh, it’s actually quite a ceremonial moment. You, you are the 100,000th person- … who has mistaken me for Keith Martin, the bloody weatherman- … who put out the almanac. But I will sign it for you, yeah.
Steve Davis: Sorry, you’re here under false pretenses now. It’s the other one. Uh, no, Keith Conlon is known by many people.
He fronted, um, State Affair- Yeah, [00:07:00] he did … for many, many years. Uh, 15 years of Postcards. He did breakfast on 5AA with Pilko. He was at ABC Radio. He actually helped Bob Francis sharpen the whole act of talk back right in the beginning of time. So he’s got a lot he’s responsible
Keith Conlon: for. Of talk back time.
Steve Davis: Yes, talk back time.
When it
Keith Conlon: was still being invented.
Steve Davis: Yes. Uh, plus he was a, or is still a drummer and a singer. He was with The Wesley Three and many other jazz bands around town. And something you might not know, late last year, he was given a key to the city. Oh. Ah. Yes. Thank you. And that actually came in,
Keith Conlon: uh, handy today ’cause we got here before Ryder, so he was able to let us in.
Opens the doors anywhere you like. Steve Davis, of course, my colleague in crime, he asked me would I like to be involved, and when I heard his songs, I said… I had to say yes, and I hope you’ll agree when you, uh, have heard a few of them today, because he, by day, is a, [00:08:00] a, a marketer guru extraordinaire. By night, he’s a lyricist, a songwriter, and that’s where we come in today, of course.
Now, he started, he’s a radio man, too. He started at 5MU in Murray Bridge. Worked at 5DN. Worked on 5AA. Uh, then was in, uh, the newsroom at Mix, and I think you broke the news of 9/11 because it was that time of night when you were- Yep … do- reading the news. Uh, he’s, um, uh, obviously, uh, interested in a whole lot of other things.
His, in fact, his, his drama teacher is here today. It’s wonderful to have you with us. Um, and she’d be proud of the fact that he went on to La Mama and did a lot of work on stage. That led to theater reviews and all sorts of cultural reviews for a good quarter of a century, and I believe you were a founding member of the Smart Arts, young Peter Geerts.
Young Peter
Steve Davis: Geerts. Yeah.
Keith Conlon: Hey, it’s a badge of honor. So here he is.
Steve Davis: Yes. And we should say, good morning, Miss Rogere. Everyone. Good morning, Miss Rogere.
Keith Conlon: Miss Rogere. [00:09:00]
Steve Davis: All right, now, a, a few rules. Well, not rules, guidelines as to what’s happening today. Yes,
Keith Conlon: I’d, I’d like to
Steve Davis: hear them. He did come over for some nice sleeps.
Oh, rehearsals. Uh, to my place. No, very simply it’s this. We have 10 songs we’d like to play, and Keith is going to help set up the historical context for each of them. Every song you’ll hear today I have sweated on with pen and paper writing the lyrics, but I did not make the music, not directly. I worked with my virtual session band using some AI tools to match my vision for the genre, the pace.
Uh, the tools these days also allow me to hum melodies that I have so it can incorporate that. So I consider these audition pieces that you’ll-
Keith Conlon: Thank goodness for that, ’cause I was a bit chowy about this. Yes, you know, it’s- I mean, I’m a muso. I’m a drummer. Yes. What am I doing with this artificial mob?
These are audition tapes for real musos, aren’t they?
Steve Davis: Yeah, and I’m happy to say that Alexandra Frost, who is a [00:10:00] singer in town, has two of my songs in the works that she wants to embody and take on as hers, which is my goal. And so that will be later this year. But for now I’m a… When I listen to music, I’m also a lyric person.
My wife snuck in two. Now, she knows that when I play a song that we’re listening to, whether it’s mine or not, I like complete silence in the car. Uh, ’cause I listen to the words. So I don’t mind if you close your eyes during the songs, ’cause that’s what I’ll be doing. Ah. But
Keith Conlon: I’d like you to keep them open- Okay
because we have the chorus, we have the words- Yeah … on the screen. They’re very catchy. So welcome to the singalong choir this morning.
Steve Davis: Yes. And the last thing I will say is, uh, when, either this week or after our last show, you’ll all receive an email with a code to download the album free of charge- Yeah
so you’ll be able to play these songs to your heart’s content.
Keith Conlon: In fact, it’s compulsory. But
Steve Davis: the opening theme we had, History Hit Parade, I can’t claim… This is the one piece of the show I haven’t written, the title. Keith [00:11:00] Conlon came up with that. Why, Keith? Why History Hit Parade? Well,
Keith Conlon: when, when we were talking about doing tunes, and these, as you will hear, are really steeped in our history, sometimes very personal, sometimes about statewide, um, it took me back to when there was a hit parade on the radio before Top 40.
Yes, young people, there was a time when there wasn’t a Top 40. We had a one night a week, Thursday night, it was the Harold Wright Hit Parade on 5AD. Now, I think it was Alex McCaskill, pictured here, who was, uh, doing it, but is it… Can anybody help me? Was it… It was the Harold Wright Hit Parade, and, that they’d just sponsored the show, and you heard about, oh, eight or 10 tunes.
You heard, at that time of year, uh, we’re talking 1957, ’58, uh, Buddy Holly was coming along, some young joker called Elvis, along with Perry Como and Pat Boone and so on. That was our lot for the week, and so it’s now the History Hit Parade.
Steve Davis: Excellent. And I have one last thing to [00:12:00] share before we start, and it’s this place.
Keith Conlon: Ah.
Steve Davis: It’s very special to me because I was married here-
Keith Conlon: Yeah …
Steve Davis: on a swel- Oh, with Nadia. On a sweltering December day in 2002. We don’t know which one, but it was one of them, and it was 42 degrees. This place was our place of getting married. We had our own cinema ads. We made featurettes. Uh, that mobile phone ad was from that day, um, that we had before.
So I hope you’ll appreciate just why this is so special. Uh, my parents are here. Eugene snuck in. He was our cameraman on the day. And when I launched my business, talked about marketing, I also launched it here. So this is the third time around in this special s- place, and I hope it’s gonna be a special morning for everybody.
Let us start with the first song, which is called Jack and Lil. [00:13:00] Up please, going up. It’s my ode to the great John Martins, the department store, and there’s another familial link that will become evident in a moment relating to Jack and Lil. But Keith John Martins Department Stores. John Martins. Take us through.
Keith Conlon: Well, these days, of course, we’re talking about the death of department stores, but we’re going back to the birth of a department store, and it was our own department store, of course. It was Johnny’s. It started out as Peters and Martin, a drapery store in Rundle Street. Don’t know what happened to Peters, but Martin, the Mr.
Martin, he was, uh, sort of released, shall we say, because of debauchery. Uh, but eventually the Hayward family took it over as John Martins, and of course, the most famous member of that family was Sir Edward Hayward, as he became. Now, not long into his role as the manager, he was looking for something to spark up the place, looking at department stores overseas, and he thought, “We need something here to get us out of the…”
what was a really still a very tough time. 1933, [00:14:00] we’re coming out of the great World Depression. “What about a Christmas pageant?” He’d seen one in Canada and thought, “Yeah, we can do it.” But then he got a bit worried when the first one was coming up. He thought, “Will anyone turn up?” So he hired a biplane and whizzed around the inner suburbs with his megaphone saying, “Come to the pageant.”
And they did. And of course, to this day, we get something like 300,000 people to his pageant, which it is in a way. I mean, it’s still Johnny’s pageant in a way, isn’t it? The store, sadly, uh, w- went out of business, where, w- was gone in 1998. Mm. But mercifully, because of its importance to the… It’s one of those things that couldn’t fail, isn’t it?
The government and sponsors picked it up, and we’ve still got it today.
Steve Davis: A- and Keith, everyone goes for that white-haired man, don’t they? Yeah. And by that, I mean Keith Conlon. Because you play jazz in the pageant.
Keith Conlon: Exactly. I, I was lucky enough, in 1964, way back then, someone in the [00:15:00] pageant writing it says, “Be great to have a jazz band on a float.
Who would do that?” Well, of course, the uni jazz band boys. And yeah, it’s just like a prosprade to us. But, and, and luckily, I’ve been in, in it ever since, and it is just the most magical, moving moment every year. You can’t, can’t explain how sweet it is to have a community all coming together and loving it, and they’re really there for Father Christmas.
And that was something Sir Edward had in mind. He’d be the real Father Christmas, wouldn’t he, if you were in town? He’d be in his magic cave.
Steve Davis: And now we turn to the song to set this up because Jack and Lil, who are on screen now, um, my late, uh, maternal grandparents. Hey. Uh, in 1930s, Lil was working in the kitchenware department in the city, and I only discovered this when I was about to interview Paul Flavell, who’s in the audience now, who’s written a wonderful book on John [00:16:00] Martins.
And that got me uncovering the story of Jack and Lil, and Christie Copley, who’s next to him, is making this beautiful The Big Store documentary at the moment. I th- I then uncovered more of their story. Jack was a young engineer who was there to install the beautiful new lifts which were in the building, uh, being put into in the 1930s, and, well, the rest is history.
What we do in this song is we follow from their meeting through their life as they gradually, their f- their family needs change, and they move floor by floor through what John Martins offers. And I want to s- just thank you, uh, to Robert Tedstone, who couldn’t be here today. He’s not all that well. He was a planner at John Martins, and he wrote out for me a complete list of what was on each floor, ’cause I try to make my songs historically accurate.
So, and of course, Up Please Going Up, it’s the wonderful lift ladies. It’s, uh, an ode to them as well. So let’s have a listen now to [00:17:00] Jack and Lil, Up Please Going Up.[00:18:00] [00:19:00] [00:20:00] [00:21:00] [00:22:00] [00:23:00]
Keith Conlon: Hey,
Steve Davis: Neuhaus
Keith Conlon: As you will hear, there’s a lot of love in the songs today.
Steve Davis: The next song that we’re looking at here is Oh Marion, because I grew up in the suburb of Marion. I lived there in a certain period of time, but Keith, you wanna take us back to its earlier days.
Keith Conlon: Right back, way back, and in this case, we go back to the origins of Marion, the name and the place, and we have to go back to 1838.
It’s only just over a year after Colonel William Light has finished surveying the city of Adelaide when he, uh, decides he’s had enough of Governor Hindmarsh and wanting to move the capital, so he went into private business as Light, uh, Finnis & Co. And, uh, they got the job We need a village on the Sturt, on the Warreperinga, and so [00:24:00] that, in the middle of the suburb, it’s still there, that little village.
And it, it has that lovely quality of being one of our early villages. And for some of your lives even, certainly for some of mine, it was still out in the countryside. In fact, there’s a lovely personal connection for me, which I’ll come to in a moment. Marion, where did they get the name? Well, it was named after the daughter of, uh, the, uh, resident commissioner of the day, James Hurtle Fisher.
So he got a square, and she… Actually, she was Mary Ann, but somehow it turned into Marion, after his daughter. And the personal connection for me is that, uh, my dad learned to drive in the 1950s, got his first car, brand new secondhand car. New secondhand car, that doesn’t work. Uh, and, uh, where would you learn to drive?
With your mate helping you? Well, of course you’d head for the countryside. You’d go down Dawes Road from Colonel Light Gardens and into the big long roads between the almond groves and the vineyards of [00:25:00] Marion.
Steve Davis: And Keith, that’s a picture of your dad on the car, isn’t it?
Keith Conlon: No, it’s not. But it is a picture of the almond blossoms- Yes
isn’t it? Great almond blossom, uh, period there, not just in Willunga, but right down on the plains, along with the vineyards, that some of them were still sort of lingering into the ’50s and ’60s. And the… There’s a nice trail that you can take, actually. You just download it from the web. A, a little heritage trail to identify, “Oh, yeah, there are spots of the village.”
The one I most love is the little St. Ann’s Church, little white modest Catholic church. When the church bell arrived, the belfry wasn’t quite big enough, so they stuck it in a gum tree out the back. And you can still visit it today. We’ve got some of the Wednesday ride mob. We’ve been down and said hello to it.
So it’s a, a, it’s actually a church bell in a gum tree as part of that lovely tour.
Steve Davis: Now, that’s the lovely story of Marion. Of course, I grew up there, and I had a different experience. I discovered this aerial photograph that is [00:26:00] circa around the, the ’70s when I lived there, and I’ve numbered some spots there.
Number one is 11 Perry Avenue, Marion. It’s where I grew up. Dad built the house. Uh, and so from there, I would go to number two, which was the railway tracks, where I’d sometimes put a 20 cent piece- On it and get it flattened into a beautiful, shiny disc Yes … which is what pocket money was for, of course. Uh, number three is where one of the two overpasses were put in while we lived there, and I remember them ’cause the pile drivers were thump, thump, thump all day for weeks and weeks on end.
But it did, uh, relieve congestion of the traffic. Uh, and then number four is pertinent because that’s the Park Holme Shopping Centre, and where number four is was, is now a Coles, but it was Coles New World back then, which gets referenced here. I was actually just in New Zealand. They’ve actually got a chain of restaurants called New World.
They’re not [00:27:00] related other than the gentleman who runs it used to work in Australia and took the idea right over with him. Uh, so that’s one part of Marion that I wanted to share. What this song also, the two quick things before we have a listen to it, is my parents made me walk to school by myself, even at age six.
You can talk to them afterwards. With my little satchel and my shorts, and one day I decided to leave school early for some reason, got lost, and back then the doctor’s surgery was in a house. It was a normal suburban doctor’s surgery, and I recognized it. I went in and they knew me. They rang Mum. She wasn’t home.
Wonderful parenting. And, uh, so he rang the neighbor across the road, who picked me up, and she made me a sandwich, and then when Mum got home, took me across the road. That was life in Marion back then. And the last thing before we have a listen, this song does l- lament the loss of the vegetation, the, the vineyards.
Of [00:28:00] course, our family did some of that in ripping it down for our house. But that’s what this song conjures as I was reflecting with all these messy ideas on Marion[00:29:00] [00:30:00] [00:31:00] [00:32:00]
Whoo!
Our next song is about love. Ah. And that’s all I feel
Keith Conlon: for you, Peter.
Steve Davis: I want to take you back to the way people courted in the 1920s with our next song, uh, which covers a number of things, but including the term dandyong, which apparently South Australian slang in some circles for finding a secluded park or hillside road to make out [00:33:00] And Keith, you’re gonna start with your favorite Dandenong location.
Keith Conlon: It’s… Well, I’m gonna take you back to some of the places that are in the song, because, uh, it’s, it’s about rowing on the Torrens, in part, and of course you can’t row on the Torrens without a lake. Because in the summertime, before the lake arrived, in the summertime it was, well, a series of rather smelly waterholes.
The lake came because of the vision and the vigor of a great mayor of Adelaide, Sir Edwin Smith. He applied himself, uh, he was a beer baron, had plenty of money, but he also applied himself to the community in big ways. That’s why he’s got a grandstand at Norwood Oval and a grandstand at Adelaide Oval.
And really, it ought to be the Sir Edwin Smith, uh, weir down on the Torrens, on the, on the Karrawirra Parade. He’s, it was partly out of community, uh, civic pride, but I suspect it might also have been out of those bloody Melbourrites who keep saying, we’d say to them, “Oh, yeah, well your [00:34:00] river runs upside down.”
They’d say, “Well, at least we’ve got one.” It’s, so he wanted to beautify. And to me, it is actually, it’s that sort of culmination of Colonel Light’s dream, this beautiful city surrounded by parklands with a ribbon running through the middle along the river. And it’s, it’s a bit like Lake Burley Griffin, isn’t it?
It really brings the plan together, and we just love it. So that’s the origins of We’ve Got a Lake. 1882, by the, within a year, the rowing craze has taken off. There are boat sheds along the, a- along the river and so on. And m- uh, one of the places gets mentioned is Jolly’s Boathouse. It started elsewhere, but very soon arrived by the City Bridge, where it still is today.
Burnt down a couple of times, but it’s been fixed. And back in the day, when you could rent a rowing boat, you could also get a milkshake and a pie. Now, it’s a very classy, very highly regarded restaurant, Jolly’s. So there’s one other place we’ve gotta mention, don’t we? We’ve gotta go under the bridge [00:35:00] to the floating palais, the Palais de Danse.
I don’t think anybody’s quite old enough to have done it, so to speak, ’cause you had to be there between 1924 and 1928. 1924, an entrepreneurial chap says, “We’ll, we’ll put a new dance palais on a barge just below the Rotunda in, uh, in Elder Park.” It was the thing. 800 people turned up on the opening night.
Soda fountain, no grog. Orchestra in the corner. There is one story about the drummer might have got onto the
We don’t really know what happened. Maybe it was just not well made and sank slowly into the mud, but that was the end of it, 1928.
Steve Davis: And for the song, in researching this, which I did for Valentine’s Day this year, discovered that, [00:36:00] um, couples would sometimes rent a rowboat at night. They have little lanterns on them, and the willows were a lot more overgrown, so you could find your little place between them, and if you were short of a coin, you could do that close to the Palais de Danse- Ah
and listen to the music for free, which is lovely. Uh, but what I love, uh, two quick things. One, there was a thing called the Rundle Street Parade. On a Saturday night, young men would promenade down one side of Rundle Street, young women down the other, and they’d be window shopping. Not for goods. And that’s how many people met.
They would have their little row, and then how do you let the person know- Mm … it was good or bad or indifferent? You would send a postcard.
Keith Conlon: This is a really South Australian secret. ‘
Steve Davis: Cause we had twice daily mail service back then. Now we get it twice weekly. How things change. But if you liked what you [00:37:00] did, what you would do is you would send a postcard, and because the young lady or young man would be living at home or there might be a matron overseeing them in a boarding house, you couldn’t put anything sordid in writing.
But the way you positioned the stamp meant everything. So an upside down stamp meant I love you. Uh, tilt it to the right and it meant yes. To the left meant no, uh, or a rejection. Um, sideways just means let’s stay as friends. Oh. Which I think is a soft no. Uh, and also if you did it in an unusual place, that meant, uh, this would be predetermined, I miss you or think of…
Um, I, I’m thinking of you or answer at once, and that you’d have to depend on what you had agreed to ahead of time. Much simpler to send an SMS I think, but- Here is my song, My Jolly Valentine.[00:38:00] [00:39:00] [00:40:00] [00:41:00] [00:42:00]
So I do have to thank Richard Pascoe for that. Not for inspiring me for love- … but for needing a Valentine’s song. And now, uh, we’re shifting to something a little sadder. Mm. It’s a story about Spring Gully, that great iconic brand that we all love, that is no more.
Keith Conlon: Yeah, we’re gonna go from the Torrens up Third Creek to a little gully that sort of just to the back of the village of Magill as it once was, pointing up towards Norton Summit.
And there was a village of Magill, another of our villages. Uh, there was a pub there by 1840. Uh, and the area soon became known as grape vines, apple orchards, and so on. And certainly market gardens all the way through as we know, through to Tea Tree Gully. Uh, recently we came across someone who said, “Oh yeah, my grandpa grew celery ri- right up where Dernancourt is today.”
And market [00:43:00] gardens, we can remember them, uh, uh, m- many of us because they were still coming down to the East End Market until the 1980s to take the produce out to, uh, retail stores.
Steve Davis: And I’ll just say, one of my clients and friends, Dominic, who runs Fun Life Fitness Center at Ingle Farm, he said, no, he and his dad used to have the ute.
They’d load it up with cucumbers, and twice a week they’d drive them across town to Spring Gully. Yeah. That’s in living memory. That’s something that happened in our time.
Keith Conlon: You can still see the little bits of the village, by the way, just below Spring Gully. Uh, a church here, and then a, a cottage there, and the institute up on the top of Magill Road.
And, uh, for me, one of the sort of dominating things, and the, certainly the Spring Gully people would know about it, there’s a big house on St. Bernards Road called Murray House, part of Murray Park, which of course turned into a s- College of Advanced Education. It could only do that because Murray Park was a big sort of city seat for a very successful farmer, Alexander Murray, a Scot.
His son became chief justice and lived there as [00:44:00] well, and so it was retained until, some of you might recall or you, you would’ve heard the story, that right up until the early ’60s it was a horse stud. That meant there could be a College of Advanced Education there. Someone who, uh, is gonna pop up in one of our later songs, Colin Tealy, he was the principal of the Warril Park, uh, Teachers College.
It was moving there, and he said, “If we’re going there, you’ve gotta preserve the creek.” Third Creek goes through the campus. Yeah. The good news is it will be preserved in the future. So that sense of the creeks and the villages and the gullies is still gonna be there. But to this poignant, uh, to a really quite poignant story just up the hill
Steve Davis: This brings us to the people, the families behind Spring Gully.
Four generations of family, uh, have made this happen. Uh, Brett and I both know, uh, Russell Webb, who was the one holding the token when the music stopped just recently. I played this song to them [00:45:00] when it was made, and I, I promise there’s nothing like this, but I will just say, ’cause it was very nice. He said, “Our whole family thinks this should, song should be in the state archives for covering the story so well.”
So it’s the song that also is a history book. And I’ll just, in case, just to help you with the song, just so you know the four generations, just very quickly, Edward McKee was the first person who started pickling those onions when he came back from the war. Then his son-in-law, Alan McMillan, uh, stepson Eric Webb, and his friend Malcolm Climer, they all got together.
Uh, so they were the second generation. Uh, the third generation was Kevin Webb with his brother Ross Webb. They were the ones at the helm in 2013. Remember, we all banded together to save Spring Gully back then? Mm-hmm. And they did. And then, uh, Russell and Tegan Webb were the ones at the helm when it just became harder and harder.
There are so many cheap imports flooding [00:46:00] in these days, and it’s one thing to want to be loyal to a local company, but it’s another thing when the cost of living is hurting. And so that is Spring Gully Road, just around the corner from our house. That’s where they used to all live, all down there. That’s where it all began.
But let’s have a listen to the song now. This is called Spring Gully Road[00:47:00] [00:48:00] [00:49:00] [00:50:00]
Keith Conlon: Very
That is a beautiful, [00:51:00] poignant, storytelling song, isn’t it? Well done, Steve.
Steve Davis: Well, I can hear the Wesley Three doing that,
Keith Conlon: actually. We would’ve done it. Yeah. If, if you’d written this in the ’60s- Yes … we would definitely have done it. Then we would’ve sung it on the country and western hour, and then The Seekers would’ve heard it, and then it would’ve gone world famous.
Steve Davis: Right. Well, let’s lift our spirits, turn the ship around, uh, with Away, Away, the PS Canali crew song. That’s a paddle steamer about to be commissioned at the end of this month, or recommissioned, and, uh, I think you should set us up with river live paddle steamers. Yeah,
Keith Conlon: this could be a sea shanty, but it isn’t.
No, it’s a river. This, this is possibly the world’s first river shanty, and it is about an era that was just so romantic but so hardworking and so immensely productive, and changed the economy of the state. We needed three visionaries to make this happen. 1853, if you went in 1852, no riverboats. 1853, three visionaries.
The first is the governor of the day, Sir Henry Fox Young. [00:52:00] He thinks we could make the Murray into the Mississippi of the south. Indeed, at one stage they called Goolwa the New Orleans of the south. So he puts up a pot of money to say, “Who’s the first person to take a paddle steamer up to Swan Hill and back with a load to put, to, to Goolwa, and then we can send it off to wherever?”
We need two more visionaries. One of them is Captain William Randell. He’s actually a flour miller up at Gumeracha, and he sees a market for his flour at the gold fields in Victoria, but he’s gonna need a way to get there easily with these heavy loads. So he starts building a paddle steamer just upstream from Mannum, the Mary Ann.
Enter an entrepreneurial sea captain. His name is Captain Randell. Uh, no, he’s Randell. He, he’s Captain Cadell, and he gets a ship made. He gets a paddle steamer made up in New South Wales, brings it around, and sails it through the Murray mouth, and so he’s at Goolwa ready to roll. They [00:53:00] didn’t know this was happening, either of them.
They end up competing. One night one’s ahead, one night the next, and so on, and they, they get a load, and they come back. Technically… In fact, uh, uh, Randell was taking a real load of his stuff. He had to, by the way, he had to go down when, on his first voyage, he had to go all the way down to Goolwa from Mannum because you had to go through customs, didn’t you, if you want to go to Victoria.
So he did that. So they, they, I think they both got a few bob out of it. But instantly there was a new trade, and it opened up the hinterland of South Australia. If you’re at Chowilla Station, and it was there, and you’re growing wool, you were a month at least away from the market by bullet wagon. Yeah. Now you’ve got a paddle steamer that turns it into days or at least a couple of weeks, and it can carry more, and it can bring stuff back.
Yeah. So supplies came up to the farms, the Loxton German farmers, and, and it transformed, uh, the riverland. And
Steve Davis: Morgan, Morgan, which is where the PS Kennally is based, was busy.
Keith Conlon: M- Morgan was [00:54:00] massively busy. Morgan ended up with that fabulous river red gum wharf. There’s only about half of it left today. Six trains a day left from Nor- Morgan- Yeah
just taking stuff down to Port Adelaide. It was a… The, the ports were, were huge. Uh, Goolwa became, of course, a big port, and Milang became a port and a, a, a shipyard effectively. Yeah. Paddle steamers and, uh-
Steve Davis: And before we finish, the drought story.
Keith Conlon: Oh, I got to do the drought story. Right. Now, the drought story is, it, floods and droughts of course on the Murray, and there’s a lovely picture.
You can’t imagine that it would be this dry. There’s a picture of people having a picnic, a Sunday school picnic, on the riverbed with the Berry Hotel up in the distance. That’s how dry it got. There is an apocryphal story about a paddle steamer that’s taking a, all of the building materials for a hotel all the way up to Bourke, up the Darling.
The drought set in. It took them two years to get there, and somehow by the time they got there, the pub was already there. [00:55:00]
Steve Davis: Yes. Uh, and to set us up for this song, uh, it was written aboard the PS Marion. I was on a three-day cruise late last year. I did notice how the bird life- Just accepted us Mm It was so peaceful.
But you see the jet skis come through, and the river boats, and the speed boats, and it was noisy as heck. So I was a bit passionate.
Keith Conlon: It, it’s wonderful, isn’t it, that we’ve still got the Marion- Yes … we’ve still got the Oscar W., and the industry up at Renmark. That’s right. And you can still smell the paddleboat era and hear the sounds of it, and y- that’s what got you in.
Steve Davis: Well, it is. And also knowing the Canali was being almost finished to be recommissioned, as we were going around slowly, I was thinking of those people who had to see that freight go, go non-stop. Mm. And I thought, “What would they, how would they capture that?” And I, I thought of a working song that was easy for them to play.
Uh, I want to… That’s me, by the way, steering the PS Marion, just before it ran aground in December. Uh, but here’s, here’s [00:56:00] my song. One thing I’m proud of in the research here, I think I annoyed the captain, ’cause I asked him about terminology. Of course, you’ve got port side and you’ve got starboard. Port side was originally called larboard, which I d- who knew that?
‘Cause I didn’t. Oh. Three of you, four of you. Oh, yeah. I didn’t know that, but it was because when they’re coming into port, they’ve got to message down, “Larboard, larboard, starboard,” you’re gonna misunderstand, so they changed it to port. So that gets a, a guernsey in this song. It’s a short one. It’s a simple shanty.
Away, away.[00:57:00] [00:58:00] [00:59:00]
Yeah, go. Nice.
We’re really going to lift it up a notch or two now because When I was driving past the West, what was the West End [01:00:00] Brewery, um, late last year, it was gone. That chimney, it, it was, it was part of my life. And so it, it spurred me on to write a song, partly for that and partly for those long pickax bottles, the amber glass.
Keith, kick off the story. Take us there, ’cause you’re in a brewery more often than you’re anywhere
Keith Conlon: else. There’s a little bit of a sad side to the chimney story, which we’ll come to with it, Steven. But, uh, yes, we, we… Breweries, of course, natural part of life. Uh, and, uh, as soon as the European settlers were here, they were building breweries.
There were a couple down on the Torrens illegally, in the parklands. I think they got washed away, so it was all right. But, um, the government actually, it was, was encouraging breweries early on to get people off the evil spirits. So breweries prospered, and the, the peak in terms of the number of breweries around the city in South Australia was something like 43 breweries.
Yeah. And we could have a quick quiz here. D- can [01:01:00] anybody remember some of the remnants? There are just a few of the remains around the joint. Who can remember a brewery, particularly in the country? Barra? You been to Barra? Unicorn Brewery or maybe the Jacka’s Brewery up at Melrose. In town, you can go, uh, past The Old Lion.
You can still go to The Old Lion. It’s a pretty snazzy hotel. That was a brewery. Kent Town Brewery Company, the bluestone walls are still there on the corner of Dequetteville Terrace and Rundle Street. So breweries are big. Breweries, um, uh, let me think. They, they, they play a role, don’t they? Uh, especially when we get to our time, they play a physical role.
Like you say, the West End Brewery used to be just a few doors that way because it was in the west end of the city. It’s actually been there since 1859, right up to 1980-ish, and that’s where a great tradition began, the chimney tradition for the grand finalists for the South Australian National Footy League on Adelaide Oval.
Hmm.
Steve Davis: Totally rigged. Was never black and yellow as much- Exactly … as it [01:02:00] should
Keith Conlon: have been. He’s, he’s, you know, he’s not bitter. Uh- It started in 1954. Uh, a Westies supporter is working at the brewery and says to the boss, “Hey, what if… If W- if Westies win, how about you stick our colors on the top?” Foss Williams is the Port Adelaide coach, and he says, “Hang on a second.
We’re in the grand final. How about if we win, you get a p- we get on the top?” So from that point on, both the winner and the other player in the grand final are on the top of the chimney. Then, of course, the chimney, as you say, disappears, and then it goes down there until 2021 when that is demolished. But luckily, the tradition lives on because they found a third chimney.
It now happens on the old brickworks chimney with a bit of fancy technology at the top to preserve that beautiful old chimney. Yeah. The colors are still there. Did, uh, Glenelg make it this year, mate? No, moving on.
Steve Davis: There, just to set us up for this song, uh, there’s something about that Pickaxe long [01:03:00] neck bottle.
Pickaxe, of course, was a conglomerate of local breweries chipping in together to make their own bottles. Mm. And what it reminds me of growing up was they would sit on the, the dinner table at lunch, and we were sharing from a communal bottle. We weren’t all having our own boutique drink. It was there to be shared.
Um, and that stuck with me. That made its way into the song. In fact, our Italian neighbors, uh, Nino, uh, they brought us- We went over to their place one s- Saturday or Sunday afternoon. All their family were there. They had a Southwick, but it was in a long neck Pickaxe bottle, and I remember he said to Dad, “Can Steve try a little bit?”
I don’t know if Dad heard, but the answer was yes, and I got to try a little bit of Southwick Bitter, which put me off beer for the rest of my life. But, uh, that, that’s beau- that stuck with me. There’s a, there’s a bottle actually turned up recently on Kangaroo Island- Wow … out of the blue. Uh, and over here, for Nadia’s side of the family, that’s Dean, who [01:04:00] recently passed away, and his daughter, Meredith.
There’s the West End brand. Just everywhere. In fact, there’s a line in the song, “It wasn’t good, it wasn’t best, but it was ours from east to west.” And I think that’s the spirit that I want to convey in this song. Let’s have a listen to it. It’s called Shout Your Mates Another Round.[01:05:00] [01:06:00] [01:07:00] [01:08:00] [01:09:00]
I had forgotten to mention my paternal grandfather worked at the brewery when it was in Hindley Street, too.
Keith Conlon: And in fact, there’s a bit of it left in a sense. The, the SA Brewing Company built a rather grand two-story brick headquarters. That’s a heritage place, and so it’s just down the road if you wanna go for a walk.
A lot of these stories, by the way, you can glean bits of them, and sometimes great lengths of them, on a terrific South Australian site, the History Hub. It’s run by the History Trust, which has been going now for 40 years. There’s a lot of accumulated good yarns there. Mm. So, uh, a- any time you come across them.
Did you,
Steve Davis: did you mention that ’cause the chair is here?
Keith Conlon: Oh, I thought I would drop it in, yeah. The, uh, chair of the, uh, of, of the History Trust is with us. Great to have you with us, Michael.
Steve Davis: Michael Neuhaus. Thank you. Round of applause for Michael.
Keith Conlon: Yep. Come in, Michael. Uh, he
Steve Davis: hasn’t vetoed our show yet.
Keith Conlon: No, that’s right, and we’re nearly through.
Steve Davis: Uh, this is, um, well, we’re getting towards the end now. This is Tunarama love song, and [01:10:00] this is very special to play it this morning because it’s about two young people, Greg and Nicole, who met and fell in love in Port Lincoln. They’re sitting in the audience to- Yay. Please wave your hands. Oh, hiya. Hiya.
Come on. There they are. Greg, come on. Oh, he’s so bashful. Um, we’re about to hear their song, but you wanna set up Port, Port Lincoln Tunarama first.
Keith Conlon: Yeah, Port Lincoln, it’s, uh, I mean, it’s a lovely spot, isn’t it? It… And, and it… And Tunarama is a lovely feature of it. But Port Lincoln was a moment of great beauty for one of my heroes, Captain Matthew Flinders, but also a moment of terrible tragedy for him because he’s coming down, uh, the west coast, uh, and he’s, uh, charting the unknown coast as the British admiralty called it.
He swings into what we now call Spencer Gulf, and he named it, and he sends off eight sailors in a cutter, a small boat. Into the dusk and they are never seen again. He loses eight men at a time when he’s 10,000 [01:11:00] miles from home. He’s 28 years old. He’s a young captain. You can imagine the stress that created.
I’ve had the good fortune and the really poignant moment of being able to come in on a rubber ducky and step onto the beach at Memory Cove as they did looking for the men. That’s why it’s Memory Cove. That’s why it’s Cape Catastrophe. That’s why it’s Thistle Island and all the other islands, they’re named after those eight sailors.
He came into Port Lincoln, of course, soon after and named several things and it’s my theory, uh, never proved, uh, in writing that perhaps he was homesick because this is a really s- tragic and difficult time. So- Mm … Lincoln is, uh, capit- the, uh, capital of, uh, the, the main city of Lincolnshire, his home, uh, county.
Uh, Cape Donington is his home village. Boston Island, another town. And indeed there is a statue of Port Lincoln now, and a, a quite contemporary one, a really lovely one, completely, it’s cat trim on the main street on the, the beach at [01:12:00] Port Lincoln to this day.
Steve Davis: And of course it’s the home of our tuna industry.
Keith Conlon: Ah, yeah, y- I bet that’s-
Steve Davis: How did that come about?
Keith Conlon: You leap into it being a major wheat port, of course, and then just after the war, scientists have discovered that there are huge schools of tuna out in the Bight We’re gonna need a bigger boat. So they build the Tacoma in 1951, and then the fleet grows around it, and still exists to this day as an important industry, but as a tourist attraction too.
And then you chuck in Tunarama, don’t you? 1962, the first one. So it’s been going a long time, and after COVID, it’s terrific to be able to tell you it’s back.
Steve Davis: Well, that’s true, and there was a movie or a book, wasn’t there?
Keith Conlon: Oh, yeah, because it, it, it became world famous in a sense, doesn’t it? Because, uh, Bluefin was written by Colin Thiele, the great children’s author.
He spent some time as a high school teacher there, and so he wrote Bluefin. It turned into a movie with a German actor, Heidi Kruger, and a local actor, Greg Rowe, and you can probably still see it somewhere on the web.
Steve Davis: And there in the bottom right [01:13:00] is Keith. At Tunarama.
Keith Conlon: Yes. 1986.
Steve Davis: Yes.
Keith Conlon: Only 40 years ago.
Steve Davis: No, that’s right.
Not that long ago. But, uh, just a couple of things to ease us into the song. First of all, I bumped into Naomi Blacker when I was in Port Lincoln recently. She told me she was heading up the new Tunarama. It’s coming back. So I’ve been wanting to do a song about Tunarama for a while. I’d also been wanting to do a song about Greg and Nicole, ’cause they’re my brother-in-law and sister-in-law respectively, and it was from our house.
Before we got married, Greg went off pedaling west. That was his plan. He- Across on his bike … on his bike, west. And he eventually made it to Port Lincoln, and then gradually, through mutual friends, bumped into Nicole, and very shortly thereafter they became a couple. And then they came back to be at this place for our wedding later that year.
And their story, their love story didn’t actually happen at Tunarama, but [01:14:00] my wife loves her rom-com movies, so I did a bit of rom-com where I just put it against the backdrop. And the only last thing I should point out, apart from Tunarama winning Best Seafood Experience this year, by the way, it is okay to call someone a tosser-
at, at Tunarama.
Keith Conlon: It’s- Only at Tunarama …
Steve Davis: only at Tunarama. So let’s enjoy Greg and Nicole’s story, and they’ll correct all the facts in the foyer after the show.[01:15:00] [01:16:00] [01:17:00] [01:18:00] [01:19:00]
Keith Conlon: New theme song for Tunarama, and it’s great. It’s on again next January
Steve Davis: Yes. Actually, Naomi wants a band to play it next year. That’s what she wants to do. Good
Keith Conlon: idea. Gotta do it.
Steve Davis: And can we give a round of applause to Greg and Nicole playing with our-
The best tosser we’ve ever met. Don [01:20:00] Dunstan is next because, uh, for the Adelaide Show podcast, we open… When we do an SA Drink of the Week, we toast our late patron, Queen Adelaide, and we sign off every one of the 400 plus episodes by saying, “Good night, Don.” And so I wanted to write a song about Don Dunstan, and Keith, you lived through the Dunstan era.
What was it like?
Keith Conlon: Uh, it, it, it’s hard to describe. You had to be there. Uh, i- in fact, you had to be there before that. Uh, I grew up in the late ’40s and the ’50s, and while there was great sort of economic progress going on, we’re expanding and all that, culturally and in terms of social reform, very sleepy. Uh, and in fact, I have a theory about our…
where we think of ourselves as the great utopia of the 1830s, and we’re a great reformer state. Most of the time we’re asleep, but every now and then we have a burst of reform, and this was one of them, the Dunstan decade. A young intellectual reformist [01:21:00] premier comes in, and it’s impossible to give it its due in a couple of minutes, but things like…
Well, sadly, this week was the anniversary of the death of Dr. Duncan, thrown into the river in 1972. It led in part to the, uh, decriminalization of homosexuality in the Dunstan era. There were women’s rights changes. There were Aboriginal land rights reform. There was a whole lot of things going on to improve the social side of the state and the cultural side.
South Australian Film Corp, 1972. Uh, the State Theater Company, 1974, and so on. So i- it was a, a really rich, changing time. The Rundle Mall’s about to celebrate its anniversary later this year, 50th anniversary. Don Dunstan was there drinking champagne out of the fountain. It was a controversial era, too, of course, and we’ve got to admit that.
I mean, the Harold Saulsvay affair, where he was proven right to sack him after an inquiry. Uh, his, some of his personal issues, his pajama conference, and a, and one that you [01:22:00] love, of course, which is in the song, uh, when he went down to the bay to stop the tide.
Steve Davis: Yes. I- there’s a, um, there’s a line that you, you s- you stared down God at the water’s edge-
uh, is one of the lines there because of that claim that it was gonna be the end of the world, the tidal wave was coming. For the song, though, I discovered, I didn’t know this at the time, I got to shake his hand once. You probably did a lot more, and not like- No, you, you would have met him many times. Robyn Archer was a dear friend of his.
Oh, yes. And she was a great cabaret performer, a lot of Brechtian stuff. So I’ve done this song in the Brechtian style. Um, I’ll just point out a couple of things that I particularly like. Steele Hall gets a mention because were it not for him and his values, where he wanted to do what was right, not necessarily what was right for his party, but what he believed was right, Dunstan wouldn’t have got as much done as he did.
Keith Conlon: Unlike some of the things that are happening today elsewhere that we won’t mention [01:23:00] He was actually for evening up the electorates. He was for democracy, would you believe? Yeah. And in effect, as you suggest, really sort of wrote himself out of office. He was, in his own way, a reformist premier.
Steve Davis: Uh, “Don’t dress for the Queen,” was one of his lines, uh, because he said, “I’m not in London, I’m in here in South Australia.
Very different weather.” Um, and also the… You’ll find this refrain going through it, um, “Your life was no brief candle, was a mighty torch that shone.” That’s my riff on the famous George Bernard Shaw, uh, quote where he talks about he, he doesn’t wanna be some brief candle, he wants to shine and live his life to the full.
And I think that probably sets us up for Don Dunstan. This is the song, and it’s called Good Night Don.[01:24:00] [01:25:00] [01:26:00] [01:27:00] [01:28:00]
Keith Conlon: Yeah, yeah.
Steve Davis: This wouldn’t be a show about South Australia if we didn’t touch on the cellar door shuffle.
Keith Conlon: Ah.
Steve Davis: That rite of passage of going around to one of our, or any of our, wonderful wine regions and enjoying a tipple. Keith is very close to this song, because I believe you went to university with someone by the name of Seppelt.
Keith Conlon: That was pretty helpful, wasn’t it? Yes. Yeah, Malcolm Seppelt, one of the Seppelts, was, uh, he was, uh, uh, was at university college and he was the, in charge of buying the grog. So we got some very good stuff at a very good price. But of course, uh, uh, when you start talking cellar doors, then you’re talking about an industry, uh, and a culture that goes back to, again, the very beginnings of European arrivals in South Australia.
Uh, Johann Gramp, [01:29:00] uh, he was, uh, one of the early German arrivals and he set up the first commercial vineyard just up Jacob’s Creek. There’s a name that went into the language, isn’t it? Because it got taken o- He, he started Orlando, the brand. That got taken over and eventually Jacob’s Creek came out under that name and so on.
And so now it’s probably the most famous creek in the world. Other German names you’ll remember, uh, there’s, uh, the Seppelts, we’ve already mentioned. Yes. Uh, and, uh, Henschke. These are big names in the industry.
Steve Davis: The Doctors?
Keith Conlon: The Doctors, of course. Yeah, it, it was a tonic. Of course it was. Yes. Do- Do- the, the, the, one of the famous names internationally is Penfold.
Dr. Christopher Penfold, his wife Mary, they plant vines brought out from France up at Magill, where we’ve already been today, and that’s still, of course, one of the great names. There were others like Dr. Hamilton and Dr. Angove up at Tea Tree Gully and so on. We’ve been through several waves. Yes, yes. Is there ano- another one?
Dr. Tolley. Tolley. There you go. There, there’s a lot of, there’s a [01:30:00] lot of w- uh, the, the, the wine industry’s had its ups and downs. In the 1890s, we were sending export wine to England, big bulk wines, uh, red wines to England. By the 1960s, it sounds amazing today, but we were putting 90% of our grapes in the wine areas into fortifieds, into port and sherry.
We weren’t drinking much real wine, so to speak. But then came another revolution. In comes Barossa Pearl, invented by Colin Gramp- … descendent of Young Johann, and, uh, and, uh, BenEan Moselle. Now, who had a sip of BenEan Moselle as a youngster? I did. Exactly. It brought- Parents didn’t,
Steve Davis: though …
Keith Conlon: it, it was a way of introducing Australians to drink wine, and it’s been growing ever since.
It’s just one example of that. Uh, and visiting cellar doors. The Adelaide Hills, lovely spot for cellar doors. In the 1970s, there was not a winery up there until a young Turk called Croser, he decided he would plant some vines at [01:31:00] Piccadilly. People said, “You’re mad. It’s too cold. It’s too wet.” He knew about the conditions.
He knew about cool climate wines, and so he begins a trend that leads us today to being able to visit up to 50 cellar doors, uh, in the Adelaide Hills district alone, and we’ve gone a bit past Barossa Pearl. Uh, I was talking to a, a, a wine maker just on the weekend. He’s just literally, that weekend, finished this year’s, uh, vintage, more than 40 varieties.
It’s still a thriving industry going through some tough times, but we’re the benefit of it at the moment because their prices, uh, are pretty good from our point of view.
Steve Davis: Part of the reason we’re doing this song is Joseph, uh, who runs Ballycroft at Greenock, good friend of mine. He is the sweet spot of wine tasting because it’s not stuffy with him.
You don’t have to watch all your bits and pieces. He’s there to make you feel at home. He knows his [01:32:00] science, but he knows how to enjoy the flavor and, and this, the curiosity to explore what was actually in the wine that you’re drinking. So part of this song is the reminder of two things. One, if it’s, if, if your place is stuffy, you’re in the wrong place.
Leave. You don’t need to do that. But secondly, you’re not here to guzzle. You’re here to enjoy the fine wine that’s being made. And so this is the Cellar Door Shuffle done with a bit of a shuffle sound to capture that joy.[01:33:00] [01:34:00] [01:35:00] [01:36:00]
Keith Conlon: Hey
Steve Davis: And, and this is something a little bit different to finish with. It’s an ode to my local pizza bar, to Rostrevor Pizza Bar, ’cause Gaetano has stood behind that counter for 35-plus years. And I’ve got a little bit more to share about that, but this whole notion of our local restaurant, et cetera- Yeah
that’s, and that incoming of the Italian cuisine.
Keith Conlon: Yeah, there’s, there’s a, there’s a couple of things there. We can go back to the Don Dunstan era too, because, uh, there was a line in there, wasn’t there, about ending the six o’clock swill. Six o’clock closing was still alive and well in the ’60s, and, uh, it changed in the ’70s in the, in the Dunstan era.
Not only that, though, he came up with this crazy idea that we could maybe have a glass [01:37:00] of wine sitting in a cafe outside on the footpath. Radical. Could not do that before, uh, the, the liquor laws changed. And that was really part of absorbing a whole new culture, wasn’t it? If you go back to just after the war when I was born in Adelaide, um, sure, my mum made some lovely dinners and so on, but the staple was basically three chops and, uh, chops and three veg, wasn’t it?
And then we started to twig as to what was happening to this wave of, uh, refugees and wave of economic migrants after the war coming in with these very different flavors and smells. To, to start with, I think it’s fair to say we just sort of looked over the fence or into the cafe and thought, “Well, that’s what, well, mm, that’s what they’re eating.
It’s interesting.” But then some- I think it mi- might’ve been the pizza that did it. Yeah. My first pizza I reckon was 1962, and it was just up here on the corner of Hindley Street and Morphett Street. It’s gone now, sadly, ’cause they widened the street, but that was really [01:38:00] exotic to have a pizza in the 1960s.
But of course, it took on, and I reckon in another 10 years there’ll be Australians who reckon that we actually made it, you know? It’s a bit like- … pavlova. We’ll claim it as our own. But of course, it’s, it’s one of the rich family traditions. Now, just how m- how much of a food revolution have people like the Italians led us?
How many different cuisines would you maybe get through either at home or just going down to the local in a fortnight or a month? I got up to about seven just counting ours. Mm. Because, eh, it’s a natural part of life. But the pizza bar has a very, very definite role to this day.
Steve Davis: It does, and that’s Gaetano there tossing his pastry in the air.
He calls it pastry, by the way- Mm … uh, not dough, which comes up in the song. 2006 we moved to Rostrevor, and I thought it was ironic because I’d finish work, I’d go over, I’d spend a couple of hours, we’d take turns doing this, but stripping 1970s Italian wallpaper off the walls of the house we bought, [01:39:00] and then I’d be having Italian pasta and pizza from Rostrevor Pizza Bar, which was beautiful.
They welcome everyone by name, not your first visit, but soon after. They always make you feel at home. Uh, it’s just lovely. That, that, the stuff he does to that pastry w- Which he m- starts making the night before, is probably why there’s no indigestion at Rosstrevor Pizza Bar. It’s beautiful. He’s won lots of awards for it, and one thing I will say, if you go there, the Rosstrevor Special is a great pizza.
There’s egg over the top of it, bacon, and all sorts of things there. But, um, mine is the Mexicana with pepperoni. Yeah. Highly recommended.
Keith Conlon: Does he do pineapple?
Steve Davis: Wash your mouth out. Actually, we, we broach that subject in the song. He never lets pineapple pass his mouth on a pizza, but if you want it, he’ll do it.
You see? Oh, okay. The Italians, they understand the value of the money.
Keith Conlon: Does he get a few ord-
Steve Davis: He- Does he get a [01:40:00] few
Keith Conlon: orders?
Steve Davis: He goes through about a pallet of pineapple every month.
Keith Conlon: Right.
Steve Davis: Yes. Uh, so there’s a lovely long episode, Adelaide Show, where he talks a- at great length, but we’re not gonna talk, we’re gonna listen.
This, there’s a bit of Italian smattered through it. It’s close to English. I think you’ll come along for the ride. Ben Venuti, welcome. This is the Ben Venuti Song for Rosstrevor Pizza Bar. Our last song.[01:41:00] [01:42:00] [01:43:00] [01:44:00]
Thank you all for, um, listening to these songs and our stories today as we’ve been sharing them. My wife’s quite relieved that she’s not the only one who gets put and subjected to them, so thank you. Just very briefly, Keith, if people wanna stay in touch with you, where are a couple of places they can do that?
Keith Conlon: Uh, I post every day about our history on This Day in South Australia on Facebook and LinkedIn. Love you to join me there. And if you wanna go for a bike ride and hear a [01:45:00] story, we go out on Wednesdays at 9:00 from Bicycle Express in the city.
Steve Davis: And if you’re curious for a little, uh, listen to a longer form interview, The Adelaide Show podcast is something I do.
Just before we finish, though, we couldn’t have Keith Connan here for a history show without playing something from our past[01:46:00]
Keith Conlon: Oh, dear. Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t actually named at the time, but a lot of people said, “I reckon that’s Keith in there.” So, it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was an institution. What could go wrong?
Steve Davis: But thank you all again. Look out in your email, could be in the junk folder, for the download code at some time during this week.
And we’ll play some more Virtualoso songs as you leave, uh, today, uh, including the one that did pretty well called the Ambo Love Song, I Ramped All Night With You. Uh, so thank you very much for coming.
Keith Conlon: And another round for our lyricist extraordinaire, Steve Davis. [01:47:00] Thank you for coming.