EVERY once in a while Muswellbrook Lifeline comes across items it knows shouldn’t be in the box of belongings delivered to its door.
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And so it was this week that a book, Smoky Dawson: a life was discovered by a volunteer carefully sorting through books from a donor.
Inside the front page was the inscription, To Father Bob the ‘Roadie’. May you enjoy good health, happiness and a merry Xmas from your pal Smoky Dawson 1985.
Smoky Dawson died in 2008 a few weeks shy of his 95th birthday.
He was affectionately known as Australia's 'first singing cowboy' and had a long and prolific career in country music as a singer and songwriter, and in radio and television.
Muswellbrook Lifeline volunteer Geoff Budden said he was cleaning up around the counter, saw the book, spoke to the manager, Annie Millward, and set about the task of researching the mystery.
“At first we thought a likely suspect could be Father Bob the priest in Melbourne, but the part about the ‘roadie’ just didn’t fit that connection,” he said.
Some intrepid internet digging a short while later revealed Father Bob was a roadie for Smoky Dawson and, years later at a considerable age, a roadie and lighting technician for his own son country music singer Paul McCloud.
A roadie is a person employed by a band or musician to set up and maintain equipment.
“So in the book Smoky tells a story about Paul’s dad and mum and he wrote a song called The Roadie and the Shirt-sewer.
“Paul’s mum visited all the op shops and made Smoky shirts for his stage show out of the old wedding dresses,” Mr Budden said.
“Sadly, Bob passed away in the late 1990s and we don’t know whether the family cleaned up the house and brought the book into Muswellbrook Lifeline or whether it went to Newcastle Lifeline's main warehouse and then was recycled back to us.”
Either way, the good news is Muswellbrook Lifeline found Paul McCloud, rang him, spoke to his wife and they were thrilled to learn of the book’s existence.
“Paul is based in Queensland so it was too far to come to Muswellbrook to pick up the book.
“But the family has sent us a post-pack to send the book back and we’re really happy to reunite it with its rightful owner,” Mr Budden added.
