We’d received a letter in the mail letting us know about a gig our neighbours were holding in their back yard. Some friends of theirs were in a band that had traveled up from Melbourne scheduled to play at the Hopetoun before it closed.

I’d just gotten home from work and walked over the road to see if I could take some pictures of the event. The party had already started when I arrived. People were gathering with voices raised and BYO packages hanging from their arms.

A tall character jumped up from his chair as I walked into the concrete garden. His smile stretched from alcohol. I explained to him were I was from and what I wanted to do. He replied loud and fast describing the gig.

It was a stunted conversation as another guy turned on his seat to stare at me through his black rimmed sunglasses. His back straight in a distracting passive hostility as if he was ready to jump up and intervene.

"So are you gonna take photos then bugger off or listen to the music?" The smiling man before me asked.
I wasn’t quite sure how to react so I tried to weight my reply somewhere in-between an appreciative cackle and a deep concern for the future of burgeoning Australian music.
"No, I'll stay and have a listen."

I returned as Wagons filled the yard, their personalities bigger than their music. Conversational pauses between songs became songs and light hearted abuse. Their instruments knew they were being played well. Beads of sweat traced draped fairy lights as the performance drew more and more sound and energy.

But music is hard to describe when you have heard it so many times before, in different forms by different bands and you wonder whether what you are listening to is just for fun, or whether it’s just there to pass the time.

I suppose you would call it country rock. Conventional and safe. Chords following a predestined progression which had been laid out and finalised well before the song was written.

I took my photos dotted with hanging bulbs and framed by shadowy heads. Leaving early felt rude but natural.

(A backyard somewhere, Sydney)