I was very fortunate in the early seventies to be living in a house with a bunch of actors and musicians. It was an extraordinary house where all sorts of tricks and theatre antics were played out every single day and there was one room that was a music room. Basically I just started sitting on the drum kit and started playing. There was a drummer there, guy called Lindsay Arnold, and he kind of taught me quite a bit and had a big influence on me, but it was really the house. It was one of those classic share houses; we were very bohemian, lots of play all the time and it really had an influence on me to become a creative person.
I went overseas for a couple of years before returning to Brisbane, when I did a couple more years of acting, political theatre, before really settling into drums and probably settling into drums because of the political movements in Brisbane at the time due to the oppression of the Bjelke-Petersen government. And punk music being such a significant artistic movement, it really affected me, and I just went ‘Oh my God I want to do something that’s significant.’
I made a decision that my drumming – this is back then – whatever was offered to me I would take, to do with drumming, and every day it would be the drumming that would prioritise my life, nothing else would. And you know I lived that life for many many years.
I don’t think I’m a natural drummer. I think I’m becoming a natural drummer now. There were a lot of years when I wasn’t playing, when I was raising my daughter, when I was directing community music shows, so I wasn’t playing. I tried to play occasionally but I was directing drummers for years and years, big drum shows on riverbanks, and pageants and parades and also community music events but I wasn’t playing, and I’ve really come back to playing now a lot and working very hard and now it’s really natural to me.
