Dinny O'brien
30/11/1941- 15/12/2021

Worked on most stations in Australia from the age of 11...cattle drives before road trains...mustering, horse breaking, drover, farmhand, fencer, camp cook, powder monkey, buffalo wrangler... A razor sharp wit...a photographic memory...as tough as they come... childish, volatile, proud and solitary...a burner of bridges...the true gentleman with kids, dogs and horses...a short fuse, a perfect storm of anger... A wordsmith... his writings portrayed a kind and compassionate understanding of life and an unwavering relationship with his own truth and his maker... and a profound, almost defiant acceptance with his own destiny... ...He would say.."my word is as good as the people I give it to.....and there's a 50 per cent chance I'm telling the truth and they're pretty good odds".... ...And so a chance meeting decades ago...Christmas Wandiligong valley, Simon and Dinny drinking and playing swapping songs and stories...a meeting of opposites in harmony and an agreement that everything is negotiable always..... ....Dinny approved of Simons approach to his lyrics ...a difficult passage sometimes and seamless at others ...but the collaboration remained true to the story telling....at times years without speaking, at others, manic communication everyday proving the work to be real to both... ......after Dinny's death in december '21 there remained an unfinished business, to make an album of this collaboration, a musical landscape for the words of this man....."East of Lonely".... like a waltz through country...