Kempsey Who's Who
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Distinguished and Famous people from Kempsey
🎵 Slim Dusty
Slim Dusty grew up on a dairy farm at Nulla Nulla Creek, west of Kempsey. Rural life supplied the landscape and working people behind much of his country music, long before his recordings reached a national audience. His breakthrough recording, A Pub With No Beer, was released in 1957 and became the first gold record by an Australian artist. The song was written by Gordon Parsons, drawing on Dan Sheahan’s poem: even an apparently simple tale of a thirsty pub has quite a family tree. Kempsey’s Slim Dusty Centre celebrates his career and the wider country music tradition.
One early song grew out of farm work itself. Watching rain sweep across the valley while milking cows, he found the inspiration for When the Rain Tumbles Down in July. He had already made a recording of his own in 1942, while still a teenager. Those beginnings put the ordinary sights and tasks of rural life close to the centre of his music.
📚 Thomas Keneally
Novelist Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney, but his childhood was divided between Homebush and Kempsey, where his grandparents had settled after coming from Ireland. That family history later fed into A River Town, set in Kempsey around the turn of the twentieth century. His wider writing career brought successive Miles Franklin awards and the 1982 Booker Prize for Schindler’s Ark, subsequently adapted as Schindler’s List. Family and childhood memories of the town became material for fiction, alongside the broader historical subjects for which he is known.
🎨 Robert Campbell Jnr
Robert Campbell Jnr was born at Kempsey in 1944 and attended the Burnt Bridge mission school; he returned to live in the town in the early 1980s. His brightly coloured paintings addressed Aboriginal experience, from segregation and dispossession to contemporary people and events. He often began with found materials before improved access to supplies and exhibitions widened his audience. A Kempsey exhibition in 1982 helped bring his work to Tony Coleing’s attention, and he later helped form the Kempsey Koori Artists collective. Portraits of people from his community reached the Archibald finals. His work connected a distinctive graphic style with the determination to tell stories on his own terms.
