By LAUREN MITCHELL

Singer/songwriter Peter Denahy has plenty to talk about now but that wasn’t always the case.
His runaway success track Sort of Dunno, Nothin’, from the new Picture in a Frame album has had 400,000 hits on YouTube since its release.
And he owes it all to a severe case of nothing-to-say.
Peter spoke to the Bendigo Weekly this week, ahead of a local in-store appearance this Saturday.
“It’s an unreal thing.  The song took me 20 minutes to write,” he said.
“The hard part is getting an idea that’s going to stick with people.
“When I wrote the song I thought, ‘I reckon this is going to go well’, but I didn’t plan to actually write it.
“For three weeks I was trying to write something and it was dreadfully frustrating.”
The song arose while Peter was waiting for some mates to drop by to rehearse some cover songs.
“I was going through the conversation we’d have in my mind when they asked me what I’d been doing and I’d say ‘nothin’.”
However this former Harcourt local is in no way an overnight success.
From 1998 Peter played fiddle, guitar and accordion in childhood hero Slim Dusty’s Travelling Country Band.
A regular solo spot on Slim’s show also allowed him the chance to showcase the lighter side of his broad talent and led to the release of the Petrol Head Fly album in 2000.
If you haven’t heard it, Sort of Dunno, Nothin’ is a “duet” between a bored teenager and an annoying character, who asks the teen question after question, to which the reply are short, sweet and typical ... along the lines of sort of, dunno and nothin’.
Humour plays a big part in Peter’s repertoire, with the very funny Dung Beetle also worth tracking down for a listen.
“You write other stuff that you think is going to go well and it doesn’t go as well as the light, throw away stuff,” he said.
Peter likened the experience to Geoff Mack’s I’ve been Everywhere.
“That was also a throw away song that’s now known world wide,” he said.
Peter is really grateful he had writer’s block.
He will be at Leading Edge at Centro Lansell on Saturday, May 10 at noon to perform and sign copies of his new album.

By LAUREN MITCHELL

Climate change has long been the domain of scientists but a group of artists currently exhibiting in Bendigo feel a similar responsibility to address the issue.
The exhibition, Wet &
Dry 008, encompasses
the work of six artists
who’ve all lived through
the effects the drought
has had on regional
Victoria.
Exhibiting artist Colin Suggett said the group came up with the idea several years ago, after sharing their concerns about climate change.
“We’ve all lived in regional areas and have a feel for what’s happening to the landscape of those areas,” he said.
Colin’s piece, Sand Trap is a visual, somewhat tounge-in-cheek representation of drought.
“It is a mechanical piece with an old bush style tap sticking out of a landscape of sand with sand coming out of the tap instead of water,” he said.
“There’s two-dimensional and three-dimensional works, sculpture, paintings, drawings and digital prints.”
Colin, of Venus Bay in Gippsland, was in Bendigo last week to launch the exhibition.
He said he hoped the art works would get people thinking about climate change and the future of the region.
“Art is better at asking questions than answering them,” he said.
“We don’t feel like there’s anything in this show that has solutions ... it’s more to create a point of discussion, to solidify in people’s mind the image of drought.”
And contrary to what you may think, that image represented in the exhibition is not all melancholy.
“I’d say it’s more wry in a sense ... we’re almost seeing the humour in our dilemma, and there’s a wry optimism with what’s happening.”
Wet & Dry 008 is on at the La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre in View Street, from now until June 1.
The gallery is open from Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm.