Perth: The First Concert Day

Wednesday 25 January 2017

Needless to say, with the one thing and another, there was a substantial backlog in the Travelogue when I surfaced around 6:30.

With the prospect of a late night, the day it was always going to be about pacing oneself and ensuring that we got to the end of the concert and all the way home without nodding off.

Since the laptop had finally completed its downloads and updates I was able to turn my attention to Travlogue matters and had knocked over a fair chunk of backlog before breakfast.

Not a substantial breakfast, however, since I had big plans for lunch.

Those plans definitely looked good after I had made my first booking on the iPhone Dimmi app.

The definitely upmarket Lalla Rookh eatery rates are very highly almost everywhere and I was booked in for 12:30.

So a light breakfast was definitely the way to go.

The cafe beside the foyer in Reception provided a bacon and egg muffin and a long black, which was all that was needed.

After that, there were places to go and things to check out.

For a start I needed to scope out the track to and from the Perth Arena, which runs past the made railway station, another substantial transport hub, and various squares and plazas.

Last time we had been in the vicinity there was significant construction work that stopped us from using the most direct line between two points, and in case something similar applied here I needed to check out the light of the land.

Once I’d hit Wellington Street at the intersection about thirty metres from the Adina’s front door, the right hand or station side looked to be the way to go since the arena was on that side of the street and I figured there would be a clear path from the station and the Perth Busport to the venue.

Unfortunately, that side of the footpath reached a dead end immediately after the egress from the passport, thanks to construction work.

Back on the city side of Wellington Street, the footpath ran relatively uninterrupted (except for the odd cross street) for the rest of the way and I heard my preferred pathway back and forth in the evening.

Once I was in the vicinity, I figured I might as well scope out the entrance and pick up the old illustratory photograph for this little enterprise and then, with the couple of snaps on the camera roll, turned my attention to the city's music shops.

I been to 78 Records on our previous visit and figured that an hour’s perusal of what was on offer in the racks would deliver a significant hit to the credit card.

That's not, however, the way it worked out. There was nothing that's caught the eye, and not a great deal of depth to investigate in the racks.

It seemed like further evidence to support the motion that the day of the specialist CD shop is almost gone. And since five to seven minutes is well short of an hour, I figured I may as well investigate Dada Records today rather than to hold off until Friday.

It was only a block or two away, I had plenty of time up my sleeve, and if Dada proved to be a dud I could devote Friday to browsing in bookstores or maybe that visit to Fremantle I had previously pencilled in for Australia Day.

And on the way to Dada, I had the mildly surreal experience of being stopped by two young dudes who wanted to know whether they were in the heart of downtown Perth.

I have no idea what they stopped me been outside McDonald's front door. Maybe it was because I looked like I knew where I was going, which was true enough because I knew I had to turn left at the next intersection.

My destination from there was uncertain, but at least I knew where I had to turn. Maps wasn't totally clear about which side of Pier Street was home to Dada, and I went up one side of the streets and out the other before I located at the front door.

An initial squiz around on the premises suggested an establishment entirely devoted to vinyl, but fortunately I asked the gentleman behind the counter and he pointed me towards the basement.

Down there, I found exactly what I had been hoping to find at my previous stop. The CD bins were well stocked, the range of genres and styles was extensive and a return visit on Friday will certainly inflict heavy damage on the credit card balance.

Even better, a casual conversation with the bloke behind the counter effectively put the kibosh on any notions of rocking on down to Fremantle tomorrow.

Talking to somebody who lives in Freo and expresses the opinion that he will probably not be venturing outside the house on the Australia Day suggested a precinct likely to be over run by flag wearing bogans.

And the crowds at the Fishermans wharf would it probably militate against a casual feed of fish and chips and the odd glass of quality white wine.

The likely temperature and the public holiday factor had almost ruled out the day trip to Freo, but it was nice to have suspicions confirmed by someone with obvious local knowledge.

It was getting on for 10:45 by the stage and with a 12:30 booking for lunch I figured I needed to head back to the hotel, take it easy for a spell and prepare for the assault on Lalla Rookh.

After lunch, I figured that there would be a nanna nap before I rocked on down to the Arena for the show.

With a concert day game plan that involves a substantial lunch followed by a relatively easy afternoon, I figured I may as well start at the top.

That could have been Long Chim, but I'd been there and done that.

From what I could see, Lalla Rookh, with what looked like a classy line in Italian cucina, was the next on the bucket list and it certainly did not disappoint.

Once I had found it, that is.

Having donned the dining out clobber, I set off down Barrack Street around 12:10, probably a tad early, but I thought an early arrival could be filled in looking at bottles of wine and wishing I had the wherewithal to afford them.

Lalla Rookh looked to be the kind of operation: high quality at premium prices.

A glance at with their premium wines by the glass list will reveal 60ml half glasses priced between $13 and $30, with 120ml glasses starting at $26 and running up to $60.

I had the impression that they also do retail, selling bottles to takeaway and I figured that if I was too early for the booking I could always browse in that department.

Not that I was expecting it to be buying, you understand.

But it didn't work out that way. I walked along the river side of St Georges Terrace looking for some obvious sign of the high class food and wine operation and ended up around one hundred metres past the target.

That wasn't a particularly surprising since I've managed to pass almost everything I've aimed for earlier in the morning, with the notable exception all the Perth Arena which was, like Retravision, too big to ignore.

So I doubled back and ended up some twenty metres past where Maps was telling me I needed to be.

The obvious conclusion was that the target was located inside one of the buildings rather than writing the street outside. It was easy enough to find the right street number, so I headed inside.

The directory in the foyer indicated that Lalla Rookh was situated in the arcade, rather than the building itself, so after a thorough reconnaissance off the ground floor I headed back outside.

And there, in the middle of a construction site, I found a sign indicating beer and wine downstairs this way. I made my way down a staircase and arrived at the desired destination with about three or four minutes to spare.

Once I'd been ushered into my table for one, a cursory glance at the menu was all that was needed.

Three courses, I figured.

Start with a beef carpaccio, follow it with a pasta dish and see how we were going.

If there was room for it, I figured I could go for a main dish and the veal cotaletta was probably the way to go in that department.

But I had no idea all of servings, so it was wait and see.

The ordering side of things brought an interesting development.

The food order was straightforward, but when I turned my attention to recommendations for an appropriate wine to accompany the first two dishes I learned that the waitress was still on training wheels.

In fact, it was the first shift, but, fortunately she had a mentor.

I would like to think but I helped the training process.

When I asked for a wine to match the carpaccio I was surprised to be pointed towards a white, rather then a red, but the $12.50 Pierpaolo Pecorari Pinot Grigio worked immaculately with the dressing on the sliced raw beef.

It was probably a better combination than the carpaccio and Pinot Noir I enjoyed in Hobart about two and a half months before.

I headed up market into Barolo for something to accompany the potato gnocchi (Marini ‘la Serra’ 2011), and the combination worked almost as well.

Maybe I should have asked for advice on that one too.

And after what amounted to two entrees there was a definite room for the veal coteletta. Since the order went in a little late I heard an excuse for a glass of Valpolicella Pieropan ‘Ruberpan’ Superiore 2013) while I waited for the main course.

When it arrived, a Prunotto ‘Bric Turot’ 2003 Barbaresco appeared alongside it in another almost divine food and wine match.

And, in between meals and drinks I could enjoy watching the apprentice wait person and her mental doing their respected things.

When the bill arrived I suppose I could have just left the cash, but waited so I could thank the two ladies for the floorshow.

Once I had, I made my way up the semi rickety staircase and headed back to base for a quiet afternoon resting up in air conditioned comfort for the first of my concerts.

It was definitely the right way to go, but 5:15 was a tad early to be pointing oneself towards the venue.

When I hit the pavement, even though it was latish in the afternoon, the open oven door heat was like walking into a wall, and even though I was walking down the shaded side of Wellington Street it was still, not to put to fine a point on it, Bloody hot.

And, when I arrived at the venue, I discovered that the doors would not open until six. They won't catch me that way a second time.

I mosied over to the merchandise caravan, picked up an event specific T-shirt and headed back to queue for admission do the arena.

Once inside, the usual preconcert routine applied: overpriced beer, something minimal to eat, and I move into the seat around 20 minutes before the scheduled start time.

As far as the concert in itself is concerned there is a separate entry in Hughesy’s music blog, so there is little point in the repeating detail hereabouts.

But, interestingly, my initial reaction was that it was possibly the best of the eight Springsteen shows I've experienced to date. I suspect I'll be saying the same thing after Friday night.

After the concert, the walk back down the Wellington Street was, largely a matter of following the crowd which thinned gradually as pedestrians peeled off to the right towards the various water holes and late-night eateries in that part of the CBD.

But not for this little black duck.

I headed straight for the Adina, tucked myself in upstairs and unwell with the help of a perfectly acceptable Chapel Hill McLaren Vale Sangiovese that was nowhere near the same postcode as what I'd tried earlier in the day but, of course, it was all I had on hand.

It did the job quite adequately, and I was pushing up Zs just after midnight at the end of a memorable day.

Brisbane > Perth

Tuesday 24 January 2017

Which, I guess, is where the adventure really begins, transcontinental flight and all.

The Critical Reader might be inclined to question Hughesy's bed time the night before, and I wasn't overly confident about it myself. But I'd been close to nodding off on the train up, and TransLink told me I needed to be on the platform at Roma Street in time for the 6:27 AirTrain.

I was awake again just before midnight, and at two and three, so one might surmise the sleep had been fitful.

On the other hand, given the vividness of dreams covering a variety of topics, most of them of nightmarish proportions rather than the pleasant thoughts I employ while trying to drop off, I must have slept fairly well.

And fairly long. It was around four-fifteen when I finally surfaced, more or less what it would have been at home, though there wasn't the hour and a half or so on the computer before the morning walk.

Instead, there was a shower, a realignment of the contents of the Coppertone Container, about three-quarters of an hour's Travelogue tapping, and a final onceover of the goods and chattels before heading downstairs to check out almost on the dot of six.

The AirTrain hit platform six at Roma Street right on time, checkin was open when Hughesy hit the terminal, and, as a result, the details are right up to date just before seven-fifty-five.

Just the way you like things when you're in the Travelogue tapping trade and you've polished off breakfast.

Better still, he tapped as he drained the last of the coffee, with Gate 41 almost in sight (it's over there, just on the other side of the Sushi Sushi operation) I'm sitting at a bench boasting five double-sided power points.

On that basis, by the time one heads off for the regulation nervous pee ten minutes before boarding, we'll have two devices sitting on more than 100% ahead of five hours in the air.

And not a Ladies' toilet in sight.

Around 10 minutes before boarding was due to commence I took myself down to date 41, where is the number of people seated in the departure lounge was significantly less the number of seats.

That, predictably, raised notions of relatively uncrowded flights that may have prompted the merging of the lunchtime flight I had booked with an early departure.

Those matters gave me something to ponder during the regulation nervous pee, but when I return from the depths there were plenty of people standing around the gates and the numbers continue to grow.

By the time they were ready to start zapping boarding passes it looked like before it would be reasonably close to full, and it was.

Still, I ended up with a vacant seat beside 15 F, which meant there was a bit more room to sort out the odds and ends in the backpack before takeoff.

Back when I had booked I had some visions of taking in views of the red centre, and which ever one of Simpson’s or Sturt’s Stony Deserts lay under our flight path.

I had forgotten that row 15 would almost certainly be looking out over the wing.

But those matters became academic.

We took off to the east, circled back over the top or Brisbane airport, looped on to a westward track and headed into the regulation cloud mass as we headed up to cruising altitude.

That was okay, I reckoned, since it was summer and there was rain about. The cloud would possibly dissipate as we reached drier inland areas.

I was on the sunny side of the plane, so I rested my eyes for awhile in anticipation of whatever foodstuffs were moving on the horizon. While I’d already demolished a reasonably substantial breakfast I figured the topping up with something that had already been paid for would stave off the necessity of lunch.

And, in any case, once I was on the ground in Perth I had more important of fish to fry than a quest for something to keep me going until dinnertime.

The Virgin breakfast, when it arrived turned out to be slightly subpar scrambled eggs with accompanying hashbrowns which turned out to be very close two double bogey territory.

And a yoghurt, which I have never eaten it wasn't about to start.

The apple juice that turned up 10 minutes later was the best part of the package, but the whole thing did what needed to be done.

By that point, well over an hour into the flight I figured that I may have had some content for a touch of trouble tapping, but the glance out of the window revealed a scenic expanse of wing with a fairly nondescript inland landscape beyond it.

Not much to tap about there, folks.

So I turned my attention to James Lee Burke, knocking over the rest of his latest masterpiece, The Jealous Kind. In that his usual inimitable fashion, Burke has managed to take a fairly non-descript starting point (girl ditches boy friend at the drive-in in Houston Texas in the early 1950s) and works it up into a turmoil of revenge, counterstroke, and moral mayhem.

That's fairly easy to do when the protagonist is a descendent of the dysfunctional Holland clan with the genetic predisposition to antisocial tendencies and the personal foibles that come with the ancestry.

Burke wraps up the story with a neat conclusion that is possibly as close as he is ever going to get to and they all lived happily ever after.

Well, the Holland descendant and the girl do, any way, as do the hooker who turns out to have a heart of all those gold and the only honest cop in the Houston police force.

Turning the virtual pages on the iPad kept me busy for much of the remainder of the flight, through the patch of turbulence that came when we entered another mass of cloud somewhere around Lake Eyre.

It persisted almost all the way across the Nullarbor, according do my regular glances out of the window, but by the time I had reached the almost happy ending, it was mostly gone and we seemed to work dropped considerably in altitude.

It wasn't that long afterwards when we started receiving the obligatory advice about large electronic devices and the impending illumination of the seatbelt sign.

The good news from the pilot just prior to landing was that we were running around half an hour early, which raised prospects of an earlier collection of the new laptop that was waiting for me at the Apple Store in Perth.

Those prospects seemed to evaporate once I had headed out of the terminal in search of the city shuttlebus. They seem to depart on the hour, but they depart from terminal three, the one allocated two full fare domestic services. Understandable, I guess.

What I couldn't understand, however, was a lengthy delay outside the international terminal that took us well past one o'clock, followed by a run out onto the freeway that delivers travellers into Perth and a U-turn at a convenient flyover that took us all the way back to the airport.

It seemed there were roadworks in between the international terminal and terminal three but no one had bothered to take transport shuttles between the two into account.

And that one particular traveller had failed to take the rivalry between bus services into account.

When we reached terminal three, the bus driver pointed me one way, which turned out to be the stop for the common or garden Perth bus service rather than the $15 into the city shuffle.

I was still somewhat confused when a 935 bus arrived, and the attempt to pay for the ticket produced a response along the lines of I'm running late, don't worry about it now, fix it up later.

We were stopped at a set of traffic lights about five minutes later, obviously having picked up a bit of time, when he pointed out that there was a quicker, more direct option if I alighted at the next stop.

On the other hand, I was already on service that was already headed in the right direction, so I expressed a willingness to stay.

And, interestingly, staying delivered me to the bottom end of Barrack Street around the time the $15 shuttle wouldn't have been leaving the airport and delivered me there at what we used to call the right price.

It's not that far from where I alighted at Stirling Gardens to the Adina Apartment Hotel at the other end of Barrack Street, what the walk had me questioning a few assumptions about what we would be doing over the next day or two.

Not to put too fine a point on it, with tomorrow’s temperature range from 19 to 37, followed by 22 to 39 on Thursday walking was no longer part of the medium term scenario.

In fact, if I didn't have to walk to the Apple Store this afternoon, I would probably have ensconced myself in the Adina conducting a thorough investigation of the air conditioning.

And there's an additional complication. Amid all the other planning I had it conveniently neglected to note that Thursday 26 January was, of course, Australia Day.

Given a maximum of 39 and public holiday crowds plans for a walk around the historic precincts in Fremantle have to disappeared towards the back burner.

But that was a concern for the future.

The first priority was to get my hands on the new laptop so as soon as I had settled in I was back on Barrack Street, turning it right onto Hay bound directly for the Apple Store, which turned out to be a bit further or than anticipated.

That ruled out and investigation of the little cluster of eateries away on the other side of the Apple Store. Tom's Kitchen, where I’d had and excellent coq au vin last time was long gone but, according to distant memory, there was a cluster of interesting eateries along the same laneway or in the same arcade, so I was half interested to find out what, if anything, remained.

Now, with the Apple store further than I thought, there was an abundance of interesting places to eat located much closer to base. I wasn't going to get to all those, so I figured there it wasn't much point in adding to the list.

And, of course, I wanted to get my hands on the new laptop.

So, once I transferred at those notions into the too hard basket, I tracked back to the big Apple, which proved to be a hive of activity.

So much so, In fact, that it took me a good five minutes to be noticed among the general hubbub.

But once I was, things flowed smoothly.

I walked out some forty minutes later with the new MacBook Air all set up and ready to go with news that, back home, the supervisor had shelled out for an iPhone.

And about time, too.

As is almost invariably the case, the walk back to the Adina seemed to take about half the time of the upward leg and it wasn't long before I had the new box and dice unpacked and ready to go.

That was when I made and important discovery. I had loaded several important odds and ends, various software packages and the old document that wasn't sitting on iCloud onto a thumb drive, which was still sitting in the appropriate slot of my desktop iMac on the other side of the continent.

So I needed a copy of Grammarly, the flavoured proof reading application, a copy of iBooks Author, the software I use to put together website pages, as well as the extension that allows would-be authors to dictate content directly into Pages without having it ping-pong back and forth over the Internet.

I figured the in-house wi-fi at the Adina wouldn't like that at all.

As it turned out, it didn't like the new laptop trying to sync itself into iCloud at the same time as Hughesy was trying to download all this additional stuff.

Consequently, it embarked on a go slow campaign which reduced everything to crawl.

By the stage it was just after five and someone who had the skipped lunch, despite one and a half breakfasts, was feeling decidedly peckish.

I suppose I could have left the Adina broadband to do its thing and see how far it had proceeded when I returned, but I figured I was better off shutting things down temporarily, heading out to eat, and resuming the process on my return.

Apart from rising hunger pangs there was a very good reason for heading towards an early dinner. Long Chim, my preferred destination, is an operation in the David Thomson chain specialising in Thai street food that I was led to believe does not take bookings.

Like Spice I Am in Sydney, where experience suggests it is advisable to turn it up right on opening time if you don't want to spend time standing in a queue.

As it turns out, Long Chim has significantly more seating, and was nowhere near crowded when I logged on the doorstep just after five.

Given a choice of where I preferred to sit, I ended up at the bar, looking across what seemed to be the salad and garnish preparation area into the kitchen.

Long Chim is one of those places best visited in company with a reasonable sized party, a fairly well stocked wallet or credit card, and an inclination towards adventure in the chilli department.

That’s not, as the friendly waitress pointed out, to suggest that everything on offer verges of the incendiary. But the heat is there if you want it, and the wait staff know what is hot and what is not.

I opted to start beef skewers and pork sausages from the entree selection with a glass of the La Violetta Ye-Ye Grise, a riesling-trainer blend from Great Southern. That was the suggestion after the original request for a straight Riesling produced a sorry all gone.

And maybe it was just as well.

The wine-food combination worked brilliantly, the beef skewers were excellent, and the pork sausages a couple of centimetres short of outstanding.

At least, that's the way my palate felt about it.

I suppose I could have stopped there but I followed it with a green curry of chicken, steamed rice and a glass of French Vouvray chenin blanc, again at the wait person's suggestion and emerged with the credit card reeling just before six.

I was an extremely happy camper as I made my way back up Barrack Street, diverted into a handy BWS en route to pick up liquid supplies to tide me over the next two and a bit days.

I wouldn't be needing much with a Bruce concert tomorrow night, so I restricted myself do a six pack of Coopers, a Vickery Riesling and a Chapel Hill Sangiovese.

While I must admit BWS is usually well out of my territory (no outlet in Bowen for a start) I was mildly surprised to note bottles of Grosset Polish Hill and Springvale Riesling among the chilled whites.

I'm sure that if I looked more closely there would have been other surprises but I had what I needed and wasn't inclined to spend anything extra on what may well have turned out to be superfluous alcohol that needed to be lugged to Adelaide and points beyond.

Back in the hotel room, I enjoyed a chilled article (actually, two) while I watched and waited for software updates and downloads to do their respective things.

Eventually, drooping eyelids forced me to retire for the night before the process was complete.

On the Road: Monday

Monday 23 January 2017.

Sitting down to the familiar task of Travelogue tapping I'm glad I played it safe as far as the new laptop is concerned.

Having made my way safely to and through Brisbane Airport with almost enough time to catch the 5:37 AirTrain I did my best to adjust the body clock to a new concert-based paradigm and was only partly successful.

It was six-forty-five when, showered, refreshed and ready for action, I sat down to resume the Travelogue duties.

That's around two hours before regular operations start on a weekday in the Little House of Concrete, so the attempt, after a reasonable night's sleep, was at least partly successful.

A change in the flight time from Brisbane to Perth means I'll be up, about and headed to the airport around the same time tomorrow morning,. If I play things right I'll handle the late night post-concert bedtime and the time difference through the rest of the week after that.

But that remains to be seen.

What has become glaringly obvious is that the preceding exercises in dictation have spoiled The Author, whose hunt and peck keyboarding skills lag behind the thought processes by a considerable margin.

As far as speed of entry goes, it's Dictation first, daylight second, with Hunt and Peck not even on camera as the winner crosses the line. I reckon that last sentence took a good twenty seconds longer to complete than would have been the case otherwise.

And while there was nothing obvious that would have prevented a laptop purchased on Wednesday arriving on the doorstep in Bowen around lunchtime on Friday, there's no total guarantee that it would have panned out that way.

Given an alternative of around twenty-five days of hunt and peck, I'll take the safe option of collecting the new machine in Perth, thank you very much.

Even though I could have hit the road yesterday morning with the new machine all set up and ready to rock and roll.

After the concerns earlier in the week, once I'd stopped off at the auto teller to fill up the wallet, the run through to the airport, via Bunnings and The Fat Frog in Cannonvale was almost completely uneventful.

After a slight delay while we debated whether a thirty-metre hose was necessary (Madam prevailed, and we went for fifteen), my fish and chips at the Corpulent Amphibian meant I wouldn't be needing anything substantial in the evening.

Madam's fish taco would probably have left her indulging in a very light snack while she enjoyed quality Hughesy-free time with the tennis, LikLik and Ninja last night.

The only excitement came when I attempted to pair Madam's iPad to the car's communication system. My iPad, with its selection of Hughesy's Top 5000 most played, usually provides the soundtrack when we hit the road, but it was going south and Madam had acquired some Japanese ska that she thought would be good driving music.

But it helps to make sure that the musical content is on the device before you set about pairing the device to the car's Bluetooth.

I think I got the pairing right, anyway.

I was at the airport comfortably before check-in opened, which meant I was through security behind about half a dozen fellow travellers, well and truly in time to track down any available power points in the Departure Lounge.

Unfortunately, the only one in evidence was right outside the entrance to the Female toilet. Still, with a good hour and a quarter before boarding was scheduled to begin, I figured I could get both iPhone and iPad fully charged before we headed off.

According to TransLink, I was looking at around five hours with no way to recharge either device en route, so I figured I'd better get it done wherever the opportunity arose.

And if that opportunity involved sitting beside the door to the Ladies' convenience, that was tough luck.

But the aircraft had landed and the iPhone was showing itself at 97% when I unplugged the device. Plugging it back in revealed it was actually 100%, and, of course, may have been for some time.

Running the iPad through the car's USB meant it had suffered minimal rundown, so it remained untapped up as I removed myself to the regular seating to await the boarding call.

My place was immediately taken by a young girl of apparent Indian extraction, who joined the attractive possibly English lass who'd arrived to claim the other power point about half an hour earlier.

As I sat in the regular seating I resolved to investigate devices that will recharge three devices from a single power source, and an appointment with OfficeWorks has been added to the morning's To Do list.

And, at seven-forty, with breakfast atop the aforementioned list, one casts the eye back over fifty minutes of Hunt and Peck and wonders how much further one might have got with dictation.

Having temporarily discarded the cafe at the foot of the unit complex as a breakfast option,  I took an extended wander around downtown Southport to scope out the options.

When nothing succeeded in catching the eye or capturing the fancy, I ended up more or less back where I started, having covered a tad over half a kilometre in the meantime (according to the iPhone's Health app). I'm sure it was more than that, though the discrepancy might  be almost entirely illusionary.

And, as I sat down to await my coffee and breakfast wrap, I turned my attention to the news for the first time today.

The Astute Reader, will no doubt, have noticed the elephant in the room present throughout the foregoing account.

It's presence registered again as I opened the morning bulletin from the ABC News website.

There was, of course, a Springsteen concert in Perth last night, and I'd spent most of yesterday trying not to remind myself of the fact.

There's always a danger in seeing reviews and reports on concerts one could have attended.

That, actually, was the point of references to Neil Young shows in 2013. I'd opted not to go to Perth and Adelaide, caught Brisbane and Sydney, and then headed back to start on the Bruce shows when I could have gone on to Melbourne for the Plenary.

Wouldn't have got to Rod Laver, though.

The Springsteen-related logistics ruled that out, and there would probably have been a can't be in two places (Brisbane and Melbourne) factor as well.

The first four shows on the Neil tour, however, shared pretty close to the same set list (at least that's the way I recall it), and I'd caught that one twice.

I was sitting in Brisbane (IIRC) one or two nights out from Bruce, seeing the set list and thinking that I really could have been there for that one, and could still made it back for the show on the horizon.

So, yesterday, there were imponderables I didn't want to ponder.

Overnight, a FaceBook comment from the inimitable Staggster inquiring whether my itinerary included Canberra, had brought a regretful Not this time, which was produced an I understand.

Which was the reminder I needed to finally turn the attention to Springsteen-elated matters.

The BRUCEFanatic app is not completely up to date, but a glance at the official website revealed a twenty-four number show, with six more in the encore.

Started with New York Serenade, included Rosalita and Candy's Room, and skipped Waitin' on a Sunny Day with the seemingly obligatory haul a kid up out of the audience to sing a verse and chorus bit.

That has been a part of six out of seven shows to date. With luck, the absence will continue, though it does go down well with the audience.

But after a brief look, there's nothing there to cause regret at being too smart by half.

Because, having decided I was going, and going included Perth, things were, I thought, straightforward.

Arrive in Perth the day before the first show, stay there until the day before Adelaide, and then move on to Sydney and Melbourne the day before the first shows there.

In hindsight there's a gap in that logic you could drive a substantial vehicle through.

It works on the assumption that additional shows in each centre will come after the one announced in the original announcement.

That's the way it usually pans out.

So it seemed logical to get in early and book flights to Perth and Adelaide before tickets went on sale. Those cheap fares aren't refundable, so that part of things is reasonably close to set in concrete.

Accommodation is all no cancellation fee, provided it's more than twenty-four hours in advance.

And, with the sole exception of Perth, where you might not expect a third show to be added, that's the way it turned out.

So, with two shows in Perth selling out, adding a third meant it had to go earlier rather than later.

There's an awful lot of gear that needs to be shipped across the Nullarbor before Adelaide.

But, at the same time, on initial appearances, it looks like I haven't missed anything significant.

Assuming, that is, you can describe what was probably a rousing and stellar three-hour performance that included Candy's Room as insignificant.

And, at that point, with another three-quarters of an hour's tapping under the belt, one turns the attention to the day's important business.

Which includes that visit to OfficeWorks or its cousin brother.

As it turned out, the cousin brother got the nod. I'd noticed a new electronics store on the premises formerly occupied by Dick Smiths in my earlier wander through Australia Fair scoping out the breakfast options, and promptly found exactly what I was looking for.

The Critical Reader might suggest there was no need for four USB slots, but Madam is looking at an iPhone, and already has an iPad.

On that basis I reckon we can charge all the devices from one hub in one fell swoop.

From there, I took myself off to the Library, renewed the borrowing card that gives family members access to the in house broadband as well as reading matter (very important: they have significant Japanese language holdings) and headed back to sort out the details of a long dormant financial account.

After that, the original game plan involved the USB charger, but since that was already attended to I headed back to base. Once the packing (or, rather, repacking was complete, I killed time before lunch with a spot of reading.

A trip out to the Asian Supermarket delivered a tasty chicken curry, half a bottle of Crabtree Riesling washed it down, and once the washing up was done, I killed time till two, then manoeuvred the Coppertone Container around to the bus stop for an uneventful run through to Roma Street and the Hotel Jen.

Something along the way suggested that the night's accommodation was, at one stage, a Holiday Inn, and it may well have been. It has, however, been refurbished, and with a location right beside the Roma Street transit hub it's an ideal stopover for people in my situation.

A 9:15 flight and an inclination to be early means I'll be looking at the 6:27 AirTrain from Roma Street, which would have left Helensvale at five.

That, obviously, was not an option.

So the Hotel Jen slotted in ideally.

There's not much in the neighbourhood as far as eating and drinking options are concerned, but it's not that far to the CBD, and Nest, the onsite bar and restaurant fitted the bill very nicely.

By the time I was downstairs to check out the options, the only takeaways open were the ones I go out of my way to avoid. If there'd been somewhere doing pizza, I may well have grabbed a takeaway and a bottle of something from the Cellarbrations on the ground level.

Since I hadn't established the finer details of the takeaway options I took a look in there, found some interesting possibilities (both red and white) and headed on with plenty of options open.

If only they had been.

Since they weren't, I ventured into Nest, downed a schooner, ordered a pad Thai and washed it down with a quite acceptable St Helga Riesling.

While it wasn't the best pad Thai I've ever had, it certainly wasn't the worst, and the combination of Thai and Riesling worked charmingly, the way it usually does.

And, with. No thoughts of bottle shops and takeaways I was back upstairs shortly afterwards, pushing up Zs by a quarter to eight.

The North Queensland wet season and other relevant factors.

Sunday 22 January 2017

And so we get to departure day with around 4300 words of Travelogue content done and dusted in an exercise that has achieved everything it set out to achieve.

We've sorted out the laptop issue, had 4000 words worth of practice, and successfully avoided pondering most of the imponderables one's thoughts turn towards when you've outlaid a substantial sum en concert tickets and airfares.

It's a situation where a realist might suspect that Murphy's Law good kick in big time. Murphy, of course, repeatedly stated that if something can go wrong it will; and when it does go wrong it will go wrong at the worst possible time.

There that there's Flannery's corollary to Murphy's law: Murphy was a bloody optimist.

Given the state of the world at large, there are any number of things that could go wrong, but there's no point in worrying about events on the global stage. The concerns of the average man in the street in downtown Bowen carry no weight in the corridors of global power.

And once we're on our way, any number of contingencies may arise; as they do, one counters them to the best of one's ability.

But the one thing that could have caused considerable preoccupation is getting to the point where one is actually on the way. That will come somewhere around 3:30, hopefully, after we've watched the aircraft land and taxi across the tarmac at Whitsunday Coast airport.

And that's item number two on the list of the things that could go wrong on Sunday the 22nd.

The first involves the possibility of not being able to get to the airport.

There is only one road between bold and Prosser Pine and only one road that I know of between Proserpine at the airport. The last bit of that road passes over the Goorganga Flats, a stretch of wetland that apparently sits on top of a substantial oil shale deposit.

That was the issue of significant ecological concerns a few years back and the notion of mining the deposit was knocked on the head.

Of course, if they had proceeded with the mine they would have been forced to relocate the airport. Possibly to a site north Proserpine on the way to Bowen.

Around the same time there were suggestions that the regions new airport should go in at Laguna Keys, a golf and residential development further south that actually lies within the boundaries of the city of Mackay rather than the region of Whitsunday.

But the airport remains where it was when Hughesy landed there on his way to Townsville back in 1963, on top of the wetlands that have been known to cut the highway, particularly at high tide when flood waters can't drain away.

There are several places between bold and Proserpine where the highway has been known to go underwater in a big wet season as well. So back around Thursday morning, with the long-range forecast suggesting thunderstorms on Sunday afternoon there was a cause for concern.

And, of course, it is the wet season.

If the monsoon trough decides to make its way south, The resulting deluge good The highway, and keep it cut for days. That's part and parcel of living in the nought.

So are those nasty little clockwise circulations around the centres of low pressure that we'll come to know as cyclones. While we love the rain, because a couple of cyclones guarantee a good wet, We can do without the disruptions to the highway thank you very much.

But, mercifully, circulation's have been absent through the first half of January and the highway south of Bowen looks clear for would-be travellers.

Today's forecast does refer to a possibility of the showers and or a thunderstorm so that could still be an issue.

That's why Hughesy will not be breathing totally easy until he sees that aircraft taxi up to the terminal.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I can't fly out until the aircraft I am going to board has landed. And aircraft can't land at Whitsunday coast unless the pilot can see the runway.

No instrument landings there, or across the water at Hamilton Island.

While one might expect the aircraft to land at Mackay with passengers transported onwards by bus, and, maybe, outbound passengers being bussed south join the flight, aircraft tend to turn around and head straight back to where they came from.

It's not something I've experienced myself, but I went within a whisker of it on the way back from the Springsteen concert in Sydney in 2013.

With the choice of a direct flight from Sydney to Hamilton Island or the two leg trip from Sydney to Brisbane to Whitsunday coast, I took the direct option which still worked out cheaper even with the ferry transfer from Hammo to the mainland included.

And, since I knew I was going to a three hour concert the night before the flight left with a choice of services on two airlines, I chose the one the departed later.

Just as well.

The other one, having departed around the time I was waking up in downtown Sydney got all the way up to the Whitsundays, encountered visibility issues, and flew all the way back.

The flight I was on also had its issues with seeing the runway, but managed to land.

It took me back to a Monday morning around forty one years earlier, when I was heading back to Palm Island after a weekend in Townsville. It had been raining all weekend, and when I joined several of my colleagues for the 7 o'clock flight everyone was very interested in the prospects. So we asked the pilot.

Don't know, was the response. Won't know until we get over there. Then, if we can see the strip, We can land. Questions about safety issues were greeted with a reassuring statement that the highest point of the island was around 3000 feet. So if we go up to 3500, our friendly flyer informed us, we probably won't bump into anything.

That's more or less the way it was.

We took off, flew straight into cloud, circled round sighting hilltops and such comfortably below us, found a clear approach to the runway and headed into land just as a squall came down the mountainside.

With that, the pilot lifted the nose and headed straight back to where we come from.

And, at around 9:40 in the morning, with a projected departure around 11:00, Hughesy heads off to complete the packing process with the narrative to be resumed somewhere between Bowen and Brisbane airport sometime between now and Tuesday morning.

Managing the adrenaline factor in the lead-up to Perth

Saturday 21 January 2016

There may be some who can sit down, cool, calm and collected, on the verge of an extended excursion but Hughesy is not one of them.

The itchy feet started on Wednesday, and at that point starting off on the blog entries seemed like a reasonable way of keeping the mind occupied.

I was also, of course, looking to verify that dictation was a viable option when it came to recording blog content.

But it wasn't.

The old laptop just didn't have the grunt to handle the task I'd assigned to it.

We fixed that by ordering a new machine at arranging to collect it in Perth. I suppose I could have started on the dictation on the desktop computer immediately afterwards, but I put it off until Thursday.

After all, I needed to do some research on wining and dining options in downtown Perth, where are the knowledge is sketchy and the multiplicity of choices intriguing.

By the end of the day, I heard enough likely candidates to cover lunch and dinner from Tuesday afternoon until Sunday morning.

Breakfast, I figure, is going to be closer to brunch the day after to Springsteen concerts.

So arriving on Tuesday afternoon and booking into the hotel, probably sometime around 2:45 will be followed by a brisk stroll to the Apple Store to collect the new laptop.

There are plenty of dinner options within a couple of blocks of the hotel, so once the new machine is set up and dinner has been negotiated that should be Tuesday done and dusted.

Wednesday is rest up before the show, a decent lunch and something at the venue and a start on the concert review once I'm back at the hotel.

The city of Fremantle at the mouth of the Swan River looks like an ideal candidate for the day between shows, and I should be able to spend much of the day at the Maritime Museum, the shipwrecked galleries and at the historic precinct in the port city.

Throw in lunch at the Fishermans Wharf and that should make for a good day out that will be a pleasant breather in between shows.

Friday is show day again, with a similar approach to Wednesday: a substantial lunch, concert and concert review.

And then, on Saturday there is a window for a lengthy ramble around Kings Park and possibly across to South Perth, lunch and dinner before Sunday's flight from Perth to Adelaide.

Sorting out that little lot kept the adrenaline under control through Wednesday.

Dictating what should have been Wednesdays blog content took a fair chunk out of Thursday morning, and the one-day cricket international (coincidentally played in Perth) looked after much of the afternoon and evening.

In between, I repeated the Perth exercise for the three night stop in Adelaide.

That wasn't quite the exhaustive process I'd employed the day before because I had a much better idea of what I was looking for, a slightly better grasp of the on the ground geography, two fewer nights to deal with and a late afternoon arrival.

So the Adelaide leg looks to be: arrival on Sunday evening, book in and eat; do the washing and the preconcert routine on Monday, and take a ramble around downtown Adelaide on Tuesday.

So there was Thursday's adrenaline the control exercise duly completed.

Friday morning saw more dictation and a lengthy discussion about the arrangements that would get Hughesy to the airport on Sunday.

Likely weather conditions had caused concern earlier in the piece, with showers and possible thunderstorm forecast for Sunday.

Throw in the start of the packing process, and a long look at the Melbourne restaurant scene and that was Fridays itchy feet syndrome comfortably tackled.

Which brings us up to today, around twenty-five hours before a likely departure from Bowen, lunch somewhere around Airlie Beach and check-in at Whitsunday Coast.

An early morning session in the garden, a light breakfast and the last of the packing will take care of Sunday morning so that only leaves the rest of Saturday.

We finished the dictation exercise just before 10:30, so that gives us about half an hour to start with the proper packing before the music show on Radio National at eleven.

Follow that by adding the final touches to the Numbers spreadsheet called Springsteen Tour 2017 and sort out the rest of the packing, and I should be right to watch the last two matches in the qualifying rounds of the Australian cricket's big–bash competition with dinner in the middle.

The critical reader will of course, by the stage be wondering why anyone is bothering to put this stuff down and the answer is quite simple.

The half hour or so spent dictating this detail has delivered just over 800 words of content with minimal use of the keyboard. So, the dictation thing is working.

I must say it delivers quite a buzz to be sitting here and watching the clearly enunciated the content appearing as if by magic on-screen.

Will be back to do it again tomorrow morning with a little exposition on local geography, the North Queensland wet season, and similar factors that could have thrown a spanner into the works.

They could still manage to do that, but tomorrow is forecast is 25 to 34 mostly sunny, partly cloudy with a slight chance of a shower developing aor a thunderstorm from the late afternoon.

So we'll see how it looks in the morning.

Why nine? Part two: Hughesy's Springsteen background

Friday 20 January 2017

So we know, with nine shows in prospect but each night will be different. But we still haven't explained the need for nine.

This short explanation is that Hughesy's Bruce experience goes right back to the very early days.

I don't know when I heard Greetings From Asbury Park for the first time but I do know where I heard it how it was packaged.

The venue was the flat in Harold Street, Townsville, where I lived for most of 1972 and the album, came in a gatefold sleeve.

I suspect that it was an import copy sourced from the hi-fi shop in Townsville that dealt in such items. Alternatively, my flatmate, Mister Dave may have a laid his hands on a copy in one of the Brisbane stores that sold imports.

While gatefold sleeves were almost de rigeur overseas, Australian companies disliked ornate packaging and saved the fancy stuff for well-established artists.

I know Greetings arrived in a gatefold sleeve because I read, and marvelled at, the lyrics that covered the entire opened out inside.

They may even have seeped over onto the back sleeve, though I would need to go back and check on that minor detail.

I already knew of this Bruce Springsteen individual.

He was one of the pack of new Dylans who had emerged in the wake of the Bobster's motorcycle crash while he was holed up in the wilds of the Woodstock woodshedding with what we later came to know as The Band.

There were quite a few would-be or might-be new Dylans, and they weren't all enamoured of a label that seemed to be a handy catchall classification, an umbrella term that covered any singer-songwriter who delivered in his material with a folky twang.

John Sebastian may have been one of them, but he dated back to the Lovin' Spoonful.

Phil Ochs might have been considered another, but he was Dylan's contemporary and notional peer rather than his successor.

The new Dylans included John Prine, Loudon Wainwright, and various other individuals apart from this Springsteen character.

Looking at the fine print on the inner gate floor fold, it seemed Bruce delivered more than just vague traces of spinning reels of rhyme.

It was back in the days when I wore glasses but took them off to read.

These days, after cataract surgery, I need reading glasses, but if I had to go back to that densely packed inner gatefold, I'd be reaching for the special high magnification spectacles I keep for very fine print.

The album contained some striking material, and it was obviously the work of someone who was worth watching.

So I did. Not necessarily by buying, because buying without the full packaging just didn't make sense.

Recollections about the second album aren't quite as clear.

It reinforced the promise and added previously unnoticed rhythm and blues elements that had been there all along but hadn't pushed their way up into the forefront.

By that stage I was working on Palm Island, making regular trips back to Townsville on the weekends, returning to the palms with boxes of 90 minutes of Hitachi cassettes that had selections from my mates record collections carefully recorded, one album per side.

One of those cassettes had the first two Bruce albums, though it was soon apparent that I needed to buy copies because I needed the lyrics.

But at that point, Springsteen merely appeared to be a reasonably classy songwriter.

The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle had given the distinct impression that here was a guy who'd started by passing himself off as a semi-folky singer-songwriter but was something of a rocker and was duly sneaking hs mates into a share of the action.

Students of Springsteen history know that by this point Bruce was hardly flavour of the month at his record company and that the third album, Born to Run, was going to be the make or break record.

 It arrived with the wave of hype that raised question marks in itself, but those of us who were familiar with the earlier work were probably inclined to take it on trust.

Fortunately, it turned out to be completely trustworthy.

These days, something launched with the same fanfare would probably be taken with a shovel load rather than a pinch of salt.

But it was the mid-70s, and those of us who been around for a while were looking for something that delivered the same buzz we regularly arrived from hearing new things on the radio.

But it was a long time since weird heard anything that made you stop, sit up and take notice the way that, say, A Whiter Shade of Pale did.

Things may have been headed over the top when Bruce appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines, but those front covers had featured the likes of The Band in the past.
But not simultaneously.
I had an import copy of Born to Run by the end of 1975 and the content more than matched the advance publicity.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a masterpiece that synthesised much of what had gone before, recognisable elements served up in a rock'n' roll gumbo with R&B seasoning by someone who knew what cooked.

And again students or Bruce history know what came next.

As Bruce began to break big, legal and contractual hassles kept him out of the recording studio.

They didn't stop them from writing or performing, but he couldn't record the new material.

And, having recruited a damn fine band, he needed to hold them together.

In other circumstances, the artist in question might place his backing musos on a retainer, the way the Dylan that did with The Hawks after the motorcycle crash.

The retainer gave them the wherewithal to transform themselves into The Band, and the whole process gave us The Basement Tapes and Music from Big Pink.

By the time The Band were releasing their second album, they were significant enough to the feature on the cover of Time magazine. And, possibly, on Newsweek.

But not in the same week.
No, if Bruce wanted to hold the E Street band together they had to work. So work they did.

In what it may have been one of the canniest career decisions a working musician has ever made they played marathon three hours shows, up and down Americas left and right posts coasts, many of them simultaneously broadcast in stereo on FM radio.

And where another performer might hold on to the newly written material, Springsteen slotted it into the set lists. After all, they seemed to be a strong possibility that stuff would never be recorded.

At least not officially recorded.

Several shows started with Springsteen exhorting the bootleggers to roll those tapes and Bruce has subsequently gone on to become arguably the most widely bootlegged artist in the recording industry's history.

By the time the court cases were settled, Springsteen had established a niche in the American concert to seeing that he continues to hold to this day. Not, perhaps, a position that slots him right into the mainstream but one that delivers marketability and the opportunity to sell out sizeable venues in significant population centres.

Having had the opportunity to road test new material the fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, consolidated all the gains he had made with Born to Run.

The consolidation continued through The River and Born in the USA while Bruce established himself as a performer who could sell out stadiums in the right markets.

And, all the while, his reputation as a dynamic live performer continued to grow.

As a regular consumer of whatever serious Rock music journals I could lay my hands on I read glowing accounts of epic E Street Band concert performances.

With no sign, and no apparent possibility, of a Springsteen tour Down Under, Australian journalist Stuart Coupe flew to Paris where he reported on a show that is alleged to have started with an acapella rendition of Elvis Presley's I Can't Help Falling In Love With You.

Except it didn't.

Not according to the BruceFanatic app, which suggests that particular song has never been performed live by Bruce.

On the other hand, a show on 19 April 1981 at the Palais de Sports in Paris opened with Presley's Follow That Dream, which fitted the never played before bit.

It was last played at the time of writing sixteen shows ago in Denmark on 20 July 2016 and has featured in the set list 48 times in between.

By that stage, we had a fan sitting in the wilds of North Queensland comfortably resigned to the notion that Bruce Springsteen live was not going to happen on Australian soil.

But, of course, it did.

By that time, however, I had relocated from Townsville to Bowen.

The tour covered major outdoor venues and probably hit Brisbane's QE2 in the middle of the week. Getting to the show would have involved at least two days off work. That's assuming I could fly from Townsville or Mackay to Brisbane on show day and back the day after.

In any case, regardless of timing and location, I had no way to obtain tickets.

So, Bruce down under 1985 was a fizzer as far as Your Humble Correspondent is concerned.

And despite the size of the venues he played, or maybe because of an inability to fill them, the tour was apparently a financial disaster.

 The 1995 solo acoustic tour supporting The Ghost of Tom Joad album played smaller venues in school time with the Brisbane, probably, a one-off midweek gig.

Not much joy there for teachers in a relatively remote rural Australia.

Fast forward to Bruce's next appearance Down under, back with the band supporting The Rising album, and we have another Australian entrepreneur taking a financial bath.

So, for awhile, it seemed that was that.

Rumour in 2012 turned into fact in 2013 but managed to coincide with a tour by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. I managed to catch Neil with the Horse in Brisbane and Sydney, then headed back north to do the same with Bruce.

That meant I passed on to Neil shows in Melbourne.

The second, at Rod Laver Arena, featured much the same set list Neil had played in Brisbane and Sydney, but the first, at the Plenary, a much smaller venue in the CBD delivered a set described as the greatest rock show ever seen on these shores.

And, quite possibly, the greatest Neil Young and Crazy Horse show ever. The Interested Reader can find the set list here.

I, of course, had missed it to catch Bruce, though Melbourne would have been doable if I'd wanted to make the to and fro extra effort.

But that was okay I'd seen Bruce, and I'd seen Neil, so that removed two significant items of the bucket list.

Better still, after the previous financial disasters, Bruce 2013 was lucrative enough to have a frontier touring back up the following year.

I looked at the tool itinerary, noted shows in Perth and Adelaide, and figured that the schedule would allow for second shows to be added in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

As it turned out, the second shows were initially slotted into Perth and Adelaide with a second show in Melbourne surreptitiously added and almost escaping my attention.

So, having returned from that excursion, I was not winding up the audience when I suggested over lunch at Food Freaks that next time I would be going to the lot.

The 2014 experience, however, underlined two significant factors.

The first was the realisation that multiple Bruce concerts were a perfect excuse for an extended stay in the city one might not otherwise be visiting.

Madam and I had four nights in Melbourne that tour and, barring one night when relentless doof doof from a nearby nightclub continued until almost four in the morning, Hughesy found it and enjoyable experience.

Mileages, however, varied.

Madam, having been to the first show, had passed on the second and found Hughes's desire to rest up for number two frustrating when there were places to go and things to do.

Which, of course, explains why this is excursion is being conducted solo and without supervision.

In conclusion, that why nine question can be answerted in a number succinct nutshells.

One. Because they are there.
Two. Because I'm a long time fan.
Three. Because I can. F
our. Because it's a perfect excuse to spend multiple lights in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Five. Because the same opportunity may not arise again.

Satisfied?

Springsteen 2017: The Beginnings

Thursday 19 January 2016
The Critical Reader may be inclined to debate whether we need to start a Travelogue some three and a bit days out from the actual border departure, but it was nearly four and a bit.

I spent yesterday's morning walk mapping out an elegant four-episode exposition about matters relating to Hughesy's Springsteen-chasing excursion.

Something that would lead elegantly into the day by day detail that will kick in when I head off to Brisbane Airport for the transcontinental flight on Tuesday.

And I sat down to start it off yesterday morning to intending to kill two birds with one stone.
It wasn't just about the Travelogue.

I needed to check whether the laptop we bought before our previous trip to Perth some six and a half years ago had the capacity to handle when I was about to ask to do.

Madam, who'd been using it for much of the meantime, had her doubts but I was hopeful that I could use a limited set of software on the not quite decrepit machine.

The plan was to use Hughesy's Christmas present, a headset and microphone of the type familiar to switchboard operators and the like to dictate Travelogue content straight into Pages on the laptop.

You can, after all, speak almost as fast as you can think and you do it much more quickly than a hunt and peck typist can type.

Dictation seems the way to go, but dictating into a word processor requires a set of skills that need to be established, developed and practised.

So yesterday's exercise was aimed to determine the capabilities and start to hone the skills.

But it didn't happen.

It was soon apparent the laptop lacked the microprocessor grunt and the RAM capacity to run Pages with the latest version of Mac OS.

We've fixed that.

A phone call to the Apple Store means a shiny new MacBook Air is waiting for me when I get to Perth on Tuesday afternoon.

In the meantime, the skill development factor remains, and things nutted out on two mornings' walk will provide the content.

So, here we go.

I'm off, over the next month, on a road trip that will encompass nine Bruce Springsteen concerts in five cities.

It's something I never expected to happen, but, then again, you never know.

The campaign, if the campaign is the right word for moving towards setting up something you regard as extremely unlikely, began at the end of February 2014.

If I remember things correctly the final concert of the Australian leg of Springsteen's Tour Down Under was followed by a return to the north of the following morning.

My calendar app tells me I was home on Thursday, 27 February, having attended four shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Since Friday follows Thursday the same way as blood that follows a punch on the nose, and that particular Friday was the last day of the month we would have been heading off to the Old Retired Teachers' (ORTs) lunch.

I don't recall whether we met at the end of January, but everyone knew I had been away and why I have been away.

We had the predictable questions about the experience.

Two of those present were bemused by the fact that their son and daughter-in-law had flown from Townsville to Sydney, rented a car and taken themselves to the Springsteen concert in the Hunter Valley the previous Saturday.

Son and daughter-in-law are both teachers, and the Brisbane show would have entailed two days off work and associated issues.

Hughesy, of course, is retired, and known to do things like fly to Japan for four Elvis Costello concerts. I had also been to a bracket of five Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen concerts the year before.

So you could say I had form.

The predictable question was whether these extravagances we justified.

My response should come as no surprise.
Wednesday's concert, which had started with a Bee Gees cover (Staying Alive) was being rated in knowledgeable circles it Is possibly one of the best Springsteen concerts ever.

That's a big call, and I was still on a significant adrenaline high.

My response would have been that it was definitely worth it and that next time, come hell or high water, I was going to the lot.

The hell or high water may not have been explicitly stated, but was definitely implied.

And if that meant flying across the clock to Perth I would be flying across the Continent to Perth.

There was, I pointed out, an additional factor. Springsteen is a big enough name to sell it out reasonably sized venues in a capital city for more than one night.

I had just come back from a tour that had included two concerts in Perth, two in Adelaide, two in Melbourne and one in each of Sydney, Brisbane, Hanging Rock and the Hunter Valley.

Springsteen 's legendary three to three-and-a-half hour shows make it unlikely he will backup on successive nights.

Spring chickens might, but Bruce is no spring chicken, and while he's on stage, believe me, he works.

On that basis, a Springsteen tour with the possibility of two shows in most of Australia's capital cities meant a seemingly obsessive fan might be forced to spend four or five nights in Perth, and the same in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

That was an exciting prospect.

Not that I thought it was ever going to happen.

Bruce wasn't the back out here in 2015, and by 2016 the Australian dollars all against the greenback suggested future Springsteen tours were a dubious prospect. I figured Bruce's asking price, at an exchange rate well below parity, would have would-be promoters heading for the door.

September 2016, however, saw, first, rumours, and then the confirmation of an Australian tour at the start of 2016.

Once it was definite (I kept the speculation to myself) I took the news down to the other end of the Little House of Concrete expecting this would be the start of the proverbial protracted negotiations.

The somewhat surprising reaction from The Supervisor was "So, of course, you're going".

That conclusion was hard to argue with, and pretty much right on the money.

 A glance at the tour itinerary revealed windows for second shows in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane so I said about booking accommodation and the flights that would get me back and forth across the Nullarbor.

Tickets for the initial round of shows went on sale, were duly purchased, and Hughesy sat down to wait for news of seconds. The next tranche included second shows in Perth and Brisbane, while a third added seconds to Sydney and Melbourne and a new show in the West.

At that point, some of the logic code unstuck since the new show in Perth would it be happening while I was making my way from Bowen to Brisbane.

But you can't have everything, and it's unreasonable to expect it.

Nine shows will have to do.

But why nine?

The answer to that question is two-pronged and double jointed.

First, every three hour Springsteen extravaganza is different. These days, Bruce never sets out to play the same show twice, and if it did happen to occur, it would have happened by accident or circumstantial coincidence rather than intent.

And not be on successive nights. Not even close.

The song matrix I use to remind me of what I've experienced at the seven Springsteen shows to date contains a tad under 190 performances spread around more than ninety separate entries.

Remarkably, comfortably more than half of those entries have a single performance beside them.

If that sounds a little vague, it depends on whether you count a full band rendition of Thunder Road or The Promised Land alongside a solo acoustic version (or vice versa).

And, with the word count heading past 1200 words, that's an appropriate point to knock this particular dictation exercise on the head.

Coming up:
Why nine? Part Two: Hughesy's Springsteen background.
Managing the adrenaline factor in the lead-up to Perth.
The North Queensland wet season and other relevant factors.
Getting there: Brisbane.
Getting there: Perth.
And, from there, day by day detail and nine concert reviews. Stay tuned.