BOB CAMPBELL
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Giant's Leap
     - the book
​

Giants Leap Book by Bob Campbell, An Activist Folksinger's Memoir  including poetry stories and articles

Giant’s Leap – An Activist Folksinger’s Memoir covers the exciting and optimistic period from WW2 to the end of the seventies and is the first book of a two part memoir and social history.  
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Bob Campbell found himself catapulted towards left wing political causes and a quest for social justice, placing him squarely in the middle of the social movements of the sixties and seventies. Bob’s experiences centred on trade union and Communist Party activism in the industrial city of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley region of N.S.W.

The stories which make up this book come to life through an ironic tone and humorous turn of phrase by a humble and, at times, self-deprecating protagonist. Initial naïve realisations and questioning are shown to develop into a lifelong quest to shape a better world. We see blind rebellion gradually
developing into a long and zealous embracing of ideology. Events inevitably direct Bob to reject rigid dogma and adopt, instead, a heartfelt conviction to the necessity for compassion towards all forms of life.

The memoir chronicles the life of the boy who suffers violence and family break-up, the juvenile who joins gangs and steals cars, the young man who educates himself and becomes the secretary of a large trade union organisation, joins the Communist Party, is gaoled for inciting opposition to the Vietnam War, the adult who travels and works at dozens of different manual jobs, playing and learning music as he goes Through all this we see a growing intellectual and moral awakening with his ASIO files playing the role of a Greek chorus to his stories and narrative.

Bob has made many successful recordings, stretching back to his first vinyl with Larrikin Records in 1987.

He is available for interview by phone or willing to travel for events or launches and is always prepared to perform live or have his CDs played on air. www.fiddlerbob.com

A CD featuring 12 songs and 4 poems from the book is also available with the book 
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Telephone 0417 625 743
www.fiddlerbob.com
fiddlerbob1@gmail.com




Endorsements & Reviews ~
Apart from Bob’s personal story I found this book an enthralling read. It is a wonderful record of the social history, music and folklore of the decades when a dedicated group of Australians were struggling to create an awareness of our social, cultural and environmental problems. More power to your bow, Fiddler Bob.
Rob Willis OAM, 
Collector of Social History and Folklore
The National Library of Australia


The tumultuous years of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s was the stimulus that enflamed Bob’s underlying and inherent instincts to resist a world of social, economic and political injustices and motivated his natural intuition to challenge these affronts.

It is evident as you come to the end of the book that there is one constant, music in all its manifestation and Bob’s passionate love for it, while still injecting a social political element into it.
Peter Barrack AM
Former Secretary Newcastle Trades Hall Council


This book is a terrific read and when you've digested it, go buy his CDs and hear the raw voice that continues to carry his songs and his stories down through the years.
Warren Fahey AM 
Cultural Historian
Founder of Larrikin Records



​
Online Opinion Review

REVIEW - Janine Kitson, Teachers Federation NSW
Retired teacher, Bob Campbell, celebrates his life as a unionist, musician and storyteller in this memoir, recently launched at a Federation Friday Forum. He continues to play and sing songs about justice, peace and the environment with his folk band, Home Rule. Previous bands that he played in include the Maitland Folk Club, Maitland Bush Band and Ironbark.

This book, which includes poetry, songs, and insights into Australian history, is a great resource for senior music, history and English students.

As well, it is a book that young, disenchanted, rebellious young men might enjoy. It describes a male working-class culture trapped in a cycle of violence, peer pressure, heavy drinking and dangerous driving.

It describes how Bob Campbell ran away from school at the age of 14 with dreams of travel and adventure, only to end up serving time at Mount Penang, a juvenile justice centre.

With no education, he worked in the Newcastle steelworks and Maitland brickworks. Finally, he escaped crime and poverty by channelling his anger into positive political action and becames a union organiser and was later promoted to Secretary of the Metal Trades Federation of Unions, representing 10,000 workers. His love of music and poetry also forms a powerful intellectual and creative foundation to his life. He finished his career as an environmental education teacher with the NSW Department of Education.

Bob Campbell remains grateful for the political and philosophical education that the union movement and the Australian Communist Party (ACP) gave him: “Most important for my political education, I was elected as a delegate to the Trades Hall Council. This was the parliament of the Newcastle unions and the forum where all major issues involving Newcastle workers were discussed, examined, and acted upon.”

Thanks to his ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) file he is able to document his activism and protests against military conscription, the Vietnam war and apartheid South Africa. He describes the tensions and splits among Australian communists over the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and revelations of Stalin’s and Mao’s purges. He saw with his own eyes some of the failings of communism on his visit to Bulgaria as a union delegate at a World Federation of Trade Unions conference.

Bob Campbell has lived in the shadow of many historical events that shaped the 20th century — World War 1, the Depression, the rise of fascism, World War 2, the Cold War, post-World War 2 migration and mass consumerism. In his book, he challenges the romanticism attached to 19th century Australian pioneers — they who ringbarked the trees, were cruel to their women and massacred its indigenous peoples.

The book is an important reminder of just how dangerous, both physically and psychologically, manual, unskilled work can be with its deaths and injuries from problems such as asbestos and coal-dust poisoning. Low wages keep workers and their families in poverty. Those workplaces that had high union numbers were safer and had better wages and conditions.

This is an important book for teachers to read and understand how a past generation of young people escaped their working-class backgrounds by becoming teachers when the former prime minister, Gough Whitlam, made university education free. Education gave Bob Campbell, along with many others, the self-confidence and opportunity to escape the “shame of poverty and the feelings of being inferior” and develop his full artistic, intellectual and professional potential.

The book outlines the environmental tragedy of the Hunter Valley, which has been transformed from one of the most beautiful valleys in the world into a coal-mining moonscape. Today, Bob Campbell’s bush home at Ulan is surrounded by coalmines, with many of the town’s historic buildings bulldozed.

"As I daily watch the mine traffic from my front verandah and witness the destruction each time I leave my house I’m drawn back to the thoughts I expressed to school students during my ten years from 1997 as an environmental educator. ‘We must change our behaviour, because this generation is stealing the future from our children, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. All future development must consider the triple bottom line: the economic, the social and environmental cost’ ."

Bob Campbell’s messages are simple — have the courage to be a radical; be kind to one another;  take time to enjoy the simple joys of life;  things improve when we treat each other better.
It is an inspiring book to read.

Archives

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Joiners Arms
Write Me A Letter
The Great Divide
​Jimmy Governor

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0417 625 743
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