User:Dunks58

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For all you stalkers out there, real name is Duncan Kimball (come and get me, copper!). I was born in 1958 (work it out). I'm a third-generation Australian with mixed American-Jewish-English-Scots-Irish ancestry, traceable on one line as far back back as Suffolk in the mid-1400s. The things you can find out nowadays ...

Some years ago we found out that my dad's family has extensive genealogical connections in the United States, dating back to 1654; our ancestors were among the first Puritan refugees to migrate to America in the reign of Charles I of England. In more recent times we discovered that one of our distant Yankee relatives, Ward Kimball was a senior executive with the Walt Disney organisation; another, Spencer Kimball, was moderator of the Mormonchurch in the 1970s; and another, (Bobby Kimball) was a member of noted '80s band Toto. The Kimball family tree is littered with carpenters and wheelwrights, accounting for my self-proclaimed handiness and love of fine woodwork.

My friends (both of them) call me Dunks. I am a Sydney boy, born and bred, grew up in the (shudder) western suburbs, but for the last 22 years I've lived in the earthly paradise at the Hub of the Universe ... otherwise known as Newtown, New South Wales.

Most of my story is pretty ordinary, but some relevant details inlcude the following: I am a musician of sorts (guitar, bass and bit of piano), I love music of almost all kinds (though I despise bagpipes and accordions), I read voraciously (mostly non-fiction) and love the work of American author James Branch Cabell in particular. I love cinema, TV and radio, hate sport of all kinds (except when discussed by Roy and HG), love the Australian bush, loathe Modernism of all kinds, especially the so-called architecture of alleged architect Harry Seidler), and hate crowds of any size.

Spiritually, I am a lifelong atheist, albeit one with a profound interest in Zen and Taoism, which seem to me to be the nearest any thinking person can get to comprehending any of This (claps with one hand). I regard any form of theistic belief or organised religion with a mixture of scorn and pity, since they represent to me the epitome of stupidity and ingrained, thoughtless social conformity, as well as providing glaring evidence of the widespread and ongoing failure of most humans to develop beyond the concrete reasoning phase. However, I am magnanimous in my contempt and abide by the dictum of my old history teacher Sam Weller, who taught me this immortal dictum:

"I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it -- but I also reserve the right to think you're a complete dickhead for saying so."

Politically I am probably best described as a pragmatic social democrat. I do not adhere to any dogmatic political system, but it seems self-evident to me that 'free-market capitalism' (or piracy, as it used to be known) is ultimately doomed to failure (if it doesn't destroy us all and the planet in the process) and that some more rational form of social democracy with a strong component of public sector ownership (transport, health, education, etc) will eventually prevail as the most efficient, safest and most sustainable form of government. Mind you, I still want my iPod Nano ...

My chief claim to (reflected) fame is that in the 1980s I shared a house with Murray Cook, now famous as a member of The Wiggles, and remarkably we remain good friends -- which probably says more about Murray than it does about me, haha. Other much-cherished brushes with fame have been a brief meeting with Peter Gabriel and a wonderful stint as volunteer roadie with the fabulous American singer-songwriter-guitarist-pianist Ellen McIlwaine on her 2003 Australian tour, through which I also met her touring partner, the incredible Margret RoadKnight.

Aside from raising a family with my wife Averil (Lucas, b. 1994, Amelia, b. 1997) my main 'intellectual' efforts since 1998 have been directed at creating the website MILESAGO (http://www.milesago.com), which is an ongoing attempt to establish a web-based resource about Australian popular music and social history between 1964 and 1975, a fertile, very creative and tumultuous era of our history that is unknown to most non-Australian music fans, and which has been roundly ignored by most local media as well (unless they want to try and make some more money out of it). Most of the articles about Aussie rock and pop that I contribute to Wikipedia are based on the work I've done (with help from many friends) for Milesago.