Former West Australian business editor Brad Collis’ novel The Cutters relives cultural change of the 70s

Melbourne-based author Brad Collis, a former Albany journalist turned novelist, has captured rural life in the Great Southern during the 1970s in The Cutters, a 277-page fiction paperback published in March. Collis’ main character draws breath (inspiration) from Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), whose music was popular but criticised for transcending the stereotypes of Russian classical music. Suffering life-long emotional trauma and a disdain for public life, Tchaikovsky wore a “composer genius” badge earned from open-hearted melodies, impressive harmonies, with colourful and picturesque orchestration, all of which evoked profound emotional response. In The Cutters, Tchaikovsky’s music genius inspires fiction hero Matthew Walker, a guitarist and returning Vietnam War soldier, to seek his own identity — a pathway to hope during the generational changes of the 70s. After attending a production of the musical opera Swan Lake, originally composed by Tchaikovsky, as played in the fiction town of Hammond (Katanning), Walker adopts his fortitude. In creating this character, Collis said he too witnessed the challenges of cultural change while growing up in Albany (1962 to 1977) when young people were “challenging the status quo”. “This time period saw hard times, Albany was dependent on fishing including whaling, and small-scale farming — rural communities were self-reliant and tight, which made it hard for outsiders,” he said. “As a Vietnam veteran, Walker finds a restart to life as a newspaper reporter in a small country town hoping for peace-of-mind and somewhere to belong — it doesn’t go to plan. “He drifts into the orbit of other outsiders — they form a pub band, The Cutters, trying to be noticed and accepted.” Collis’ band of misfits represents the social reprieve of the 70s, also a period when farming communities were going through great change — “the cruel get big or get out mantra”. “The band members attracted unlikely friendships — a bikie parolee, a struggling farmer, and a wealthy grazier’s daughter — brought together by a common foe, the establishment,” he said. “It was life changing times driven by people’s determination to come out the other side with hope — I watched all this unfold around me — it made living and working in the Great Southern a special time in my life. “Today, that wonderful part of the world has evolved into a mecca of diverse agricultural production, tourism, and a community that supports its young people as they work through their generation’s challenges.” Collis was born in Perth, educated in Albany and was a cadet journalist at the Albany Advertiser (1973-1977). He moved to Peth to join the Western Farmer Grazier newspaper and the Western Mail (1980-1982) before an on and off decade-long stint with The Age in Canberra and Melbourne while also writing. In that period, he was also the West Australian business editor (1990-92). Collis authored his first publication ‘Snowy-The Making of Modern Australia’ (1990) – the history of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, which is still in print. Others were Fields of Discovery (2002) — the history of the CSIRO, and the Soul Stone (1994) plus other lab features. Collins and his wife Adrienne Dolphin founded Melbourne-based Coretext, a journalism and graphic design business to communicate the value of research and development and support capacity building for the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of global communities.