I first met Russell at Trinity College, University of Melbourne, on the first day of "O" Week, 1982. Russell and I may or may not have been the token country-high-school intake to the College for that year, but in any event we gravitated towards each other by reason of a common farmboy background, and mutual interests in music, cricket and science fiction novels. I got to visit Russell's farm at Wangaratta on several occasions, and he came down to Fish Creek more than once.
We spent a lot of time going to watch bands together (I soon lost count of the number of times we had seen the Models, following in minute detail all of its complex web of line-up changes; and we were two of the very few people to witness David Bridie's short-lived Not Drowning, Waving offshoot band, Easter). We also, as was the custom, wandered up to Lygon Street at late hours, to Twins for souvlaki and to l'Alba to play the machines. We could also be found, late afternoons, at Naughton's Hotel, nursing a quiet beer and playing Centipede, or Galaga, or whatever games were built into the tables over there at any given time.
After a year and a half we had both outgrown college life (it became too demoralising to see the first-year girls jumping into the beds of seemingly all of the older guys at the college except ours). A house became available at 166 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy. Five of us got together and took out a lease of that house. Russell and I stayed there for two years. During that time Russell and I, and Russell's long-lost friend Roger, who had recently left the Australian defence forces, rented a room in the Nicholas Building, on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane, just round the corner from the original site of Missing Link Records. This room was known to us as "The Studio", and was used for the purpose of forming a band. Russell, I think, saw himself as Paul McCartney to Roger's John Lennon, even to the extent of paying a large sum of money for a left-handed Maton guitar. (Perhaps I was their Ringo Starr.) We called ourselves The Drought. Much fun was had. Eventually I recognised my limited ability to contribute, other members came along, and my interest in the band became that of a close outsider. I moved to the country, where, as host of a radio program on the local community FM station, I was able to get them a live-to-air slot, at a time when they were sounding like a "real" group (and if anyone happens to have a tape of that performance I would be very grateful for a copy). An eight-song recording exists as proof of The Drought, on which I can be heard playing some wayward keyboards on one track. That my contribution wasn't edited out is more a testament to Russell's sense of loyalty and fair play than any endorsement of my playing ability.
Greg Clark, Ed Kuepper's number one fan, became a friend of Russell's during the Nicholson Street years. I liked Greg. The only problem with Greg was his friendship with the Willy Boys (named for their shared history as Williamstown residents). At the second annual Nicholson Street party, the house was briefly, and unpleasantly, invaded by the Willy Boys, who kicked a hole in our backyard dunny, and who, once we managed to get rid of them, terrorised us by bashing on the back gate and throwing sticks, stones, beer cans and other solid objects over the back fence and up onto the front balcony, before eventually going off to perform other acts of humanitarianism elsewhere. Russell, of course, was terribly apologetic and remorseful for days afterwards, even though it clearly wasn't his fault that any of this had happened.
Russell was too level-headed to have crises of identity; but when I had mine, which inevitably reached its pinnacle at three o'clock one morning, it was Russell I turned to. I am forever in his debt, which cannot now be repaid, for the way he was prepared to hear me out, offering some of his typically gentle, non-judgmental wisdom, and never speaking of it again. (None of you know anything of this. Nor will you ask.)
Russell, Roger and I took a summer job at Erand Couriers, in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, working on the conveyor belt that sorted packages for delivery to the (if they were lucky) correct locations (not always unbroken - upended tins of paint make a heck of a mess - but what can you do?), and loading and unloading trucks. It was good, hard, cash-in-hand work, and we met some fun people there, one of whom invited the three of us to his house in Hawthorn for a barbecue one Sunday. Roger drove, he being the only one of us with a car. Alcohol was consumed. More alcohol was consumed. At some point a device for the communal smoking of marijuana appeared. Not being dope smokers, we underwent a crash course in bong etiquette and smoking technique. Whether the weed had any effect is impossible to tell. The afternoon spun out of control. Roger drove home, the only way he knew how to drive: fast and lurching. He dropped us off at Nicholson Street, and as soon as we got inside the front door we staggered off, one to the upstairs toilet and the other to the aforementioned backyard dunny, to vomit our naive little hearts out. It was a salutary lesson for both of us. Clean living was the only way forward.
Shared houses cannot last forever, and at the end of 1985 we went our separate ways. I stayed with Russell a couple of times in a terrace house in Best Street, North Fitzroy. And then Russell moved to the UK, met Tracy, moved back (briefly) to Melbourne, and then left for the United States, where he and Tracy started a family. Russell, Roger and I had a reunion of sorts one night at Mario's in Brunswick Street when Russell made a flying visit back to Australia to see his ailing father. I spoke to Russell over the phone during his last trip back. I was looking forward to our next catch-up, whenever it may have been.
