Journalist Dave Dawson has been a country music fan since he grew up in Warrnambool in the 1950s and 1960s, before pop-rock completely took over the airwaves. "Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins - back then country was the pop music of the day", Dawson said this week from his "second" home in Melbourne. 55 year old Dawson, who with his sister, still operates the family property "Shipley" at Jubilee Park, while squeezing in freelance newspaper and music magazine work - has long championed country music on radio. For eight years he was the driving force behind Nu Country, a community radio station based in Northcote that held 31 test broadcasts up until December last year. That was when the Australian Broadcasting Authority allocated four precious FM band licenses to new stations. "They went to a Koori station, a Christian station, a gay station, and a youth station. We just weren't politically correct enough, even though we had a far bigger membership than any of them", was Dawson's blunt assessment of his and other fans' shattered dream. The remarkable, tragic and emotional story of Nu Country, Dawson and his fellow volunteer presenters and workers, is the subject of his concluding episode of Reality Bites. Warrnambool connections abound. Dawson said many of the staff, guest musicians, listeners and members were either Warrnambool and District ex-pats or south west residents who would travel down for the station's various get-togethers and fund raisers. Even if the sound of a pedal-steel makes you reach for shootin' iron, don't miss Nu Country (ABC TV 8.00 pm Tuesday September 3rd 2002). It's great.
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