Rob Hurst

We even got invited to Lucas Heights where the nuclear, that was a brand new.

What were you doing there?

I don't know.

Maybe opening a new reactor or something.

Dad was horrified.

He said, don't play in the dirt.

We opened Dad's shops because by this time Dad and some of his war buddies had done some good investments back in Campbelltown.

He'd wanted to be a lawyer but came back from being a serviceman and didn't have any money even for the legal books.

So he sadly drew his attention to starting a little real estate business up there and gradually they made some investments and they bought this row of shops and the Stanley Street Jazz Band opened the shops.

Yeah, so we got lots of gigs and so much fun.

In fact, there was already a cross-pollination with this band called Farm as well because Jim Magini, guitar player in Farm, which eventually became Midnight Oil, was sometimes guest with the Stanley Street Jazz Band doing all that kind of guitar playing that you have in the traditional jazz bands.

Well, when I discovered she was pregnant, I was 17.

Yeah.

Obviously, after a while, both parents had to know, you know, there was this child and...

Mum and Dad, in their typical fashion, were incredibly supportive of me.

They said, whatever you want to do.

But they strongly advised against trying to raise this child as a teenage couple.

And I realised I couldn't.

So my then-girlfriend was shuttled off to South Australia, as teenage mothers were back in the early 70s.

It was quite brutal back then.