I’m wary of nostalgia because its like hippopotimus wallowing in the mud holes of yesteryear. For hippos, that might be good fun. For humans with a predilection for nostalgia (our culture is full of it), it suggests the past is better than the present, when there is no objective reason to believe that.

Even so, there was one period in my late teens (why is it always the teens?) when I allow nostalgia to wash over me. I was about 18 and living in Adelaide, which had absolutely nothing going for it. It was boring and had more cliques than a forest of crickets. I was living in a garage in the eastern suburbs which I shared with a pool table, a bar and my guitar.

Somehow, somewhere, I heard Chris Bailey and The Saint’s Stranded followed by Know Your Product. This must have been around late 1978. It’s hard to be definitive due to the liquor and drugs. I packed my bag, threw in a copy of Faber & Faber, Selected Poems and within a week, I was living in a boarding house in Fortitude Valley. My single room overlooked the city. I lived with a bad tempered Irishman, a pedophile, a young woman who cried a lot and a very nice man who was on parole for murder.

I bought a cheap EH Holden station wagon and I earned my living catching chickens in large sheds south of the city during the week. It was good money. I remember driving over the Story Bridge at night covered in chicken shit, thinking I was free.

This was a delusion because I’d arrived at the height of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen dictatorship, when the corrupt Queensland Police were conducting a violent campaign against young people listening to music in pubs and political protests. You weren’t allowed to congregate in groups in the streets.

I spent two nights in the Brisbane lockup in Roma Street, singing “Reasons to be Cheerful” by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. I was bashed up by the police and by people watching the bands. I learnt to get the first punch in.

I saw The Saints at Griffith University through a hail of spit and flying beer cans. The noise was incredible. My ears rang for two days afterwards. At a lawyers ball in the city, I saw The Riptides and a very young Go Betweens. They only had two songs: Karen and Lee Remick. This was before Lindy Morrison joined the band. That night the cops used police dogs and arrested 80 people. I was one of them.

It politicised me and I started writing atrocious opinion pieces for underground newspapers. I also started writing terrible articles on bands for the music press in Sydney. The most important thing was I started writing. I have Brisbane to thank for that.

The music was vibrant, angry and raucous. In December, massive lightening storms filled the sky. I was living on another planet. When I smell frangipani now, I travel back to the Brisbane of that time and give a nod of thanks.

Vale Chris Bailey.