Sunshine River and beyond
If West Australian musician Charles Hall had been born on this day in 1948, he would've been conscripted to national service and lived a life very different from his own. Instead, the 66-year-old debut author, who'll celebrate his 67th birthday in transit tomorrow, was born a day later, allowing him to take a more lyrical path.
The Perth-born, Melbourne-based author is flying to WA tomorrow for the Perth Writers Festival launch of his debut novel Summer's Gone, the second novel from Margaret River Press. Hall has form for doing important things on his birthday, chucking in a job at the small Wheatbelt town of Bonnie Rock after a week on that day back in 1967.
"I woke up on the morning of my birthday when I turned 19 and I thought to myself 'this is horrible', so my friend and I quit our jobs on the wheat bins and hitched back to Perth," he says. "Back in the 60s, it was hippy-trippy time."
The next month Hall met his future wife, the then Sue Jennings, joining a band and performing at Will Taylor's poetry, folk and blues venue POFOBIA in Guildford. Hall married Jennings - who now performs with the stage name Sue Richmond - at a Melbourne registry office that August. The pair went back to Perth in 1969, moving on to the UK in the 70s and setting up again in Melbourne in 1979.
On the surface, the now-retired teacher and engineer's path is not too dissimilar to his lead character Nicko who pairs up with a jazz singer from Melbourne in the late 60s. The draft-dodger is not the hardest-working bloke but he's sincere and into posh chick Helen, although he finds her tougher, free-loving sister Allie not half bad neither.
Nicko and his mate Mitch form a folk quartet with the two Melbourne girls . Allie hooks up with Mitch, a future Vietnam vet, but their pairing doesn't last, so the Warehouse Four become three. Helen takes off to Melbourne to wait at her ailing ex-boyfriend's bedside, leaving the door open for Nicko and Allie to shack up.
Bad choices abound but the temporary duo hitchhike regardless to Victoria where Nicko picks up with a largely unsuspecting Helen while Allie goes classy and latches on to a cashed-up real-estate developer.
A bitter Mitch then turns up after being conscripted and drunkenly stirs up trouble. Soon enough Helen's dead, Nicko's torn up, on the run and then in jail. What has happened? Nicko finds out in the end, just like the reader, but it's a meandering and revealing journey to the truth. The Warehouse Four's long road to destruction mimics the experience of many young Australians in the 60s and early 70s. In this sense, Hall has produced a baby- boomer's everyman tale. But Hall's distinctive, realist voice is where he shines.
The debutante author says he always wanted to write a story set in this era. He has covered Vietnam, sex, guilt, access to contraception, the pressures of dodgy accommodation and the commonplace threat of asbestos, mining material from his own and friends' experiences.
"I draw on real-life experiences," he says.
