My story ...

In 1970 I was working as a boat painter at Newport. I'd come to Sydney with a blues band called the Seed and after we broke up I decided to do it alone as a singer/ songwriter.

One of the venues I was playing at was called the Arts Factory. It was a kind of a Woodstock in a Surry Hills warehouse. The Shud played there often, Tully I seem to remember ... definitely the Nutwood Rug Band. I got to know these people pretty well and started doing shows with the Shud at Mona Vale Town Hall. Lindsay and the boys played very loud and I think I was a hit because I gave everyone a break from the volume. I was just one quiet guy up there with a guitar.

At about that time they advertised a writing competition in Tracks magazine with a stereo system and three records as first prize. I was keen on the idea of a stereo because Lyn and I hadn't had a stereo in quite a while. We were very broke, renting a little bungalow in a bamboo thicket halfway down Gladstone St.

I won the prize and when I went to David Elphick's place to pick up the stereo I met Alby and they started talking about the movie they were making. I asked them if they wanted any music for it. They said they'd have a listen and off I went to write a surfing song.

At the time I was haunted by a chord that I'd found on an open D tuning. It was kind of watery and flowing and reminded me of the feeling of my favourite wave which at that time was Little Avalon. I got serious with the feeling and started to live inside the song that came from it. I took the song to David's place and sang it to David and Alby. David got pretty excited and said he'd make me a star. I couldn't think of anything worse than being famous but gee, I really wanted to be able to pay the bills by writing songs. I began to wait for the call to come to the studio.

I waited and waited. Finally the call came and I hitched into Pact Studio in Sussex St with the old Levin all strung up with brand new strings, full of anticipation and dread. I'd been in studios before with Tully and Nutwood Rug but this time it was me. David introduced me to Wayne and Wayne basically said "Sorry man, we've got to work real fast ... we're out of money. There's only half an hour of studio time left. Listen I want to put a flute player with you."

I told him I didn't want a flute player in my song. I had it down, tight and ready to go. Wayne was very persuasive. He talked me into giving it a go. The flute player was a soft, gentle kind of guy with long curly hair and I've often wondered if he's still playing. I started to play the first chords and the pick which were very weird and very different and he just heard me instantly and played along in the most inspiring way. We just connected right there and then. We did a couple of takes and it was starting to clean up when Wayne apologised and said goodbye and I was out in Sussex St again. If that flute player reads this I want to thank you for a nice little jam.

Having your nice little jam reverbed up almost out of its essence and put on a record was a little embarrassing but people tell me they like the song. I still find it very hard to bring myself to listen to it.

I think the record itself was a great idea and had some really wonderful Australian songs on it. The sound track and the movie are part of Australian culture now. David and Alby were a really good team I think. Alby had heaps of flow and ideas and colour and warmth and David had the determination and the level-headedness and the cheek to push the project through. And it was a great project. Full of a warm Australian integrity that spoke for itself without saying anything.

David organised for me to meet a Warner Bros. Music exec at that time and I went along to his flat at Neutral Bay and had a beer with him. He didn't have a cigar and he wasn't loud and overweight, but he was American. I liked him. He spelled out to me what I'd have to do to sign up with Warner Bros. and I wouldn't have been able to do it. I still have an aversion to being well known and I couldn't have become the kind of commodity that you have to be if your work is going to be marketed on a large scale. Besides, many of my songs were against the system that I'd be earning money from and I don't think I could have lived with that.

I suppose I reached a kind of crisis in my life at that time. It seems corny now but I believed that I had to write songs that would save the world and I couldn't get that out of my head. It got so bad that I couldn't talk. Literally. I had a day job at that time painting boats and I can remember standing there for hours looking vacantly at my stationary brush and not being able to talk to my workmate Dave Hannagan (Terry Hannagan's cousin by the way and a really good harmony singer from Country Radio).

Towards the end of that tortured afternoon Dave said: "Listen mate, you've been telling me you have to save the world. You know where the world starts? With your wife and kid. Try saving them first. Get into the real world, will you!"

All around us people were leaving for the north coast. It was the peak of the alternative revolution. I was singing songs about going back to nature while most of my friends were doing it. Lyn had always wanted to leave the city and rent a farmhouse. I definitely didn't want to join the capitalist machine that we believed was going to self destruct anyway.

We had friends who were taking over the Good Earth Cafe at Bangalow near Byron and they offered us a room upstairs in return for help in running the cafe. Lyn, little Michelle and I set off for Byron in the old Kombi with $30 to our name. And yes, the motor blew up. It was kind enough to let us get almost to Bangalow.

We were in the middle of the back to nature revolution and the cafe was a kind of epicenter with its natural foods and talk of the revolution. They were shaky times, I can tell you. Kombi loads of pilgrims were heading north like the early American wagon trains headed west. All kinds of people poured through the cafe with all kinds of stories and motivations. Some of the best jam sessions of my life I had with those people, many of them beautiful musicians, but I'm going into too much detail.

As time went by it seemed that to be a successful hippie you needed rich parents, an insurance payout of some kind, a part time job in the city or plenty of dope to sell and we had none of the above. The busy cafe life burned us out and we moved into a tent at Broken Head, my absolute favourite wave. I had many mornings there in the first light, just me and the dolphins and these beautiful, poetic barrels. I'd found a job as a labourer on the Byron Bay sewerage installations and a little bit of money was coming in. Then disaster struck. The great little surfboard I'd made at Newport fell off the car and snapped in two.

The need for money to get our little family on its feet finally drove me back into teaching. I went kind of reluctantly but enjoyed it more and more, having lots of fun doing music with kids. Lyn and I ended up renting a farmhouse near Pambula in 1974 and teaching in the area.

I now live at Tathra with my second wife Janet, still busy teaching, still enjoying it and still having fun with music. My latest project has been with marimba bands. Kids love marimbas and so do I. They're so rich and woody.

I have five beautiful and clever kids and I play music for God at Tathra Uniting church most Sundays. Still the guitar.

— Peter Howe