Ep 100: Danny Phegan _ Part 1

Episode 100 

What better way to celebrate than with Danny Phegan — farmer, singer/songwriter, entertainer and great family man — sharing a story that’s big, wild and full of heart.

Across three episodes, we cover life on the farm near Albury, NSW, the influence of his grandfather, and the unbelievable story of buying his farm at auction.

From breaking in horses in America to riding from Darwin to Tassie raising over $500,000 for the Campfires Against Cancer Ride — capped off by a homecoming concert with Lee Kernaghan — Danny’s life is packed with grit, music, and pure country energy.

Honest, raw, and entertaining.

Pour a cuppa or grab a cold one — this is Danny Phegan.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Step into the heart of Australian agriculture with Salt of the Earth Farm Stories, hosted by Darren Grigg.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Everyone says, how can you do what you do on the weekends away with your band in all corners of the country? And for a lot of years, like we were on a thousand dollars a day interest when we put the four parcels of this farm together. And this farm wasn't making that much money. It wasn't making 350 grand a year. So we're surviving off music.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Episode 100. And I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than sitting down with Danny Fegan, farmer, singer-songwriter, entertainer, all-round character, and a mate to tell a story that's big, wild, and full of hope. It's a cracker. We talk a lot of music too. Danny's on big stages right across Australia, mixing it with big names and big crayouts. We even hear about a stint in America breaking in horses. There's true work ethic here that goes right back to counting 2010 places from pinball machines, to being on horseback for a year, riding from Darwin to Tassie, raising over half a million dollars for the campfires against Cancer Ride. This man's life is packed with grit, heart, and pure country energy. This chat is honest and entertaining. So pour a cupper or grab a cold one. This is Danny Fegan. What a life. Do you still get Daz? I do, mate. I get a lot of names, but that's one of them.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

I get a few too.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Mate, uh, I just interrupted you from that uh nice traveller you're having.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

We're gonna get that in early, aren't we? Traveller beer, 100% Australian owned. Yeah, great supporters of uh a lot of things we ride at and sing at. Well done. So I uh I like to appreciate them where I can. Mate, can you tell us where we are today?

SPEAKER_03 2:39

We're at home, so we're out at Roseville Walla Walla. And Walla Walla, southern New South Wales?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Walla Walla, yeah. It's uh south of Wagga Wagga, northeast of Middlemitter, south of Gumley Gumley.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

So very good. Now, how many acres are you on here and what are you farming?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Two and a half thousand acres we're on here. Um we bought the place in four parcels. We've been here 20 years this year, but we're in two and a half thousand acres now. Uh Black Angus cattle, a couple of oddboards down there, the kids are red. Uh a bit light on sheep at the moment because uh about 800 acres of the farm is under solar panels now. So we we had a couple of thousand use, we got them out of the way. That's all finished, so we'll buy sheep back in shortly. So cattle sheep and Caroline's two brothers have always done the share farming with the cropping side.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

Yeah, right. Yeah, all right. We're gonna get to a bit more of the farming side of it soon, but as I said in the intro, you're a farmer, but also a singer songwriter. And I'm gonna mention a few of your songs throughout our chat today. First up, inches love it. Life's a game of ventures, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Well, that was dad's phrase all the time to me. He's he's got a he's got a few beauties, really. He uh he says, never make a good man wait for his money. Life's a game of ventures, so you just gotta try hard on the bloke next to you and you go, alright.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Step by step.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Step by step, yeah. And uh you always let your missus get the finishing post first, their rules of live and die by.

unknown 4:15

Thanks, mate.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Maybe that's where I went wrong. Um well, talking about your old man, mate, how is he?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah, he's pretty good now. Pretty rough there for a while. He uh just went through uh he's got esophagus cancer, or or at least he had it, fingers crossed. Yeah. Now he was pretty crooked last year, wasn't much of a year. Um his eight-hour operation turned into 14 hours, and he had to have uh they call it a chemo sandwich, so he got a real savage dose of chemo before it, and then he just wasn't well enough to have it after it, so they're they're pretty confident they got it all and uh they've left him alone and and he's been going pretty good, really. Yeah, that's amazing. Just recently. Oh, it's huge. They don't actually get much bigger. Um the fellow was saying, the surgeon down there, in terms of complexity and all the rest of it. So he's pretty lucky, and it came on. I mean, he he fell over it pretty quick, really. I don't know how this long this bloody thing was been growing for, but um he just got to a point early last year where he couldn't keep food down and even a swig of beer and he came straight back up, you know, and he said, Well, something's going wrong here. He had a dirty great big tumour in his esophagus. So anyway, touch wood, we're all we're all still here, and and he's uh he's on the mend. Good on him. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Mate, where were you born?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

In the overcrowded hallway of the Mercy Hospital in Albury. Yeah, Albury, right, eh? Yeah. What were you like as a kid? Oh, I think I was alright. I um I think I've got similar kids. They get up to a bit of cheek. The boys are larricans, uh, the girls are probably more studious than I was. That comes from Caroline. Caroline was quite academic, school captain, and ducks of Charleston University. And uh the girls are certainly taken after her. The boys, uh the boys are probably more hands-on. I think I was a pretty good kid. I got up to a fair bit of trouble, but I was never a nasty kid. That's a pretty good summary, I reckon.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

And you grew up in the outskirts of Aubrey?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah, so our family farm, Dan Mara Park, uh, which is named after myself and my new my sister Tamara, and then Bonnie came along about seven years later, so the property was already named then. So I was two when we moved out into the land. Tam was about six months old, I think. So yeah, we we grew up just outside of Aubrey, it was very much considered the sticks back then. When we went out there, there was really only Guadalupe house, uh, the orphanage up there in the hill and a church and I'd just starting to scratch in the road work of St. John's Hill, like your feather top circuits, which were the original developments of Thaguna. And over the years, uh the farm grew in size, and then in the subsequent years it diminished in size as dad sort of peeled off bits and sold it to uh residential developers. And we we went right around the golf course there at one stage, and uh mum and dad sold what was left of the family farm about five years ago, which was back to the original 35 acres he started with. Yeah, before it grew from Tabletop Road through to Kerr Road. I'd had about five different incarnations. The name of that road while we were there was uh Tabletop Road, Hue and Wee Road, Old Sydney Road, Boner Waters Road, Boner Road, and then back to Tabletop Road. Yeah, it's pretty pretty busy there now, though. You want to try getting through to the goon at about 4:30 in the afternoon?

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Yeah. Has he still got the old Grey Fergie?

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Did he have a grey one too? Did he?

SPEAKER_03 7:18

He bought one off me about 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Oh you know.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

A grey Fergie too.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

No. No, I don't know what he do. I can't remember that. He might have loaned it to one of his brothers. They're a big family, he's one of nine. He had uh I learned to drive a tractor when I was nine or ten on a uh international B-52, which is down parked in the shed here. I've still got it. And then he uh he bought another one, uh, which he loaned to his older brother Christopher and Wogo, who had it for years, who then loaned it to their younger brother John Fegan, who put it in his bloody clearing sale six months ago. I had to go back and buy it, so it's parked down in the shed, too, but at least I've got it home.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

So always a country boy, Danny?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah, I yeah, absolutely. You know, I've been quoted a few times as saying that uh I'm I'm lucky to be able to live the lifestyle that a lot of country artists can only sing about. And I don't say that looking down my nose and poo-hooing anybody because who wouldn't want to live on it in the country if you can? And I think for the next generation it's starting to become unachievable, really, unless you're uh you're bred into it. But coupled with the fact that dad was a country boy, uh born in Sydney, but then Pa Figan reared them in Golgong and all over the place while he was trying to make a quid. So Golgong was the town on the$10 note, um, famous for that and for Henry Lawson, uh, and for the most narrow main street, I think in the southern hemisphere. Um, but coupled with the Figan side of things and dad wanting to get out into the land, because I was actually born in Aubrey and lived in Glen Roy for first two years of my life when I was a baby before Dad bought the first part of the farm out there, uh at Willinga, as it was called back then. I think those called it Orthaguna now. Coupled with that, my grandfather on mum's side, I was very good mates with. Mum's one of seven, and she was the smallest twin, the youngest out of the seven, and the smallest. And uh Pa used to look after her a bit, and then I was her first child, so I got spoilt a bit by my grandfather, and he was a uh stock buyer for 52 years, a drover. Uh he was a light horseman, World War II. Uh didn't actually leave Australia, but he he got his service medals. So I had that countryside from Parr as well, that Parfreeer. Um and I used to spend a lot of time with him while Dad was trying to get on his feet. I'd uh probably be around at Par Freeers probably four or five nights a week. He'd bring me home after school and then spend weekends with him riding horses and things.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

I'm gonna bring up Parr a bit later in the uh chat, mate, um uh which is a really interesting story. Were you always into music?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Oh, for as long as I can remember, I uh dad learnt the piano, I think for I I don't know, he he'll correct me, but I'm gonna say maybe 12 months, and he always regretted that he couldn't punch out a tune. He taught himself a few chords on the guitar, so because he was allowed quit, and I think Pa and Nan Feegan were probably quietly uh happy about that because they didn't really have the money to push it. But um he made me and my two sisters do piano, and it sort of went from there. I didn't, I had I think I had about six weeks of guitar lessons, and I wasn't a great student. I wasn't a great student full stop. I um anyway, I spent more time away from school than in it. But my piano teacher became a great ally of mine that if I was ever missing, she would back me up that I was in piano lessons, so I should be a concert penis, really. The amount of time that I was meant to be in the piano lessons, but I uh I sort of morphed towards the guitar. Um there's no one really I wouldn't say particularly musical in the Fegan or the Freer side, except for my uncle Barry Freer, who was Parr's eldest son. And I always used to admire him when he was he was in a country band, and um Barry was a drover and then a cobbler. I used to work down at um Swift Street there in the Abercarez building, fixing uh shoes and boots and things. So I used to, well, I remember it was about four or four four or five. I watched him perform on the back of a truck somewhere at some festival, and he had his cowboy hat on and his shirt, and he had the press button shirt and the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and I kind of morphed into that. Um but on the vegan side, uh look, there was a bit of music ran through there, but but but not a whole lot really. I just saw it as a way to get girls' attention and later to make some cash. I I guess that's the truth. So, farming and music, you were a self-starter on both sides. Oh well, we went off, we were off to a fly. I think we had uh like you didn't get it handed to you. No, no, certainly didn't get it handed to us. No, it's not intergenerational like that. It's um I had a plan. I'm not gonna tell you exactly what the plan is because it sounds conceited, but it was my own private plan from 20 to 30, what I wanted to achieve. And I was driven by that, and I ticked two out of three of those boxes. The third plan was to be on our own, you know, working farm. And we were bridesmaids a few times, Caroline and I, and we missed out, and uh this place was stranded. It had actually gone to auction and failed because some of the country down the back is uh it gets quite wet, which I don't mind. I'm into cattle, you know, it hangs on a bit longer than the rest of the country. But a lot of the stuff around here is only really valued for its cropping capacity, which I think is a bit short-sighted, but I um it got stranded, and because it got stranded, uh, we were in the box suit to be able to negotiate some terms with the Van Doors that suited us because uh how old was I? I think I was 28. So history repeated itself. Caroline and I, we had our first two kids in Glen Roy as well, in a little nine square home while we're trying to save up. Kaz is a radiographer and a sonographer, and within the first two years of her joining the workforce, she paid off that little house in Glen Roy and owned it. Got my timelines all around the wrong way, then we had kids. Uh, but we sold that home and I had uh the Rand Hotel, the Wamargamer Hotel, and the Drogery Hotel. So I sold Rand and Wamargama to further boost our deposit. Hang on, so at what age you had the three hotels? Oh well, I bought Drogery when I was 20. I still own that now. I just turned 50 last weekend, so that's uh 30 years. Congratulations. That's 30 years if my sums are right, if I spent enough time in school. Um sold the other two to get a deposit mistake together. Um, and and Caroline sold what became our house, our um the marital abode.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

And so when did you buy the other two pubs?

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Oh, I can't remember. Can't remember in my to uh look, I did that uh Campfires Against Cancer ride when I was 26, and while I was on the back of a horse riding across the country, I sold the three poker machines out of the Dodgery Hotel, which funded the purchase of Amargama. Uh, and then there was one machine in there for memory which helped fund the purpose of Rand. My end game with Rand was to buy the general store, which I did, and I moved it to the pub, and I wanted to buy the post office too, so it was a one-stop shop, but I couldn't secure the post office back then. So it um all roads led to just abandoning the project, really, and selling, sold to Bloken Sydney, I think, from memory. But that formed our stake to come out here, and because this had been stranded and failed at auction, we were able to talk to the vendors and negotiate favourable terms. So originally Roseville was 1,313 acres, and it's amazing how often that number's been good to me in my life, 13. And we couldn't afford it all, but we were able to negotiate to buy 600 acres with all the improvements on it, the house and the sheds. And uh, there was no no sheep yards here and some basic cattle yards. I built those in subsequent years, but but the improvements that were here, we bought the 600 acres and we leased the other uh 700 or 713, whatever it was, for five years with an option to buy in that five years. And in that five years, I pulled off a few deals in town. We bought the 400 acres on the corner, and then not long after that, we bought the other 600 acres off our mates, the pumpers, who were here for generations, and everyone put dirt on me for buying that 600 acres because it was so low-lying and so wet. Um, it was a foot underwater in uh years 10 and 11, and the old timers can remember that happening over the years. So everybody uh put dirt on me about buying it, but it had been on the market two and a half years, had two failed auctions. Actually, the day we went down there to buy it, the auction. I've got notes on that, mate. I was gonna ask. Oh, it's funny. You these are triggering my own memories here now. We went down to buy it. This is this was the second auction, second time around. And I I wasn't sure if the agents down there thought much of me because I don't sell my cattle through them, and you know, people sort of stick together a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

So And you were in the real estate game.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Oh, I was in the real estate game back then. Yeah, I was in it for 20 years. Uh, we mainly sold hotels, pubs, but um, we had a bit of a broad, well, three generations, so we had a bit of a broad depth of it all. But I asked my solicitor, and I'm not sure I'm not sure how many solicitors would do this for a bloke. Paul came out here and I said, Right up, Paul, this is this is the deal. I said, follow me down. I don't want them to know it's me bidding. All right, because I don't know what the agents think about me. I said, Um, if I've got my arms crossed, you don't do anything. If I've got my arms in my pocket, stick it into when$10,000 rises. We'll see how we go. Anyway, we never got a chance to pull that that lurk because the creek down here, I said, Paul, I've never seen this creek this high. It was in a petrol car, I was in the old farm diesel with a snorkel. I said, just let me sneak through it.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Um there were floods on the day of the auction, right? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

I can't remember, it was 2010 or 2011, but everything was flooded. The billion was coming across the Colcan Bridge, it was huge. They closed the Hume Freeway, and I don't know how many times they've done that, which kind of worked in my favour because no one else could make it to the auction. But um, so we we're cruising down there to this creek just in my place down here, and uh yeah, I said to Paul, I said, mate, just let me sneak through this first, you know. I said, I haven't seen it run this high this fast before. It should be okay, but see how we go. Anyway, I got about halfway through it and I started to panic a little bit, so I didn't really pay any attention to what Paul was doing. I was just maintaining a little putt-putt to try and get through there, and the water's up over the bonnet and it's coming in through the side of the doors. And I got through expecting to say to Paul, look, the game's up, the game's up, I'll come back and get you. We're gonna have to go down to this auction together. He panicked and was right up my backside the whole way, but he was in a petrol and he's in his wife's brand new Pajero. Leather Sea's beautiful vehicle, not now. So the creek picked it up and just upended it in the side, and Paul had to swim out, had to swim out this flooded creek. And when he came out, he looked like the saggy baggy elephant. His suit was just hanging off him, and he had all debris and bark and everything hanging off his forehead and stuff like and he he looked at me like a deer in headlights, and I was only taking the Mickey. I said, uh, where's that authority to bid on my behalf? And he said, Oh, he turned around and all the water's the creek's running through his windows and out the other side of his Pajero. He goes, It's in the Pajero. I said, We'll go back and get it. So he jumped around, he jumped back in the creek and he swam out and got it. I was only joking. I'm there laughing my head off. Anyway, he came back out and he was a little bit startled. So he jumped in the Ute with me. We went down to the auction. There was only one other fellow could scrape through the Hume Highway, and he wasn't quite prepared to buy anyway. So we all sort of sat there with our hands in our pockets and waited for the auction to finish. And uh then I went to uh the vendor's solicitor and I said, Look, this is my best and fairest. I think it's a fair offer. And so we bought uh from our friends, the pumpers. But um, so we bought we bought the block, and then we came back here. We had two coronas each, and I took the track down, scalped, dragged his his fajero out, and I paid his excess for him because it was a complete write-off. But that ended up all that country down there, that 400 acres and that 600 acres uh of quite wet country, is now the solar farm, the Walla Walla solar farm. So, for what I was told was the poorest country I own, and for years ago, and I was told, Why would you want to be next to these power lines, which are across the road on the neighbour's place and actually run through here? It's uh by by hook or crook or good fortune, it's become the best business decision of my life.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

Well done, mate. And you said before you're in real estate for 20 odd years uh around Orby Donga selling pubs. Is that what you did after you left school?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

No, I did law. So yeah, I I had a deal going with dad, and my old bosses probably won't relish in this story that I was always going to leave law, but but I was so the deal was like all the boys in real estate had done something at first, they're all tradies or something, and they went into real estate. I think about five of them end up in real estate out of the nine, I'd have to do a count, but probably more than that actually, because uh the girls, Roseanne and only Roseanne and only Colleen were also working in real estate too for the boys at different periods of time. But uh the deal was I had to qualify in something first. Um so dad had organized me a start with DG Skinner Associates to start with, and I went down there thinking I already had the job, and when I sat down, I was interrogated by three suits, and um I thought, wow, that was a bit of an ambush, I thought, but I ended up getting a job with Belvidge Haig solicitors across the road.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Did you?

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah, and I worked for them. Well, I started, if you want the whole story, I started working for them over the Christmas holidays before the working year started, but because I'd mucked around so much in school and barely attended, I didn't get the marks to do law. So it was called an article clerkship. So it's like a backdoor way of doing law. If you work full-time, you can study by correspondence and you learn on the job. So I knew I didn't need to shoot the lights out with tremendous figures out coming out of school, and I just thought I'd I'd do it in it, you know, with a at an easy sale. And it turns out I missed by about six percent. So the bosses called me in and they said, look, they uh they quite like my work ethic. They said if I pull my head in and go back and do your 12 again, they'll hold the job over for me for 12 months uh and I could work down school holidays. So that's what I did. So I went back, did your 12 again, which was very humbling because I'd squared up with most of my teachers on the way out and told them exactly what I thought of them on the last day. And of course, they couldn't hide under the umbrella of being protected by the sanctuary of the school anymore. So a couple of those sprays were were quite fierce. And um when I when I went back to see the principal, I said, Oh, I've got to come back and do your 12 again. She had a speech impediment, she was a little nun called Sister Angela Jordan. She said, Well, quite frankly, Daniel, we don't want you here. So I kind of panicked because I thought, Dad's gonna flog me up and down the paddock if I don't get placed back down here. So uh I went to a friend uh uh Meg who was at Aubrey High, and I said, Uh I need to place myself in school somewhere to do year 12 again. And she said, Learn the school motto and the principal love you. I think it was called Adasper Paraspra, shoot for the stars or somebody. But I had a down pad at the time. I thought I'm gonna get placed somewhere, I'm not owning up to that about this. And uh anyway, the the principal rang me and she said, if you go around and apologize to your teachers, and she said, and you sing at the opening school ceremony, you can come back and do your 12. And I said, I'll go and apologise, but I'm not singing. I'm not a hide bloody. And she said, you will sing. And I said, I won't. So I did. So there you go. Sung like a canary in a petrol. And I got my spot back. And uh which worked out pretty well because I was a prefect voted in by my peers in year 12, not so much the teachers. And uh they had this hand of the badge over ceremony when we're leaving the first time around. And Caroline caught my eye, who became the school captain the following year. And because I repeated, we ended up in the same year, and well, here we are married, buddy, all these years later, six kids and farms and all the rest of it. So what was a very awkward start ended up working out okay. So I can make any answer long, mate. You cut me when you're ready. But so I did law then for three years and I hated it. I passed the hard subjects, but I failed the easier ones, the tedious ones. I just couldn't sit still for long enough to study. And Dad and I had a bit of a blue about it. Um, so I jumped on a plane and went to America to live. I was breaking in horses up in Colorado, Rocky Mountains. Is that right? It's over there for about eight months, nine months. And uh Dad said to me, back then it wasn't that easy to communicate, you know. I had to go down to the town library on my day off, and you'd be on dial up internet, you know, all that sort of business waiting in line too. And uh I saw a message there from dad one day, and I thought um might have been a bit of an olive branch or something, you know, and you're old enough to go on to real estate now or something, and it turns out he'd shot my dog. So that the the email basically said, Dan, you're in the market for a new dog. Sorry about the 50 bucks, Dad. That was it.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

No olive branch at all.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

No olive branch at all. But anyway, it wasn't too bad. I was talking to him there one day um when I got to the public phone, they they fixed this public phone where I was living and worked, and um, I called him one night and he said, I think you're old enough to go into real estate now. And I think I was 21 or two, 22 maybe. I'd um you'd already owned your roderry, and that was pretty well what helped me fund this trip over there to get over there. And um, so I came home expecting to go into real estate, and I said, Dad, when do I start? He said, Start what? He said, get back there and finish your law. So I jumped on a plane, went to Europe with Donald Leslie. Another robbery boy, yeah. Picked up my sister's birthday on the way through, but then went to Europe. But I ran out of money really fast. Like, you know, we're paying nine bucks back then for a beer. Um but you had the pub here at that time, too. Had the pub here, but it was borrowed money uh as well. The the town talk back in the day was uh oh, his father bought him that pub for his 21st birthday. And that stuff used to really stir me up when I was young because I'd be working my backside off and taking risks everywhere, and you'd get that sort of snide remark. The truth is, I was 20 when I bought it, and dad guaranteed my mortgage. I had about 40 or 45,000 saved up. The pub was a hundred and eighty thousand dollar purchase, and he guaranteed my mortgage for two years with the bank that if I fell over, he'd make good. Um, but anyway, that sort of talk used to stir me. I used to get a lot of fights over that sort of stuff, but then I sort of grew into um just embracing it because nothing stirs an assayer up more than owning something and running with it, and that takes all the wind out of their sails, you know. Like when I'd hear that sort of talk, I'd say they'd say, Oh, I heard your dad bought this pub for your 21st. I said, Yeah, but the old bastard made me weight loss 30 to buy me a new tractor. That did better for me than Beltham. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

That's right. And I often say the people who talk about you behind your back are there for a reason. 100%. That's a beauty. I like that. Mate, I remember when you're in real estate, I came in for a meeting with you about 20 years ago. We sat out in the car park for 55 minutes and then went inside for five minutes and couldn't work out what we were there to have a meeting about. Remember that?

SPEAKER_01 25:32

That'd be about right.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Does that happen often? Oh, Caroline reckons I was vaccinated with a gramophone noodle, so I probably didn't know she's talking. So, mate, this next song came up in my daily mix a few years ago. And I thought how good it was. And I looked up who sung it, and bugger me, Danny Fegan. Oh, true. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Don't let babies grow up to be cowboys. Don't let them hit guitar to drive the motor up. Let them be doctors to lawyers and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

Mate, this has been a massive hit. Congrats.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Yeah. Tell me about this song. Obviously, it's not my song, it's an old Whalen and Willie song, and um oh, it's been covered a million times, but I don't know, I was just going through it one day and uh essentially it's a 6-8, but I heard someone do it as a 4-4, which is a straight rock beat. So I said to the boys, let's let's mosh it up, let's go from a 6-8 to a 4-4 to rock because people think they're getting something, then it becomes something else, and then we'll finish it back at a 6-8. And it was just, I don't know, it was just a bit of an experiment. It works, so I recorded it as a bonus track on the album. But some people in Canada picked it up and a couple other my songs as um I don't do TikTok, I actually don't do much outside of Facebook, really, and I'm barely I can barely hang on to the fringes of that, but some people picked it up as a TikTok soundtrack for riding dumb things like getting on a pig or a donkey or a horse and getting bucked off and stuff, and mainly in Canada. So I kind of went a little bit crazy there for a little while. Yeah, and that's how it can work. Yeah, it's just there's no rhyme or reason with trying to get a song right. I think Graeme Connors, I'm sure it was Graham Connors, said to me once, you know, some of his best work never went anywhere that he thought that's the best song I've ever written, and just tanked. And some stuff he gets out, he thought, you know, that won't do anything, and it's just yeah, you know, go on guitar or something, and it's that's right. There's no rhyme or reason because it just depends what pair of ears are hearing at a what particular time in their life. And yeah. And he's had an amazing career himself.

SPEAKER_03 27:32

Yeah, he's a nice fella. Was there a point when your music really got noticed?

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Is this then? Oh, not really, I'm not in sure it's noticed now. I'm not sure, not sure if it deserves to be noticed, so I'm just grinding away and just just doing my thing, you know. It's um when I just totire for real quickly. Another story, when I finally came back because I ran out of money in Europe, um, dad still wouldn't give me a job in real estate, so I went to work in competition with him with his brother John, and I was there for about two years, and then Dad and I ended up opening WA Feeding and some real estate down in South Auburn. I think you were down there to do an ad for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, down there. So that's that's how all that sort of started. But I I had half or partly funded my way around America uh before I settled into Colorado, um, busk John Williamson songs and and that sort of thing, and music had never left me. So I um I was 22, I think. So I had to knuckle down if this 10-year plant of mine was going to crystallise. So I was just, you know, I was like a cat with a paw on four mice and looking for a fifth, you know. I was doing everything I could. I was I got back into playing music as often as I could. I had jukeboxes and arcade games placed at venues all over the place. So I'd go and we'd divvy up the 20 cent pieces once a month with the with the venue owners. I was riding track work, riding racehorses in the morning. Oh, it's probably half a dozen other things I can't remember now, but I I was uh burning as many candles as I could find.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Yeah, I can't imagine you ever sitting still. Mate, you said uh you're not sure whether it's noticed. I've had a look on Spotify alone, you've had hundreds of thousands of plays on Spotify alone. So mate, it's being noticed for sure. I think that look the voice was probably the apex of it all. Well, I want to get to that one in a sec, too. Um, mate, you mentioned your grandfather before. You lost him to cancer in the early 2000s. And this led you to take on a massive task. Can you tell me about the campfires against cancer ride?

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yeah, no, he yeah, he died earlier than that. He died uh in 1993. Right. 18th of January 1993, 7 30 p.m. I think it was a Thursday night. Oh we were very close, there's no doubt about it. He taught me how to ride. He um I was very fortunate because uh the the stages of our lives joined up that uh I was able to get a lot of his attention and monopolise a lot of his education back then when my other 12 cousins on that side of the family certainly um got plenty from him, but I was just very fortunate that uh we're both at the stage of life that we were. He had time and I was only a kid, and he was a great educator, he was a great horseman, and it did knock me around, you know. Like I was uh nearly 17 and I don't know, it's a it's a hard thing to quantify, you know. The passage of time, you you sort of get numb to it all, but even casting back now, I can still see that young fella who wasn't that sure of himself holding his hand, holding my grandfather's hand when he took his last breaths. And it's quite a confronting thing. And Dad said to me some years later, he said, You've seen a lot of death in your young life, and he said, I'm not sure if that is a burden or a privilege, and I'm still not sure either. But um I wanted to do something to honour his memory, and uh while I was overliving in America, Dad was telling me that he it had a bit to do with this uh this fellow from Sydney who was a priest, I can't think of his name now, but he had uh the idea to get young troubled youth off the streets in Sydney by putting them on the back of a horse and go cattle driving uh around the place and get make them earn some blisters. And but when they came through this area, Dad uh helped them out with some tracks and routes and and no doubt a bit of sponsorship, I'd imagine. And I thought, yeah, that's a great idea. So I had plenty of time to think about my life when I was living over in America with horses and things and those mountains. I thought I'm gonna do that in honour and in memory of my grandfather when I come back. And I wanted to do it, I wanted to push cattle initially from Darwin all the way to Corion. That was the original plan. And I was attending a seminar. I come back from America now. Dad wouldn't give me a start in real estate. I got a job with his brother in real estate, and we're doing this seminar in Sydney. I've never been good with that stuff. Like, I still get the icks now when I'm around school teachers, and there's just I don't know, I just it's not my lane, and certainly someone on a stage talking to you like you're just talking down to you, you know, like you're uh you it's it's just got those vibes for me still, and I don't like it. So I said to my uncle, I'm not standing here doing this. You know, one of the things this bloke did, he got up, he made a thousand people in this bloody uh auditorium hold hands, swing hands, and sing. Uh Monty Python's always look on the bright side of life. And I'm like, what the fuck is this about? You're grown ass men. Yeah, you said you're grown ass men, I'm not doing this, you know. Like, um, everyone's laughing, and and and Uncle John said, Well, you will, and I said, No, I won't. I said, So I went down the pub and I sat there for two days until I finished. And of course, that a mate uh who I'd grown up with through pony clubs, a lot older than me, he was about 10 years older. He uh Ian James, I knew him through the pony club riding ranks, although he was quite a bit older than me, and he was working in real estate too, and he he said he'd like to help me organise it. And uh so we sort of shook hands on it, and it morphed into what was going to be a cattle drive right across the country. To we're in the 02-03 drought by the time uh that we actually saddled a horse for it, and it just wasn't feasible to try and push cattle that far because the media love about it. It's hard enough to get on the news with a good story, you know, when you're raising money and doing it, you kill a couple of horses out there, uh, you'd be on the front page of everything. So we were mindful that we had to keep it all glossy and rosy and everything had to go perfect for the ride. So we changed it from being a cattle drive from north to south to we just ride and lead one, ride one, lead one, all the way across the territory in Queensland. And halfway through each day you'd swap saddles, you'd swap over and ride the fresh one. But in New South Wales, at uh across the road, across the uh border from Gundawindy, a little place called Boggabilla, uh, we started our mob there, and the idea was that everybody would contribute to the mob, graziers would contribute to the mob on the way down, and we keep building this mob up. And and I had images of you know walking a thousand bullets across the Hume Wall. But the O203 drought got a hold of us, so we only made it as far as Tamworth and we had to sell, but but it was still a big cash injection, and the whole ride itself raised uh$531,318.39. Wow, mate.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

I've read this, and that's that's a huge congrats, mate. That's a lot of money. Well done. And you had a lot of support along the way. I think you had a lot of media coverage, but you also had people like, and I could be wrong, Lee and Tanya Koenigan and those sort of people come and join you at some points.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Yeah, it's it'd be impossible to name them all now, but um, yeah, certainly Lee rang me one night. So the connection with the Koenigans and the Freer is everyone thinks Lee and I are cousins, we're not related at all. It's um my grandfather Herb Freer, his best mate was Pat Koenigan, and they were drovers together in Coral, and and uh they had a mob of cattle down at Noryl, uh, where everyone goes down there sunbathing that now, and it wasn't too much different back in the day. They had a cattle, a mob of cattle there that they're gonna swim across because that was the stock route, right? To get to Wadonga. Oh, Newmarket to start with, but then they moved out of Wadonga. So there's two girls sunbaking on the other side of the river and looking alright. So the boys are wolf whistling and carrying on as boys do, and said to the girls, swim over. And the two girls said, We can't swim, you swim to us. So the the two lads jumped on their horses and swam across the river. And long story ever longer is the two boys married the two girls, which is my grandparents and Lou's grandparents. Ah, so when Lou was actually out doing a charity uh concert for the Great Australian Cattle Drive, which is also a feature of End of the Year of the Outback, as were Lou, Camp Fires Against Cancer. And the chairman of that, Bruce Campbell, mentioned my name and what I was doing. And uh Louis had a lot of time for my grandfather, and vice versa. So he rang me and he said, mate, I'll do a homecoming concert for you. And from there it just sort of grew, you know. His producer, Garth Porter from Sherbet Fame back in the 70s. He got a hold of it and he asked all these other artists, and they put a CD out called Trailer Dreams. I think there's about 24 artists on there, all the good ones, you know, Casey and uh Lee and Tanya and James Blunt. That was awesome. Yeah, yeah. So they were all on that, which helped. And uh Sarah Storer and Martin Oakes and Garth wrote a single about the ride called Trailer Dreams, which was the album's namesake, and uh that did a bunch of good things too. Um and I think Garth has supported Sarah all the way through, too. Is that right? Garth discovered her and he discovered Martin and he discovered Tom Curtin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, his happy hunting ground was to go to the Victoria River. They used to have a talent quest like set up up there, so all these ringers and uh Victoria River Downs VRD, so it's it's way up north. So he'd go out there, and I'm pretty sure this is accurate. He uh he certainly found Martin there, and Sarah was there. She might, I don't know what she was doing, she might have been governessing. But um, Martin was the breaker, and then I don't know if you heard of Tom Curtin, Tom's going very well. He's won a few on guitars. Yeah, well Martin handed the reins over to Tom when Martin finished breaking. Tom took it on, as the story goes, coming from Martin. Um, Tom was always writing down poems and things, but couldn't play the guitar. So Martin said, You want to put a bit of that literature to music. And there you go. Now he's killing the pig. Alright.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Should have been a cowboy. What does this song mean to you personally?

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Uh not much. Come on, mate. There was a Toby Keith uh track, which is a really cool story about Toby Keith was over in a bar with his mates, and they were deer hunting, and uh one of his young mates tried to get onto this uh young Schiller at the bar and she blew him off. And uh when this young fella came back, Keith was there with his cowboy hat and boots, and uh he basically said you should have been a cowboy stone, yeah. You would have been alright. So he and he went into the uh as the story goes, he went into the toilet and the bathroom there if it was quiet space and he wrote, you should have gone to Cowboy and went 10 minutes. But I've always liked that song for that story and a fan of Toby Key. But the I was I was going through it one day and I thought the chord setup is exactly the same and is well pretty well similar to um Run to Paradox by the Claw Boys. So just for a bit of fun, we morphed it into a medley. We bolted that onto the album as another bonus track, and we recorded that live in the front bar of the Kinross Hotel. I think and and Nick Conway, when I came back from the Campfires Against Cancer ride, I'd given up all my regular spots with music, so I was really starting from scratch. I was going cap in hand again, trying to get some work. And Nick, uh Nick put me on out there in the bar at Kinross that he just freshly acquired, and he said, Um, look, give me two nights. And he said, and uh, if you're any good, I'll get you some radio space on a couple of the radio stations around here. And I said, mate, I'm not trying to get famous, I want the cash. I said, I'll do the first one for you for free. I said, then the rest is cash and and full bottle. So I played there once a month for 15 years. Yeah, right. It took really 15 years.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

Yeah. And Nick was a big supporter of yours and uh and a big fan, and he helped along like uh Kelly Hope and that too.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Well, yeah, a lot of people got this started Kinross, it was just a great live venue. And uh Nick's still a great mate of mine. So you see some of the paintings in this. This is the Half Star Hotel, which I I name tongue-in-cheek because it's so rough, was built in 1884. It's it's there's a mud date behind that fridge there in the wall. Um, it's a half-star hotel, and this is this became the half-way hotel for the purpose of the song I wrote about it, um, which did very well for me. It was my first number one single coming off the voice, but a lot of the paintings around here are actually from Tony Conway, Nick's father, who gave them to. Oh, really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:28

Ah, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 39:31

Mate, uh, I want to talk about your fast-growing tribe. And firstly, a special shout out to your dear wife Caroline. Yep. How does she manage your hectic life?

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Mate, it's a formula that works for us, and it's it's worked since the uh beginning of time in our relationship. Caroline likes being home and I like coming home. And um, I think that's what makes it work. Uh, everyone says, How can you do what you do on the weekends away with your band in all corners of the country and drinking and having a good time? And but for a lot of years, like we we're on a thousand dollars a day interest when we put the four parcels of this farm together, and this farm wasn't making that much money, it wasn't making 350 grand a year. So we were surviving off music. So at that stage in our lives for an extended period, I had to be out singing two and three nights a week because we relied on it. So, in short, Caroline's never really known me to be home on a weekend. It's just the way we've worked. But um, as I say, Kaz loves being home, which I love because you know the home fires are always burning and the kids are right, and we think it's important to have a parent home with kids.

SPEAKER_03 40:34

Absolutely. Talking about the kids, mate, I remember chatting to you around 20 years ago, and you had your firstborn, and then a little bit later I think there was two. Yep. And then it felt like about 12 months after that, there were four and then five, and now you're up to six.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Caroline's dad used to tell us she's the only crop that doesn't fail. We actually never had a plan, right? We never had a plan. We always knew we wanted kids, and my old man used to always say to me, mate, have a thousand kids if you can, he said, because at the end of the day, they're all that matters to you, and you're all that matters to them. And I didn't mean to take that say literally, but we never had a plan. We just took them happily and willingly. But when we had five uh six and under, and we slipped one, pardon me, we slipped one in that journey too, so it was nearly even more congested. When we had five, six and under, I looked at Caroline and I said, We'd better get a bloody plan. This is getting out of control. And then uh nothing really changed except I suppose uh inactivity, which comes with being uh married for that long. But Patty didn't come along for about seven years after Adelaide, and we always said we'd accept kids willingly until Caroline turned 40. And if we did the countback, I think Patty was either Caroline's 40th birthday present or my 41st, but because our day our birthdays are a day apart. Patty doesn't want to know this.

SPEAKER_03 41:49

I was thinking from my point of view, it just seemed to happen all of a sudden, and I was a bit concerned that maybe your tally was on the blink or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

But um it's yeah, I look, I feel like I've always had the balance pretty right. Like I know uh Caroline probably looks like a single mum most of the time, but I do spend a lot of time with the kids too. But yeah, everyone says, How do you do it? You know, but I I don't think six is much different to one. One's the big adjustment, one one is the one that changes your life, and all of a sudden you're not living for yourself, you're living for some other creature, and you're doing everything for her or he. You just bolt them on after that. Just follow, mate.

SPEAKER_03 42:24

Uh, I love their names too. Can you run through them from the start?

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Uh, so well, their their short names are Jess, Tilly, Bill, Emmy, Adelaide, and Patty, who gets Murphy most of the time now because my mate up at Weaper could never remember the sixth name, but he knew he had an Irish sort of connotation to it, so he's calling me Murphy. Did I get six now?

SPEAKER_03 42:45

What do the kids think of dad on stage?

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Uh I think they seem to be proud of me. I must go alright. I I think they think I'm pretty daggy a lot of the time. A lot of kids, you know, it's it's it gets harder as your kids grow older and you can see in their eyes they realize that you're not Superman after all, uh, when the curtains are pulled back. But I think in those moments when I'm going okay and the crowds in my palm and the hand, I think that uh they think I might have still a little bit of Superman left in the outfield.

SPEAKER_03 43:17

Who's the most critical of your music?

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Oh, they all take turns, really. I asked them what's relevant with the young ones. Like, I'm I was 50 last weekend, and they're um I feel sometimes at some stages now there can be a bit of a disconnect. And it doesn't necessarily have to come down to age either, uh, because we played to one of the youngest crowds we've played at for years last weekend at Geelong Rodeo, and there'd be 2,000 of them, and they I felt like they're in the palm of my hand the whole night. They were an amazing crowd. But then sometimes you'll you'll get them, you'll see them checking their phone and talking to their friends, and and um, and you don't know. I don't know if I'm tanking or the sound guy's not doing his job because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much you practice, rehearse, and prepare, you're only ever as good as your sound guy. Um, there's a lot of pressure. On their shoulders, uh, or a mixture of both, but sometimes I feel like um there's a little bit of a disconnect, and but I'm a very tough critic of myself as well. Uh the boys in the band tell me that, like we can get most things right, but I'll still go away kicking an epic coke can about something that I missed or that I'm not happy with, so I will ask the kids what's relevant, you know. What what do you young ones listen to? And most of the time I don't like what they tell me. So any of them showing any interest in music? Oh, they're all musical. Um, they had no choice really. We uh my old my old piano teacher Lisa I when we first came out here I asked asked Lisa to come out and teach the kids. I said, I I I we're kind of a come one come all family, you know. Like if one wants to do something and they've all got to do it for a while, because it's too hard. You you cut more ways in an orphanage pie if you're gonna start taking one to tennis over here and one to nipple here, and one there, and one there. So they all we all we're all package deals. So I said to Lisa, we we're not gonna come into town. I said, but you know, we've got plenty of kids here and we haven't finished, so you you've got to come out to us on the farm. And she's been doing that for only 20 years. Um, so they've all learnt the piano, and from there they've all morphed into other instruments, mainly the guitar and a bit of singing, but they all they all ebb and flow too. Tilly's been up in the cattle camps for two years up in the territory. She's been working in the Kimberleys and across in Arnhem Land, and she's become quite a proficient campfire entertainer. Yeah, and she's lost that shyness, uh, which is great. And made a nice kid too. I was just chatting to her then. Uh thanks, mate. Yeah, no, we're proud of her. She's uh she's certainly not a run-on-the-mill kid, Tilly. She's as pretty as a picture and not girly in the slightest. She never wanted to be pigeon-holed into girl jobs and things like that. I think when you turned up today, we're talking about a beast we're gonna kill later and uh cut it up, and and she's gonna do all that for me. But um, Tilly's become quite proficient at the campfire singing, and uh Jess and Bill sort of took their turns, but m of more into working careers now. Emily is is shining at it now, and and Adelaide has really surprised me. Adelaide's got a gorgeous voice, and I only really noticed that about two months ago.

SPEAKER_03 46:07

Really?

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Yeah, and they chip away quietly, you know. It's I always say Caroline was very proficient on the piano, she went to eighth grade. I only went to three, and then just was teaching myself stuff, but Caroline is very proficient. I'm not, but I'll play for anybody, and Caroline won't play for anyone. And the kids are a bit like that, they do it quietly until they can pull a couple of bangers out. And Patty has taken up the harmonica. I've had him on the big stages with us probably the last two or three gigs. At eight or nine. He's eight, yeah. Oh yeah, I was that proud of him at the Mount Catamans there the other month. He was as cowboy as hell, I reckon. He uh he had his boots and his hat on, he just finished riding in this horse competition. He won the whipcracking competition, a big trophy and a sash and some cash. And then he walked up on stage with us and did a a uh a song called Cowpoke and uh Big Arden Baby, which are which the youngers quite like.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

Love it. Love it.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

And you wouldn't believe it?

SPEAKER_03 47:00

Here's Patty now. G'day Patty. What were you doing on stage with Dad?

SPEAKER_02 47:03

Cowpoke.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

Really? How much fun was that? Were you nervous?

SPEAKER_02 47:09

A little bit.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

What's Dad like as a singer on stage?

SPEAKER_02 47:13

He's good.

SPEAKER_03 47:13

Is he? What instrument did you play with cowpoke?

SPEAKER_02 47:16

Harmonica.

SPEAKER_03 47:18

Well done, mate. Thanks, Patty. Mate, little man, could this be about your son Patty or Bill?

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Well, it could be about any of the kids, to be honest, um, but it was written at at a time um when Bill was the right age. But it could have been written about any of them because the premise behind the song was Tuck it out from feeding cattle. After we've acquired all this land, you know, sold those couple of hotels and things and bought the land here.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

Is this life too tough on you sometime?

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Uh Bloke went bankrupt on us, owing us quite a bit of money in town for a deal we had in there, and he fled to New Guinea, and we never were able to satisfy that debt. And it put us under quite a bit of hardship for quite a few years. And uh it was a terrible time. Caroline would say I'd fall asleep looking at the ceiling with my eyes open. And I I was trying to do sums. If I get through October, some cattle sales, you know, if we can get through to after Christmas, some crop will come in and working out interest and all the rest of it. And at that time, Bill was only a little fella, and he was always desperate, like Patty is now, to be right next to me. You could never move a centimeter without him being right on the leg.

unknown 48:33

Hey that little man.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

And he always wanted to come around the farm with me, but he was always asleep with the first gate, he'd miss it all. And then you'd come back and you'd wake him up, and uh, but as long as he was with me, it didn't matter. And I'd look at him, you know, he always, I'm sure we've all been there, you know, he'd have a jacket all heaped up for a pillow on the back seat.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

And how you're lending me a hair.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

I remember looking at him one day and thinking, uh, geez, I could wish I could sleep as soundly as you. Um, but I thought, you know what, you you'll get your turn at Life's Worries, we all do. And for the moment, I'm the man of the house, so I've got to make it right. So I've just got to man up and take care of things. And son, sleep while you can, you know, because you're not always gonna have sleep full nights.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

For now I'll do the worry.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

Mate, I love the song, and even though I can get emotional listening to that one, I I think it's a an awesome piece, so well done.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

I I I like it too, and I appreciate that. I um it's uh it got slaughtered on release, which I was really annoyed about. Um there was a bit of a disconnect between the media release that came out and the song wasn't available for it nearly a week later. So all the steam had run out of it, so I only charted number seven nationally, but I um it's probably my sentimental favourite.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

And I'll show you what to do. How to cast the dragon. We'll talk about the one that got away. The great big brilliant one today. We nearly had him in the back.

SPEAKER_03 50:08

Well, there you have it. Part A with Danny Fegan. We're off to a good start. From farm life to music, to counting 20 cent pieces, this bloke's lived a life you'd hardly believe.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

Life to love like that life. Some filing and some winners. And you're the best part of me and have your money.

SPEAKER_03 50:30

But hang on to your hat, because part B is where it really kicks off. We're talking the tough ways to make a quid. His album, From Where I Stand, peaking at number one on the Aria charts. This is huge. We hear about performing on The Voiced, and even a Pauline Hansen story that pushed him to write a song. Yep, it gets wild. You won't want to miss it. Catch you in part B. Please subscribe, follow us on social media, and leave us a review.