Just to prove it an be done on the road. Posted from the Hidden Valley Caravan Park Kununurra.
James Durack:
It's starting to get down towards the end of proceedings, and it's hard not to repeat what my elder illustrious brothers have said. This afternoon will be a success if in 30 years time we are gathered here or somewhere else, again to talk over memories of family and still feel proud to be a family, not because we're Duracks, not because we're anything special, but because we have a love of memories.
Last weekend, Matthew and I played in an all-Beethoven concert with the Toowoomba Sinfonia. That represented the continuation of a long series of memories connected with music, which to me is all that's important in life I suppose. There's been a lot of talk of the land, there's been a lot of talk of architecture, there's been a lot of talk of wonderful things. To me, music is what I am and that is what I will thank my parents for, to have supported me in what it is that I love.
If I go back 40 years, I can remember when I walked with my Aunt Mary from Bathurst, when we walked down to the old Toowoomba Showgrounds on a sunny Toowoomba day a little bit like that which is today, and we went to the first concert that I ever went to; 40 years ago I wasn't very old, so I think I was holding my auntie's hand from below. The concert was the marching bands concerts, and I don't remember very much of the music, but I do remember the big bass drum. And on that big bass drum were written the letters E.T.A., and that has created a strange association for me, between music and peanut butter!
Since that time, music has been the thread that keeps my memories alive, that holds my life together through the years, and that thread has been accompanied by the memory of my mother and my father, and of sunshine. And I remember many beautiful times when music and sunshine have come together. I remember in the porch of our home in Curzon Street, which was a wonderful place, the wonderful time we had for many years. I remember I think as perhaps a boy of about eight years old, a photo being taken of me that no doubt somewhere back in the files we still have, Dad, and I think it was the first time I wore a suit (well not quite a suit, I think probably a pair of shorts which I've been rather renowned for over the years) but I remember still that sunshine and I remember perhaps thinking, 'Gee I can look pretty smart, can't I?' preparing I think for my first Eisteddfod, and I think if I remember the story rightly, I'm not quite sure how to take it, that initially my parents encouraged me in music, because they thought I was a bit of a scrappy boy and they thought music might improve me. Perhaps in more recent decades they've wondered whether that was a very good idea, as I've become involved with rather strange musical things.
But over the years, Mother and Dad have contributed an enormous amount to music in Toowomba, music in Queensland, music I think in Australia. I remember the days of the first Toowoomba Youth Orchestra, I think Dad and I, I seem to remember, putting an ad in The Toowoomba Chronicle and calling together a meeting of the public to discuss the formation of that orchestra, and in the years after that I remember the absence of sunshine in that cold and draughty hall, where the Youth Orchestra used to get together to practice, to put on our concerts and so on.
Mother and Dad have been enormously significant in the development of culture in a variety of forms in Toowoomba, with their involvement in the Toowoomba Youth Orchestra, the early festivals in Toowoomba, the Gemini Festival, which might not have been quite so famous as the Aquarius Festival and the Nimbin Festival back in the early '70s, but it was Toowoomba's Festival, it was a time when we started to get together and say Yes, Toowoomba is a place which has a culture which is not a culture of the past, but rather which is a culture which looks towards the future. Times not only of music, but times of drama, of acting, of performance, of literature, of art, and I'm very proud to be your son; I'm very privileged that you have supported me, not only in my sensible profession of engineering, but also in my love of music.
And that is the memories that I hold as they go into the future, and I think it's wonderful that while we may be a great pastoral family, we might be a great this, we might be a great that. I think perhaps for my children, for all of us, the important thing is that memories are not something which locks us into a past, but memories are something which we create into our future, and I look forward to lots of new memories in the future.
Thank you, Mother and Dad.
APPLAUSE
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