For all the goss on the Adelaide connections, I recommend reading the chapters “Fraternity” and “Up in the hills too long” in Clinton Walker’s biography of Bon. All the following is pulled from that book…

Essentially, Bon was playing with a band called Fraternity in the early 1970s, and a “rich kid with vision” - this patron of the arts called Hamish Henry - really dug them, and set them up in a big old farmhouse in Aldgate, in the Adelaide Hills. They called the place “Hemming’s Farm”. Does Aldgate ring a bell to you, Andy? This was in early 1971.

This Hamish Henry guy paid them a wage and everything… Clinton writes that Hamish was a bit like Andy Warhol, he wanted to cultivate his own band.

But apparently life on the farm was a bit cushy and the band wallowed in excessive self-confidence and hippy drug stuff, magic mushrooms and multi-day parties etc. And they weren’t very productive, at least in terms of putting out records, although they did play a lot of gigs in the Adelaide seaside suburb of Semaphore, at the Largs Pier Hotel.

Bon moved away from the farm, back down to Adelaide in late 1971, to a house on Norwood Parade, but it doesn’t sound like he was there too long, since they went on a big tour of SA and then moved to England to seek their fortune.

(PS: Fraternity didn’t strike it big in the UK, and Bon had to get a job in a wig factory to sustain himself. The band tried changing their name to “Fang” to gain popularity but that didn’t really work either, and upon their return to Oz in 1973 they broke up).

Here’s a pic of Bon with his hippy facepainting:

two things:
- often ac/dc is referred to as acca dacca- notice how
usually nicknames are shorter than ‘given’ ones, in
this case there aint much difference. but you should
definately use the term ‘acca dacca’- when you feel
more comfortable with it.
- a number of years ago benji had a ‘rock out with
your cock out party’ and simon yates dressed as slash
and i was angus. i now realise my fault as dressing
as the entrepreneur rather than the true rock legend.
apologies, bon- but the school uniform was easy to
recreate.

glad youre back!
xkeg