Sad End To A Great Night

The local Powerboat Club here in Caloundra had a double act on last night (Thursday), rock icon Jon English along with Peter Cupples who often performed in "Carols", lots of daytime TV shows and with a group called the Stylists in the 70's were performing.  Along with 4 friends we had a great night out, great company, good pub fare and few drinks to go with it.

I have a link with Peter Cupples via his brother Terry.  As a young 19 year old country teacher I was appointed to Toora Primary School in South Gippsland around September 1965.  I lived with a local family.  I went to French Island in 1966 to teach but returned to Toora in 1967.

In 1967, ccommodation was found for me at the local Guest House where I was quickly taken under the wing of two of the young residents there, Garry Moore who worked at a local bank and Terry Cupples, the Toora Station Assistant.

In those days I never really had a drink.  These two guys were seasoned Guest House inhabitants and before long I was enjoying a beer, listening to music and having an all round wow of a time.  We became good mates and spent nearly all of our out of work hours together, chatting, listening to Bob Dylan albums and enjoying a cool refreshing ale.  I will spare you the gory details but we got up to quite some mischief and did some things we would now not rather repeat nowadays.

How we ever got home some nights driving in the condition we were in made us believe we would live forever. 

On weekends, we would each go home then meet up again on Monday when we returned to work.

After leaving Toora a couple of years later, we kind of lost contact, a fact I discovered happens with many young teachers working in different spots around the state.

Around 20 years later we all caught up again at Terry's place in Thorpdale in the Latrobe Valley for Terry's 40th birthday.  It was a glorious sunny day, sitting around telling lies about what we used to get up to, enjoying a few beers, meeting each others' family and having an all round great time.

Later that afternoon Terry's younger brother Peter arrived to join the celebrations.  We all sat on the grass in a paddock nearby, Terry and Peter with their guitars and Garry's wife with her violin.  There were a few more beers of course.  What a sensational day we all had, the drinks were great, the music unbelievable and the company as good as ever.  It was like the intervening years had disappeared and it was just yesterday.

I hadn't heard from Terry since that great day now around 30 years ago.

As we headed to the Powerboat Club last night I vowed to have a chat with Peter, check up on how Terry was going and try to contact him.

Jon English and Peter Cupples were just great, we all enjoyed the evening enormously.  After the show I managed a few words with Peter and asked after Terry!  Terry had passed away a couple of weeks ago.  Garry Moore had been dead for around 2 years now.

What a shock!