TREK. ….. so many great memories but you wouldn’t believe some of them so here’s a few ..

Pre Trek I was the same as most in those days learning to play… no formal training, no internet, or resources so most of what i learned early was watching Nobby (Neil) Osbourne and the boys practicing in their garages and then copying riffs etc to work out what was going on, and the rest was by ear and collaborating with friends in our own garage bands …. Paul Brancheid (RIP) originally a bass player, and I spent many hours with other like minded friends like Satchmo Santilli pounding out early Stones and similar songs … great fun.  I went to Finx , Bogislav, Mantra, Shane, Purple Haze and other bands shows but my earliest intro to full on bands was seeing Zoot and The Masters Apprentices in Tamworth and driving through Uralla one day hearing a band practicing and stopped and see a mob called Hot Frost belting out “Paranoid” and Stones songs and I was hooked.

About 12 months later I was trying out with a mob called Justin Tyme at Wagon Wheels in Uralla and 6 weeks later we won Tamworth Battle of the Sounds … celebrated appropriately ( for me) at Maguires Hotel in Tamworth with my mate Pat Maguire ( And Joe Maguires hospitality) where I spent several summers in my teen years watching Country ( and western) Artists and learning to win on the pool table.. 

Then we morphed into Trek and with Paul (Keys, Harp and Lead Vocals), Stevie ( playing with Steve was like playing with SRV, Chuck Berry and Hendrix simultaneously .. great talent and great fun to play with as a guitarist) Bob (Hobbsy – powerhouse drummer – you just have to dance) and Trevor ( still the “Smart Dressed Man” and a born entertainer )we started getting jobs and soon were working 3 to 4 nights a week, B&S shows all over, Coffs, Sawtell, Bellingen ( with mates from Condors MC Club doing the door and standing on stage in full colours with us …. Nothing like belting out full on Rock through 100 watt Marshalls with Porky Farrawell and the boys standing beside you in full MC smells … great fun.

We needed someone to organise us with all the jobs, bookings, parties etc and Roger Hong was that guy …. Behind the scenes keeping us on track .. blocking out weekends 6 months in the future so we could have a weekend off for one of our legendary road trips to the big smoke. Roger could also party with the best of us and was a big part of who Trek was…. Which was a band intent on making sure everyone who came to our shows had a good time and could dance their hearts out and I think a reason it worked so well was that we also always had a great time and really enjoyed each others company and friendship and playing in the band.

Some of the best nights were when we dressed up in line with the theme for the night ( eg Stars and Stripes at Austin College) and got into the whole fun with the audience. Tiny Anderson ( photographer) always around creating a history of those days… great guy. Never forget Hobbsy playing drums behind his back and Steve and I playing with guitars behind us … always room for some entertainment. – even George doing his version of “My old mans a dustman “ … believe it or not most people loved it.

Doug took over lead vocals after Paul moved on and wow … what a voice and performer … we became more diverse in our music and George joined on Bass and harp and subsequently Ross Gilbert on bass and harp and the benefit of that was continuing to diversify our genres and learning new ideas and skills continuously … we learned new songs continuously and thats why we could do 8 hour plus shows.  Great bunch of musos.

We played with lots of other great bands .. local bands and touring bands which was fun … Chisel were around for a while and we did quite a few shows together and even played both bands on stage together … talk about a wall of sound …. Mossy you are a god .

There were legendary shows like House of Lords turned on by the Robb College guys and Steve Morrow who also magically appeared on stage with the microphone in his hand everytime we played “Carol “….. played lots of great shows at University Colleges over the years.  Those academics sure knew how to party 🙂

The Armidale Teachers mob were equally great fun with lots of legend nights with them and Bruce ( my Brother, who with mates from the Rugby team often did the door for us at Impies and the Wine bar (those quiet Phipps lads ) and Spider Vernon ( thanks for the use of that brown telecaster for about 2 years Spider) often topped off with a few quiet drinks at the Keg Shed… lots of great friends from ATC days. 

For most of the Trek days I also was doing Uni part time and working at ATC and finished up being awarded the Faculty Outstanding Academic Achievement award on graduation …. which proves you can party 6 nights a week, play 4 or 5 times a week in a full on rock band and achieve in other areas. One of our lecturers ( Macca) once announced to the lecture that there was a Rocker in their midst who had seen the writing on the wall for live music and was studying Business and Marketing for the future … unfortunately he was right.

After Trek, George Finney and I formed Charlie Rag with Al Heeney, Pat Obrien ( Drums), Geoff Jones ( bass) and Brad Dunham for a while. Robert (Boots) Moss joined us later on Bass … the only “hippy” I met who flew to Sydney fortnightly for personal lessons with George Golla 🙂 It was a great band also.  I also joined Doug and Pat (O’Brien … drummer) and Peter Cummins in “Footloose” which was fun too.  

Eventually practical reality arrived and I was off to Brisbane for work. In later years offshore based in Singapore for 12 years as Regional Head of Operations responsible for 13 countries ops  ( which meant lots of travel and new cultures and great people)  for a very large international Insurer … all great experience.

The “Trek family” including the band, families, great friends and those like Roger who kept it all happening, as well as the wider band community in Armidale in those days were wonderful friends, and despite a healthy level of competition between the bands, made it the most amazing time you could imagine. The band and our mobs are all still very close friends and we all play as often as possible, and together when we can …. we were all hooked on our music way back then and rode a wave of incredible experiences. And we are all still “hooked” on music.

I thank all of you, the bands, friends and family, party animals, and our supporters and most of all everyone who enjoyed our shows and had as much fun as we did.

Trek on lads 🙂