Going back, you and your family came to Adelaide from Glasgow at the age of five, or when you
were the age of five.
Yeah I was five.
What were your parents looking for in Australia?
Well my parents had a lot of problems in Glasgow, my dad drank a lot and probably
my mum did at that point, but there was a lot of violence, a lot of, they were just
unhappy in the marriage.
My mum and dad had five kids before they left Scotland, my mum was only 23 years old, so
very young, she was married at 16.
My mum and my dad dealt with their problems with their fists, there was always a lot of
violence around the house; my dad womanised; they both had drinking problems, so my mum decided
if we moved to Australia, she could leave all that stuff behind, wipe the slate clean
and like a fairy tale restart, but unfortunately when they moved things didn't change and
you know, when and probably things got worse, well I know things got worse and unfortunately
for them they had the same problems that were getting worse only they were 12,000 miles
away from where they lived and they had no support, where in the past they had my mum's
family and my dad's family to support them. Now they were here with nobody and so their
problems just escalated.
Well like you kind of say you know, the idea of being new to a country kind of can amplify
all these other problems, did Australia welcome you as an immigrant family?
Well I don't know if Australia welcomed us, I mean at that time there was a huge
influx of British immigrants you know and European immigrants and we didn't really notice
that we weren't welcomed, but I don't know if Australia was going, "hey come on in," because
we did bring a lot of problems with us you know, whenever you bring groups of immigrants,
particularly from post war countries, like we are doing now and what like what we did
with the British immigrants, there is a lot of problems. There was a lot of drinking,
there was a lot of violence, there was a lot of heartbreak that they brought with them,
but when we came, we were in hostels, which they do with immigrants now.
We were in hostels and then from there we moved to a place called Elizabeth just outside
Adelaide.
Basically we didn't interact with many Australians, Elizabeth was a whole satellite city set up
to sort of cope with immigrants. I went to school with Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh
you know, the odd Italian, the odd Greek person, but not many, it was mostly Brits.
I think my dad was the odd Italian that you my have met.
Later on when I moved out of Elizabeth, I went to school with a lot of Italians, a lot
of Greek, a lot of Polish kids, Russian kids there was all sorts of Immigrants, but in
Elizabeth, seems to be a lot, primarily Brits.
Well given that kind of immigrant environment and knowing that's such a strong strain in Australia,
is that kind of, jumping forward a bit, part of what angered you about Reclaim Australia,
using your music for their anti-immigrant stance?
Well you know, I mean Reclaim Australia, but who are they reclaiming it from, is what I
would like to know and I'm happy for them to try and reclaim Australia for whatever
reason they have to do it, but I just don't want to using my music as a soundtrack to it,
I mean their views and my views are totally different and my views of Australia are an
open place, where people are welcomed; where my family were welcomed, I've seen friends
who came from Yugoslavia, who were welcomed, friends from Greece, friends from Italy and
we all came and basically we all had our problems, we all had troubles with language, we had
troubles with the culture, but over some time and a bit of love we all sort of blended in
and some of us you know end up being quite you know, we contributed a lot to this
community.
Most families do, you know, contribute to the community and I just don't like the way they
are singling out sort of a particular sort of religious groups you know, if you were,
part of having the freedom in Australia, why we love Australia is because we're free to
worship who we like and free to have free speech you know? Free speech comes with responsibility
and you know there's a big difference between free speech and hate speech and I think everybody
is sort of jumping up and down and saying, "yeah we want free speech" so they can insult
people, is the wrong way of using free speech, I think it's a bad example of it.
So I mean I'm happy for people that say what they feel as long as it's not hateful, as
long as it's not ignorant and as long as they don't use my songs to do it.
Absolutely.