Pat Alexander never thought his stint selling life insurance would lead him to write a song that would top Australia’s music charts and become an anthem of the country’s mateship.
Alexander spent a “disastrous” two years knocking on doors in Sydney’s inner west, scouting out potential customers, when he came across heat treatment factory owner Duncan Urquhart.
“He was free to talk and suggested we do that at a pub around the corner, and the pub was the Town and Country Hotel at St Peters,” he told patrons at the Criterion Hotel in 2006.
“We yarned about everything except life insurance, and I went back to see Duncan Urquhart three times before I realised he had no intention of buying any of my life cover.”
Pat Alexander wrote the song after meeting with Duncan Urquhart. (ABC News: Tony Ibrahim)
Alexander’s time spent drinking beers with Mr Urquhart at the Town and Country Hotel inspired him to write a song that would soon be picked up by country music star Slim Dusty.
“Driving home from the last of those sessions I should have been miserable, but I wasn’t. In the car, all at once, the music and lyrics came into my head,”
he said.
“I jotted down those words when I got home and tossed them in the cupboard.”
Duncan rises to fame years after it was written
About five years later, Alexander sent his song to radio stations around Sydney.
Duncan was first played on Phil Halderman and Malcolm T Elliot’s morning radio show in September 1980.
A month later, Slim Dusty’s wife, Joy McKean, picked up the song from one of the many discs sent to their post office box in Parramatta and urged her husband to listen to it.
Duncan topped the national music charts in 1981. (ABC News: Tony Ibrahim)
“She asked Slim to listen; he didn’t like it at first but she made him listen again — as every good woman should,” Alexander said.
In February 1981, more than five years after writing the song, Duncan, topped the national music charts and became the number one selling song in Australia for two weeks.
“Slim Dusty is a monument in Australian culture — every Australian knows that — and I am very much aware, that what Slim Dusty did for Duncan is beyond measure,”
Alexander said.
“But the song itself, somehow, mysteriously captures the character of Australian mateship.”
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The Town and Country Hotel in St Peters, which inspired Alexander’s song, has been listed for sale.
Highland Commercial Property sales agent Peter Seeto told the ABC that the hotel’s original roots would be a drawcard for prospective patrons.
“If a person can connect back to those original roots, they can make a big deal of it. And whether it becomes a new home of country music here in Sydney, that’d be fantastic,” Mr Seeto said.
‘You should be going to the Town and Country Hotel’
Mr Seeto said the pub and hotel sale, which he said was expected to sell for more than $5 million, was a good opportunity to rethink the space.
He said the premises could transform into a craft brewery, a whisky bar, gin bar, wine bar, cafe, restaurant and even ground-floor retail.
“It’s a bit of a blank canvas,” he said.
Peter Seeto says the pub and hotel is a blank canvas. (ABC News: Tony Ibrahim)
“What person who’s an Australian is not a fan of it at the end of the day, having a nice, chilled, cold beer, and with some of the great locals in the area.”
Photojournalist and author John Elliot, who spent about 20 years photographing Slim Dusty, said Duncan was a universal song that touched a nerve right through the Australian population.
“Most people live in the cities but they dream about getting out to the country and so the name of the hotel connects with that part of the Australian character,” he said.
“I think that the lyrics, they’re simple and they’re to the point, but it touches that deeper part of our being, somehow, it’s what we all aspire to as a race, I think.“
John Elliot says the hotel should be listed on the National Trust. (ABC News)
The Town and Country Hotel should be listed on the National Trust and placed in a “glass case”, according to Elliot.
“If you’re a Catholic, you go to the Vatican. If you’re an Australian, you should be going to the Town and Country Hotel in Sydney.
“I think if we have no respect for what’s gone before, I don’t think we have a future.”
