The Darcy Dugan Song

Darcy Dugan was a Ned Kelly type hero to Bob Campbell in childhood because he kept escaping from jail (six times).   In the early 1970s, bob spent a short time in East Maitland and Long Bay jails because of anti-Vietnam war activities.

About that time Darcy Dugan gave evidence to an enquiry about the dreadful brutality regularly perpetrated against prisoners in Grafton Jail, including daily, brutal beatings and torture, and even throwing boiling water on them. This prompted Bob to write a song about Darcy based on the evidence he gave.

A year after being in East Maitland Jail, Bob accepted an invitation from a group at Newcastle University to perform at a concert in the jail.  He accepted with enthusiasm because he had heard that Darcy was on the social committee at the prison and would be hosting afternoon tea with the performers. While not intending to perform the Darcy Dugan song for the concert, he hoped to sing it for Darcy during the afternoon tea.

However this was not to be because one of the warders recognized him, and the prison authorities enforced a rule that forbad ex-prisoners to re-enter the jail, and threw him out at the end of his performance.

Darcy spent 43 of his 71 years in jail and when he was out for a short time in the 1970s he became a social worker and began exposing police corruption involving crooked cops, gangster Lennie McPherson and the State Premier of NSW.  The crooked cops then framed him and put him back inside for a crime he did not commit. 

While in prison, Darcy wrote an autobiography in exercise books, smuggled them out to author Michael Tatlow with instructions to hold publication until he, McPherson, the crooked cops and the Premier were dead. This has now happened and Michael Tatlow has written a final section to the autobiography and had it published by Harper Collins.  

Bob was so impressed by the book that he recently re-recorded the song which first appeared on a Home Rule album, ‘Australian Accent’, on Larrikin Records, in 1987. 

The song can now be heard on You Tube