Coming to New Farm...
 
I’d left Sydney in 1961 and I came up here. I met this kind lady who told me about New Farm, she said I could stay at her place here in New Farm and look around for jobs, so that I had something to do. So I came in 1961, I left Sydney and I came up and I’ve been up ever since.
 
The hostel where I live now didn’t accept coloured people then, it was a motel. Then it got sold and that’s when I moved in. Board was cheap and there were a lot of students staying there then, they used to have wild parties until the manager told them not to drink and smoke in their rooms. They have to go right outside the hostel now to smoke.
 
Going out in the 1960s...
 
I like jazz. I used to go to concerts – Gerry Cologner, Buddy Rich, I did see Eartha Kitt. But this was in Sydney, this was going back a few years now.
 
I saw Ella Fitzgerald in person. She was great. I wanted to get an autograph but it was impossible, I waited in a long queue. Eartha Kitt sings about an old-fashioned woman with an old-fashioned mind. She wasn’t actually a jazz singer but she could sing those sorts of songs, definitely. She’s a very unusual person – she married a white man but because he ill treated her she left him.
 
Well I used to save my money and go without things and then go along [to shows]. I’d go to Sydney Stadium, which was a boxing arena, but they’d do up the place, move all the rough seats. That was in Sydney – it wasn’t the same in Brisbane.
 
Changing hairstyles...
 
Fashions have changed. Men used to wear short back and sides – a Cornell Wilde hairdo I called it. One day I saw a guy down here with his hair all combed in the middle spiking right up – he was a tall, skinny guy with tight pants. It suited him.
 
Young people today...
 
There’s a lot of nice young people in our community always trying to do a good job – even in the city you get kind people that will offer to help you, and they’re standing around and they’ve got nothing else to do. I think there’s good and bad everywhere and you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Talking to: