In 1982 I was accepted into an Airframe Fitters course at the RAAF Training Base in Wagga Wagga. I was in the army and had spent about a year as a Technical Clerk at the Amy Aviation Centre in Oakey Qld, approximately half an hour west of Toowoomba.

The army’s aviation contingent nationwide was a bit ‘F Troop’, with three bases and aircraft that had a life span of three minutes on average during an actual conflict. The Nomad, Pilatus Porter and Kiowa helicopter were built for reconnaissance and rarely exceeded 100mph.

Having said that, the culture at Oakey was laid back and fun. Also the mechanics were on the highest pay scale in the army so I applied for the trade course and miraculously got in without barely being able to change a tyre on my car.

The training was called an ‘adult apprenticeship’, an intensive twelve months course living on the base with very few privileges. There were approximately twenty army students and two thousand RAAF students.

I drove down in my car which was stolen (another story I’m not overly proud of) and moved into a barrack room with three RAAF guys. We slept in two bunk beds in one half of the room, leaving the other half for my turntable, amp and speakers for everyone to share.

Eddie was eighteen and I was nineteen. We bonded immediately through music and comedy. He was from Brisbane but he looked like he’d been dragged from the back alleys of 80’s St Kilda.

Eddie was an excellent cartoonist and artist too and designed and named our training class ‘61 Airframe’, ‘The Flying Wombats’. You can just see the badges sewn on the left shoulder of our overalls in the above class photo.

We got up to plenty of extra curricula mischief which I won’t expand on and we were very much bonded by independent music, which was referred to by many as punk or post punk.

The name came about around the arrival of the Sex Pistols but the origins go back another ten years prior in New York via The Ramones, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, The Stooges, Television et all.

Punk was simply an attitude not a genre. Brisbane’s The Saints arrived before The Sex Pistols and were pioneers of a rich period of independent Australian music and were truly authentic.

Much of the punk attitude was derived from the state of politics in Australia. It was a very conservative, boring time in Australia with high unemployment.

The West Australian Premier Sir Charles Court and the Qld Premier Sir Joh Bjelke Peterson wanted to build a road between Perth and Brisbane to separate themselves from the other states who in their eyes weren’t pulling their weight.

Presumably that meant building a tunnel through Uluru. If you think Pauline Hanson is difficult to listen to, Qld under Joh and his corrupt regime was intolerable. Enter The Saints and Go Betweens in Brisbane.

I can honestly say I rarely met a soldier or airman at that point in time who joined for a long career. Some ended up doing long stints but most of us were simply desperate for work.

Eddie and I were very different in some ways. I loved footy and he had no interest in it. A fellow soldier at the base, Ray from Horsham and I went to North Wagga in The Riverina League and played in a premiership which was very exciting.

It was a party club after hours at The Black Swan Hotel and North Wagga fortuitously introduced me to Riverina legend Laurie Pendrick who would coach me to two more flags in Brisbane over the next few years. This is Ray and I when we lived together in Toowoomba a couple of years later.

Eddie liked more political, hard core punk music like Crass and The Exploited while I loved X Ray Spex, Magazine and Gang of Four. What we did agree on was the Australian stuff like The Laughing Clowns, The Scientists, Midnight Oil, The Triffids, Radio Birdman and an up and coming Melbourne band called Hunters and Collectors.

They had just released a 12 inch EP that had a song on it call World of Stone. Occasionally we would turn the lights out in the barrack room and in an altered state, play it as loud as we could.

Then within a couple of months word arrived that the H&C’s were coming to Wagga. Suddenly promotional flyers were attached to telegraph poles all over town. They said and I quote, “If you haven’t seen Hunters and Collectors live, you’re either dead or you live in Wagga Wagga. Rolling Stone Magazine” Unquote.

At this stage Eddie and I were making our own clothes from op shop purchases. I was wearing ‘winkle pickers’ or ‘cockroach killers’ on my feet and I made this jacket from all sorts of stuff including a brass H&C badge I made and a dodgy bit of op shop cloth with H&C written on it using Hobby Tex.

The big night arrived and there was Eddie, another punk in Luke and another RAAF female from Townsville, Kaylene.

The gig was at the Agricultural College and when we walked in it was like being at Bob’s Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers.

As it turned out the local students found the scene quite amusing and left us alone to pogo away at the front of the stage.

Afterwards the band invited us back stage. They too were quite fascinated to find us freaks in regional NSW and they nicknamed us ‘The RAAF Punks’, inviting us to Canberra the following night.

What was to become an extraordinary 48 hours a couple of months later, Eddie and I hopped on a train to Melbourne where we would buy some records and hopefully see a band. My sister and her husband were kindly giving us accommodation in Mentone.

We left on a Friday afternoon and arrived at Spencer St early evening. Dressed in full punk regalia, we wandered through the streets of the CBD with Eddie’s blue RAAF duffel bag and my green army duffel bag.

We stopped at a bookshop and bought a couple of books then when we got to the counter the girl behind the counter asked us if we were The RAAF Punks!

Tentatively we told her we were and she asked if we were looking for The H&Cs.  Yes! we replied in sheer astonishment. She then wrote down the phone numbers of Greg Perano, John Archer and Doug Falconer on a paper bag. I kept it in the pocket of the jacket all these years.

So we visit my sister and head out the next day running amok in Melbourne. What we loved about the city was that no one even glimpsed at us. I bought a Dead Kennedy’s 12 inch, Too Drunk To F… from Missing Link Records then we entered a minimalist Bang and Olufsen store and feigned interest in a turntable. I asked if I could play my record which they did but after five seconds it was ripped off and we were shown the door.

It was time to ring the band. They were rapt to hear from us and asked us to meet at, and I’m not sure if it was The Seaview Ballroom or The George in Fitzroy St, St Kilda. It was a small band room off to the side as I remember it.

We were greeted warmly and sat down to watch a hybrid band call ‘Bang’. The few I remember were Doug Falconer on drums, Karen Ansel from The Reels on synthesiser and Zan from I’m Talking on vocals.

After the show they asked us if we’d like to go to a party. I don’t remember how we got there but I remember it didn’t take long. The house was owned by The Australian Ballet and living in it were a number of exquisite looking individuals.

The living areas were huge and there must have been forty revellers. Strangely enough Eddie and I were comfortable there and had a ball.

There was a three piece band in the corner and I remember getting called up to a conga line and dancing away the early hours.

Eddie was chatting to someone and asked who the band was. He told Eddie it was Mark Seymour’s younger brother and a couple of guys from Split Enz! Who woulda thunk it! The genesis of Crowded House!

Greg Perano the percussionist from H&C offered to give us somewhere to sleep. He was the one member of the band that was so kind to us from the moment we met him in Wagga.

Greg lived in a one bedroom flat in St Kilda and Eddie and I slept on the floor. A few hours later he made us a coffee and announce that he had something for us that he may as well give us instead of mailing it.

It was a thick roll of concert posters wrapped and protected by cardboard cleverly shaped like a propeller. It was addressed to the RAAF Punks c/- RAAF BASE WAGGA. This is one of the posters we put up in our room upon our return.

He also gave both of us a 45RPM demo single of Talking To A Stranger, the band’s first single on their debut album. Both Eddie and I still have our copies.

So around August 1983 we graduated. Eddie went to Perth to work on fast planes and I returned to Oakey to our adorable plodders.

In 1984 I drove to my hometown of Perth on my own and caught up with Eddie briefly but that was it. He ended up serving six years and disappeared as had I.

For the past twenty years without fail I would try Google to find him. Little did I know he was doing the same for me.

Incredibly a few weeks ago Eddie found my website and sent me a message to say he was visiting a friend in Creswick about 20 mins from Ballarat on Easter Friday.

I rang him and we spoke for about ninety mins non-stop. The anticipation of seeing him was like a first date! Crazy.

I grabbed a collection of old photos and met him at the pub where we spent the next three and a half hours catching up like t was 1983..

Eddie has had a very successful career in aviation and works for Airbus in Brisbane having spent time in France and Germany.

We’ve had similar experiences over the decades in a creative sense, both MC’ing big work conferences and playing the fool in corporate videos. Only difference is he has tried his hand at stand up which I have never had the guts to attempt.

We also have both had our challenges with congenital mental illness so it was great to share our stories with each other.

As we said our goodbyes, Eddie handed over a record he borrowed from me 42 years ago, Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. Better late than never, just like his appearance after all these years.