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Bill has a laugh at the Sunbury Festival 2010 (pic Philbey)

Mike's Pith & Wind - Being there..
Inevitable perhaps, given our long partnership, but it still hasn’t really sunk in. I still imagine Bill might turn up in my drive-way in his battered FLO-mobile on gig-day, decant his battered equipment, accept my offer of a cup of tea and then painstakingly scrutinise the odd piece of mundane mail that’s arrived for him in our PO Box.
It still comes as a shock to realise that Bill and I are never going to drive off together to Adelaide again, Bill wearing a beanie from his undazzling collection that will inevitably go missing at least once during the week, (along with his bum-bag), for which everybody else will be blamed. Bill and I’d got it down so that we barely spoke to each other for the entire nine or so hours driving to Adelaide, basically because it’s all been said, but also because we were comfortable enough in each other’s company without the verbal embellishments. For the boys in the band, the irony of vegetarian Bill winning the meat plate at the Murray Bridge Rowing Club raffle and his passionate but skeptical devotion to the Richmond Tigers (their theme tune was his ring-tone) will always be remembered in band mythology.
No matter how difficult the circumstances - and they were rarely less than difficult - Bill always maintained the look and demeanour of an authentic rock music legend. I’ve often described Bill as the archetypal bass-player and it’s true – imagine a typical rock bass player and you’ll imagine somebody exactly like Bill - This is Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls and The Muppets’ Floyd.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - You are never alone..
Films such as the series of ‘Bourne’ action thrillers have given us what we thought was a fanciful view of the clandestine world of espionage and intrigue where everybody’s movements could be tracked and analysed in real time. A world where there was no way to go ‘off the grid’ and be anonymous, where satellites were nudged in orbit to track you in high resolution in Istanbul, where surveillance cameras in London were hijacked by the secret service and mobile phones ensured your exact location was always known . But apparently the globe was still a place where the virtuous action man could triumph through cunning, martial skills, computing hacking, an astounding six-pack’ stomach and brute force. The government and its agencies - usually portrayed as capricious and out of control - terminated lives and reputations at their pleasure to conceal their devious path to some form of.. read more