Forty years ago, Mark ‘Bushie’ Thompson ran away from his rural Australian home and he hasn’t stopped moving since.
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Inspired by the voices and stories of country music greats like Slim Dusty, Smoky Dawson and Gordon Parsons, Bushie journeys across the land with little more than his swag and his poetry - inspired by the characters he meets along the way and the silent stories buried like opal gems in the isolated, unpretentious towns of outback Australia.
At the risk of sounding disparaging to city folk - most of ‘em don’t have a bloody clue where their meat comes from.
When he’s not working odd-jobs, Bushie hops from one country music festival to another and has been visiting Kempsey to celebrate the Slim Dusty festival for four years now.
He wears his pilgrimage on his happy face and wrinkles dance around when he talks. You can almost see the outback’s dried rivers, red earth and starry skies in the lines furrowing along his forehead and the light that’s beaming from his eyes.
“I started writing when I was a little fella cause I was always surrounded by bush and that old wireless radio with a piece of copper for an antenna. We were always sitting around a campfire somewhere and the ABC country hour would play from the radio. It’s those voices and those stories that I listened to that got me into poetry and singing and that's when I started writing about the bush.”
When it comes to writing his poetry and songs, Bushie says it’s all about the stories of the little people who are often forgotten.
“At the risk of sounding disparaging to city folk - most of ‘em don’t have a bloody clue where their meat comes from,” he says.
“I write about the people and characters who pretty much shape this country and keep it rolling on - the people who supply us with everything, the stories about our truck drivers (there’s not much that hasn’t been delivered in a truck), and then the history that was before us - the workers using horses and bullocks to pull loads across the country.”
“As we go back in history we look at what shapes us - what I feel I need to write about is those events and the men and women who’ve done it pretty bloody tough but who have given us our Australia,” he says.
Bushie is just one of many country music die-hards who’ve rolled into Kempsey for some boot-tappin’ tunes and country show fun at this year’s Slim Dusty Festival. The full week of music kicked off on Monday 16 October and will end this Sunday October 22.
On Saturday, locals and tourists will be treated to a performance from three generations of the Slim Dusty family which will combine visual images from the family archives with renditions of Slim Dusty favourites.