There’s something kind of beautiful about seeing a dedicated trouser–wearer’s knees. The sartorial equivalent of showing your neck – that most delicate side of you, open and vulnerable. It’s what I think about when Tex Perkins jumps out of his car, wearing a chambray shirt and a pair of faded black shorts. As one of Australia’s best-known and hardest-working performers, his moon-tanned legs are, for the general population, better recognised on stage in bootcut jeans.
Rock’n’roll twitchers will be able to list a myriad of Tex Perkins’ early 80s groups that formed and unformed in a matter of weeks or months. Not to mention rolling credits of sideshows, and freak performances. The guy rarely stops making music, and has done since he was a teenager, gigging around his home town of Brisbane with his first band,Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums.
Those same twitchers will probably also know Tex’s given name is Greg. Many will know the singer best from the Beasts of Bourbon – the sound raw as a fresh-picked scab – and that signature deep caramel growl of The Cruel Sea. He’s consummate, adaptable, restless. He often tours with his friend and fellow frontman,You Am I’s Tim Rogers. He also plays with Cold Chisel’s Don Walker and guitarist Charlie Owen. He fronts another band, Dark Horses, and also enjoys a solo career.
Today I’m on his home turf in the Byron Hinterland, to spend the day with him on his property. Before I meet him, he calls to say there’s no reception at his place, I will most probably get lost on the way, and that he’ll come and pick me up at the bottom of the road. I wonder what he’s going to be like – musicians can be tricky people to interview. Shy when they’re not on stage, private (understandably) and happy enough to let their work do the talking.
I have a few minutes of kicking pebbles into the creek and listening to the cicadas, when a dusty silver Holden SUV hurtles down the road, careening the turnoff and finishing with a couple of greasy doughnuts. Tex Perkins is a bloody hoon. And the shorts? In his hurry to meet me on time, he gave up waiting for his pants to dry.We agree any photos taken before we get back to the house should be taken from the waist up.
Before we head out to his property, which he and his family have been living and working on for the past 25 years, he wants to show me Minyon Falls. With enough rain (and there’s been plenty lately), thousands of litres of water barrel down the 100-metre cliffs causing rainbows to bounce down the palm-filled valley. The air is sweet, heady, almost fecund with the smell of leaf litter. What an ice-breaker.
Back in the car, he happily chats away, taking the tight corners up the narrow, pot-holed Federal roads with the assured nature of someone that’s driven those same curves forever.
Just as I wasn’t sure what to expect from Perkins, I’m not sure what to expect from his property. Is it going to be one of those tightly manicured places complete with a massive concrete bunker that have become so popular up there in recent years? Or one of those old Queenslanders, equally popular with more established residents, suffocated by banana trees and filled with carpet pythons and geckos crawling up the walls?
Better.
It’s 40 acres of land that’s been through hell over the past 100 years and has come out the other side. What was once an area entirely made up of rainforest has been cleared for cattle, re-cleared and poisoned to make way for banana plantations, and now, after a quarter of a century of care and regeneration, is recovering as a sanctuary for the Perkins family.
They grow a portion of their food, though admittedly the garden beds have been overrun since the heavy rain and devastating floods of 2022. They keep animals of all persuasions, including a herd of donkeys, and can’t stop rescuing unwanted buildings from the adjoining properties. It all gets used – between their children and close friends, they’ve created a lovely, tightly knit little commune.
Tex Perkins really has hit the sweet spot of being able to live on a property, tour and raise a family at the same time. It’s wonderful luck fuelled by hard work and talent. We pull up in front of an old barn which has been converted into a studio, performance space and all-round good times hang spot. A carpeted, show-ready stage sits at one end, along with his record collection, and countless shelves of DVDs. The barn doors at the stage end open out onto the property – the sweet smell of eucalyptus wafting through the dreamy, filtered northern rivers sunlight. In interviews, he’s been known to speak of the sur- rounding natural environment heavily influencing his music making, and you can feel it, standing on that stage.
“The model is Neil Young, really,” says Perkins. “Look at Harvest. It was recorded in a barn on his ranch in Laurel Canyon. You know, you’re travelling all the time so having a home base that is your creative space as well is awesome. I fantasised about that way before this was an actual reality.”
This is an excerpt from issue 3 of Swill magazine. Grab your copy today to read the whole thing.
