Joe Marshall warms slippered feet by morning fire, nursing pannikin tea. “Hot as hell, black as sin, sweet as a woman.” A dawn mantra. Old, alone, in a one-room Turon River hut, life hangs on bones of routine and ritual. The previous night’s call was not routine. Joe g...

David Broughton stares through sheeting rain, across Sydney city traffic, at the adversarial pub door. He has walked the block twice, in winter sun sinking; downtown is warning edged, dark. He pulls the last of the hash joint, tucks guitar case under arm, and bolts acr...

Shivery shadow walls stretch forever above. I’m off with Jim on another grand bush adventure. We’re holding fast to Li-los, shooting on a silver stream, inches over smooth grey-green stones; a Blue Mountains river, with a serrated crack of blue sky far away at the top...

Just a breather. Charlie Johnson is half-way down, resting on the landing to quiet his temple roar, now louder than the trains below. He pulls for oxygen, falls short, pulls again, holding hand rail, looking back at nineteen blurry steps from the ticket office; ninetee...

Night falls, a piece-perfect puzzle. David Broughton wipes Napoli pizza grease on blue jeans, and holds cool pinball glass. Achingly familiar, impossibly distant... He has John Maloney, best mate gone thirty years, now on his left shoulder again, ever riding shotgun, h...

Space Ace Frehley is pacing, raving, furious. He’s only halfway through applying his make-up… So more accurately, it’s half Ace from The Australian KISS Experience, half Frank from Fairfield. But he’s fully furious. “You little shits.”

David Broughton slumps sunken, swe...