When Slim Dusty died in 2003, after a long battle with cancer, he was given a state funeral attended by the prime minister.
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We use the term "legend" often in Australia but if anybody deserves the accolade it is the nation's most prolific recording artist. Over a career spanning seven decades, Dusty recorded more than 100 albums, notched up 70 gold and platinum awards and sold more than 7 million records. He toured Australia almost constantly, leaving few places untouched by his songs.
It's strange how some legends pass you by. Growing up in London during the punk era, to a background of the snarling Sex Pistols and the occasional thunder of AC/DC from Down Under, Slim Dusty didn't register on my radar. Two decades living here did nothing to change that, even if living in rural NSW for half of that time should have given me a greater predilection for a country twang.
So I approach the new Slim Dusty Centre in Kempsey, whose grand opening takes place on Thursday, November 19, with virtually no knowledge about this Australian superstar.
Even my Northern Irish friend Roger is astonished at my ignorance, Slim Dusty having figured prominently during his upbringing on a farm near Armagh. "Oh, you must know A Pub with No Beer," he says incredulously, before I visit.
I am here to learn. And learn I do. Not in any eyes-out-of-the-classroom-window way, but by being engaged – thanks to this well-organised, interactive new museum – with the soul of this musician.
Born David Kilpatrick at Nulla Nulla Creek, near Kempsey, in 1927, the nascent talent changed his name to Slim Dusty at the age of 11.
The exhibition tracks the early days, the significant marriage to fellow country warbler Joy McKean in 1951, and times on the road in the Outback. Then there were the showgrounds performances among vaudevillian acts that included trapeze and memory acts.
Headphones placed around the chronologically arranged display allow you to dip into the music of each period in his career. The initial sound was anchored in hillbilly and folk music, tinny and almost comic in tone.
Unsurprisingly, Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson were big influences on this poet of the bush, who turned ballads like The Man from Snowy River into songs. But it was with A Pub with No Beer that Dusty made the big time. When it was released in 1957 it became the biggest-selling Australian record of all time.
As music and Australia evolved into the 1960s, so did Dusty, helping define country music here for decades. Costumes and memorabilia donated by the Kilpatrick family and by friends and fans help chart the journey. Even to somebody largely ignorant of his work, his warmth, gentle humour and generosity of spirit is clear.
"Whether you had met him or not," says manager Kathryn Arnold, "or bought his album, Slim had this uncanny ability to make everyone connected to him and his story."
Dusty's trademark Akubra, with its bent rim, is prominent in both the centre's exterior, the roof of which is similarly bent , and in the exhibition, with archive footage showing him grinding a new hat into the dirt to achieve the desired style. My favourite photograph is of Dusty meeting the Queen in 1982 after getting special dispensation to wear his hat.
It's about time that Kempsey, a slightly dowdy Macleay riverside town that many pass by on their way to the beaches of Crescent Head or the coast further north, had something to shout about. This excellent museum, which includes a wall dedicated to Dusty's 35 golden guitar awards and a travelling exhibition space – in December it will host a display of Steve Parish photographs – could well be it.
That's certainly what he hoped for.
"Joy and I look forward," said Dusty in 2003, "to the eventual opening of a venture that will showcase not just my music and my life, but the role that Australian country music has played in the culture of the north coast of NSW, and indeed, Australia … I believe too that it will be of great benefit to the town of Kempsey and the district of the Macleay Valley."
By the time I leave the centre, Dusty's song She'll Be Right Mate is on repeat in this former Londoner's brain, suggesting I might finally have arrived in country Australia.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Kempsey is 3½ hours' drive north of Sydney, just off the Pacific Highway.
TOURING THERE
The Slim Dusty Centre is on the southern fringe of Kempsey, at 490 Macleay Valley Way, open 10am-4pm daily. Entry: $19.50 adults, concessions $14.50, children (5-12) $9.50.
The writer travelled courtesy of the Legendary Pacific Coast and was a guest of the Slim Dusty Centre.
