These were my opening remarks at the launch of Great John Maclean Has Come Home to the Clyde at Pollokshaws Burgh Hall, Glasgow on 26 August 2025. Joining me on the panel were Owen Maitland, national president of Scottish Socialist Youth (pictured above left) and Iain Gault from my publisher Resistance Books (above right). “History’s what people are trying to hide from you, not what they’re trying to show you.
As far as I am aware, only Calton Books and Lighthouse Books in Scotland, and Connolly Books in Ireland, have copies in store. The book is available online at all other outlets listed. Scotland Calton Books, 159 London Road, Glasgow (pictured above) Lighthouse Books, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh. Ireland Connolly Books, 43 East Essex Street Temple Bar, Dublin UK Resistance Books Waterstones Foyles Hive TGJones Fishpond Awesome Books Blackwell’s
It was early 1975. I remember warm summer nights and nude swimming in the backyard pool of the house on Nottage Terrace. There were a few Adelaide locals but mainly twenty-somethings evacuated from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy struck on Christmas Day. A mix of English, Americans and Australians; more than a few fresh from India and the Asian hippie trail. They had been part of a little Darwin scene that
If it had all gone smoothly there wouldn’t have been any stories to tell, would there? Despite the challenges and hurdles along the way, our three-week tour around the Scottish Highlands was a marvelous and memorable experience. The first challenge was getting there. Once she’d decided she wanted to mark her admission into the 60s club with a trip back to Scotland, Di found a reasonable three-leg business class fare.
An eBook of ‘No Fixed Address’ is now available on Ratuken Kobo and Amazon. The Kobo version can be purchased from Rakuten Kobo and can be read on a Kobo eReader, a Kobo Books app or the Kobo Web Reader. Click on the screenshot below to go to the site. The Kobo preview includes the foreword, introduction, prologue and first chapter of the book. The Kindle version can be purchased
There was a lot of love in the room at the Adelaide launch of ‘No Fixed Address’ and the opening of the related exhibition in the Wall Gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre on 24 August. Main pic: Duckie Taylor, Graeme Isaac, Donald Robertson and Ricky Harrison. Pic by Peter Thurmer. An early arrival was original No Fixed Address sound engineer (and sometimes bass player) Duckie Taylor, accompanied by his cousin
Through May, June and July 2023, there was a swag of radio interviews done in Melbourne and Sydney about the book ‘No Fixed Address’. Links are below. Main pic above: Ricky Harrison and Bart Willoughby at ABC studios, Ultimo, Sydney, 6 July 2023. 3CR Melbourne #1 (5 May) Bart Willoughby waxed lyrical on No Fixed Address, music, life, the universe and everything on Robbie’s Thorpe’s Blak ‘n’ Deadly show on
The critics are swooning over ‘No Fixed Address’. Links to print and online articles and reviews are below. ‘The story of this radical group is told in a new book by Donald Robertson. On the back cover Goanna’s Shane Howard describes No Fixed Address as “the tip of the spear” that plunged into the heart of middle Australia. And as a story, it’s got everything – starting with a fiery
Ricky Harrison and Sean Moffatt from No Fixed Address travelled from Gippsland to Sydney in mid-May to do some publicity for the ‘No Fixed Address’ book. On Saturday 20 May, Ricky and Sean joined me on a lunchtime panel at the Addison Road Writers’ Festival in Marrickville. It was a brilliant, memorable, session (superbly marshalled by Mark Mordue) capped off by a stunning two-song performance. The duo played Ricky’s songs
It was Easter 1982. No Fixed Address were on the road, driving back east from Perth, heading to Alice Springs. This is the Prologue to No Fixed Address (Hybrid Publishers, 2023). To purchase a copy, click here Although they’d been impressing audiences and slowly building a live following in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney for a couple of years, the release of the film Wrong Side of the Road the previous
The core of this playlist is a) songs recorded and released by No Fixed Address and b) songs performed live by No Fixed Address but recorded by others (i.e., Joe Geia, Bart Willoughby and Mixed Relations). It also includes songs by people the band played with, people they met along the way, and other significant songs mentioned in the book ‘No Fixed Address’. ‘The Vision’, No Fixed Address, Wrong Side
A playlist of singles reviewed in The Big Beat: rock music in Australia 1978-83, through the pages of Roadrunner magazine. The playlist, first published a year ago on this site—and updated in the past few weeks with new tracks added to Spotify in the past 12 months—contains 583 songs and runs for 35 hours and 17 minutes. The Roadrunner years were a golden age for the single and The Big
1970 saw the end of many things. The sixties of course. But also The Beatles, who announced their split in April. And Jim Morrison of The Doors, who was found dead in his bathtub in Paris, France on 3 July. Although accounts about the precise circumstances vary, it is generally agreed that he suffered a heart attack after taking heroin. And Jimi Hendrix, who was found unresponsive by his girlfriend
I’ve been having fun pottering around in 1969 to put together the Spotify playlist below. It’s the fourth in my ‘Back to Schooldays’ series and again a roughly chronological selection of singles that charted on Australian radio stations (in this case, 2UW Sydney, 3UZ Melbourne, 4BC Brisbane, 4IP Ipswich and 6PR Perth) sprinkled with a smattering of significant album tracks. The soundtrack to my fourth year at Whyalla Technical High
I think the Spotify playlist below does a pretty good job of capturing the swirling crosscurrents of the Australian airwaves in 1968. From the psychedelic soul blues of ‘Voodoo Chile’ to the frothy bubble of ‘Goody Goody Gumdrops’—via country, Motown, soul, blues, sunshine pop, California harmonies, folk, British invasion groups, the ‘underground’ sound and a myriad of other styles and sub-styles—it was a year in which the musical spectrum really
