Nine Parts Water, One Part Sand. Douglas Galbraith
making a mark. And then later, when adolescence happened, sure enough, there I was in my bedroom, floating in my tin can.
16 was miserable. Estranged from friends, nursing a broken heart, and dodging the school toughs, Kim retreated to his bedroom.
The post-war periods saw an influx of European immigration to Perth, and Hampton Senior High School in the early 70s hosted some pretty tough kids. There were the ‘Rock Outs’, dressed in satin purple shirts, black hipster jeans, black tee shirts and black tractor tread desert boots. Long hair was a pre-requisite, which they were forever flicking out of their eyes. Then there were the ‘Surfs’, with hair parted in the middle and more mundane clothes, thongs and drab looking jeans. They rarely surfed, but got the girls. These two main groups were rounded out by studious but tough Yugoslavians, razor sharp Italians, and embryonic British skinheads. ‘Kids who had been mild in primary school seemed to have transformed over the holidays and were suddenly stealing cars.’ It was a scary amalgam of cultures, which made for a menacing social environment. And anyone who didn’t fit one of these cliques was singled out for derision.
The best way not to fit in was to look different. Kim successfully achieved this by happenstance. Owen was nuts about motorbikes and gifted one to Kim for his 16th birthday. Joy insisted he wear protective clothing and took Kim to the Army Disposals to buy a black leather jacket, foreshadowing the ones that would adorn the first Ramones album three years later. Kim would ride the bike to school each day wearing the jacket, often accompanied by large Sunaroid aviator shades to protect his light sensitive eyes from sun glare. And to combat persistent hay fever, Kim was taking polaramin tablets causing him to frequently doze off in class. ‘So I looked like a pilled out cat in a leather jacket and sunnies doing badly at school.’ Without trying, Kim had affected full punk rock regalia years before it arrived on Australian shores. He stood out. ’I got shit for it but I didn’t care.’
If he had grown not to care about fitting in with other people, fitting in with himself was more troubling. ‘It’s almost like you’re not really anybody, just a series of little scripts … It’s not that I didn’t fit in ‘cos I was such a freak, although that would be a great thing to say. I just think I didn’t know what I wanted.’
There were possibilities, but nothing was happening. He sensed potential and direction and went deeper into himself to find it. Like his earliest memory of his alien expectations needing stronger skin, Kim was reaching for the right identity to bind together the simmering concepts in his head. He was looking for the formula.
The conventional was not going to work. Kim was cultivating a framework for interpreting the world that was at once primitive and sophisticated; or sophisticated because it was primitive. Incapable of adopting the popular paradigms, Kim identified the more rudimentary angles, creating space for the concepts that would shape his music to grow.
The decision to pursue the arts against the school’s guidance spoke of his determination not to be constrained by other’s expectations. His refusal to join the pack or fit in had sharpened his independence, while his adventures in the Embleton everglades and Fremantle docks had instilled a freedom and wildness of heart. He was stripped back, self-reliant and resolute.
The final ingredient was music. The guitar became a refuge. Although isolated in his room, through the guitar and the vinyl records accumulating on his floor, Kim connected his interior existence with the world beyond the sandpits of Northern Perth. He knew that sometime, something would happen.
•••
As the end of school loomed, Kim had found some kind of social foothold, falling in with a group of older kids. Relative sophisticates, they were Kim’s ticket into parties where he was able to encounter some of the hedonism he’d been reading about. A friend who worked at a record shop told Kim about a party, promising hash and live music. Kim went along to jam with his harmonica, smoked pot and killed it on the harp. His first performance was a success.
In the end, he got through high school and scraped in with his leaving certificate. The day before his art exam, Kim and a friend stumbled across a bottle of vodka and a case of Fosters and got smashed. After throwing up all over his parent’s front yard, Kim fronted for his final exam in dusty shape, but made it through. Walking home, he paused at one of the L shaped streets that led to nowhere. He didn’t know exactly what was next, but he wouldn’t find it there.
1975 arrived for Kim with career plans undetermined and an identity still in formation. The Whitlam Government’s fast-moving agenda of social reform and political miscalculations paraded towards the Dismissal. But while the social landscape in the Eastern States was twisting and shouting, Perth was still slow dancing to a more conservative tune.
Perth was really just a big country town and, like many country towns, reflected a white bread, mainstream culture with little diversity. The counter culture was corralled into an out of the way cinema, and music was dominated by ‘Top 40’ cover bands playing in suburban beer barns like the Scarborough Beach Hotel.
It was from this claustrophobic atmosphere that Kim escaped to the Art Faculty of the Western Australian Institute of Technology. ‘I was thinking that by the time I get to art school it’s all going to happen; free love, drugs, action, rock and roll. I imagined the whole Woodstock thing would be there in the art faculty.’ He pictured holing up in a garret somewhere, walls splashed with paint, surrounded by a community of artists, and started his tertiary studies enthusiastically.
Kim’s natural skills refined under the tuition of teacher Henry Hall — a skinny, aging, chain-smoking hipster in the mould of Keith Richards. ‘I learned to draw properly then; I got my drawing chops down. Drawing was easy, they stuck a nude model in front of you … and you’d draw it.’ But the students were older than Kim, rundown hippies who had already been ’round the block. The vibe was like this isn’t for you, it’s a burned-out scene … They weren’t trying ideas other than the ones they already had.’
Outside art class, however, a troupe of likeminded accomplices had emerged, and Kim spent the year exploring Perth’s nocturnal life. One night, his high school friend Ken Seymour introduced him to fellow student and keyboard player Dave Faulkner. Kim recognised Dave’s sensibility straight away, ‘and it became clear that maybe we should have a jam’.
Dave Faulkner would go on to be one of Australia’s most successful musicians, selling hundreds of thousands of albums and his songs on constant radio play. But in 1975, he was just ‘Dave Flick’ and still working out his angle. Dave had gathered a strange conglomeration of players that loosely resembled a band, including Neil Fernandes, a laid-back guitarist with a beautiful voice who would, the following year, respond to Kim’s punk call to arms. Into this mix arrived Kim Salmon. Epic art rock paroxysms, ‘prog’ explorations and blues jams followed, but it was the increasingly alcoholic drummer’s suggestion to play atonal noise over an unlikely 7/4 beat that stuck in Kim’s head.
Dave adorned the combo with the name Moulin Rouge. ‘Nobody said anything, giving Dave carte blanche to be the boss you see. He was a keyboard player. He also played a little guitar but not that well. The embarrassing thing was you’d be playing and he’d say, “oh your B string’s slightly sharp” and you’d tune it and he’d say “yeah but now your A’s out” — it was off-putting! Even in those days he must have had an amazing ear, everything sounded ugly to him.’ The band never got off the ground. Practice in the faculty rehearsal room at midday would blend into drinks at the uni tavern, ‘and by 6 o’clock I’d be in the garden in fisticuffs with the bass player.’
In the wake of Moulin Rouge, Dave suggested joining a blues band. Perth was awash with stylised, holier-than-thou blues bands like The Elks, Beagle Boys or Duck Soup. The other choice was carbon copy, white-washed cover bands. Playing Beatles songs to huge crowds in awful beer barns was big business, and Neil Fernandes recalls stories of people earning house deposits from playing covers.
Kim was over it. ‘God