Everyone loved Simmy

SIMON McDonald was a well-loved and well-known Creswick character who, for all his life from 1906 to 1968, lived on the family property at Springmount.

He eked out a living from gold fossicking and agricultural work, and was a fixture at local pubs, particularly The American Hotel, where he would sing after work for beer and food.

At a time when The Folk Wave was on, when folk music was the hip-hop of its age, Simmy was called “the best traditional singer in the British style ever recorded in Australia”.

There are still friends and relatives of Simmy’s living in Creswick.

His story will come alive again when Neil Adem, musician and storyteller will impart the life of this remarkable man at the Creswick Courthouse on Saturday 19 August, as a fundraiser for the Courthouse, now home of Creswick Theatre Company.

Adem has been on a journey into Simmy’s life, which has put him in touch with his relatives and local people who knew him, turning up some great and touching stories.

The show ranges through tales of gold-fossicking around Creswick and grape-picking in Mildura, to songs that have their origins in Napoleonic Europe, Burl Ives, and the 1960s Folk Wave.

Half family and local history, half Simmy talking and singing about his life from the tapes, half Simmy’s songs re-sung.

With an LP of his songs made in 1964, and a book on his life published soon after, there are also about 30 hours of reel-to-reel tapes recorded between 1959 and 1967 in the National Archives of Australia in Canberra.

The tapes are of Simmy talking about his life in Creswick and surrounds, and singing the songs he learnt from his father and grandfather in a house with no electricity, where the entertainment was conversation, story-telling and singing the family songs from Ireland and Scotland.

If you missed Adem’s engaging performance at CresFest, or you want to hear it again, book your tickets through humanitix.com.au.