After almost destroying himself with drugs, musician Tristan O'Meara found his salvation in a didgeridoo store in north Queensland. That powerful sound has translated into a new career and a new life.

By WARREN CLARK

IN 2005, while fishing at a creek near Innisfail in north Queensland, budding musician Tristan O’Meara heard a sound that would shape his future.

It cut through the cool night air and pierced him as if being injected directly into his veins.

Further up the creek, a fisherman was playing a didgeridoo fashioned out of PVC pipe.

“I instantly felt connected to it and asked him if I could have a go,” Tristan remembers.

“I’ve loved it ever since.”

Eight years earlier, Tristan had left school as a 14-year-old and was spending his time writing songs and smoking marijuana with a couple of mates in his hometown of Sale, in Victoria’s Gippsland region.

In 2002, he decided to make a new start in Western Australia. The drug habit followed him.

He survived on about $30 a day, busking the streets of Fremantle.

After two years, Tristan decided to hit the road again, this time heading back east to the Gold Coast.

By this time, Tristan had become a regular user of speed and acid. One night, after taking both, he locked himself in a room for three days.

When he emerged, he took himself to Gold Coast Hospital where he was diagnosed as suffering a drug-induced psychosis.

He remained in hospital for two days before he was handed a couple of brochures and sent on his way.

Looking for a way out, Tristan took the 20-hour drive north to Cairns.

During his journey, Tristan thought about the sound he’d heard on the banks of that north Queensland creek and promised himself that he would find it again.

After reaching Cairns, Tristan again took to busking, trying to make enough for a hostel bed and a meal each night.

There was a didgeridoo store just back from the esplanade and although he didn’t have the money, Tristan visited at every opportunity.

It was during one of these visits that Tristan met Dallas, a small and lean Aboriginal man with deep blue eyes that gave him a kind of angelic quality.

“Hey, you want that didge?” the stranger says.

“How much cash do you have?”

Tristan had $130 – the didgeridoo was $270.

Dallas took the money and told Tristan to meet him at the café across the road in three minutes.

“I don’t know why, but I trusted him,” Tristan recalls.

Three minutes later, as promised, Dallas showed up at the café with the didgeridoo that Tristan had been eyeing for weeks.

They began chatting and Dallas offered Tristan a place to stay.

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Tristan stayed with Dallas in a rainforest village in the hills above Kuranda, 25km northwest of Cairns.

“He taught me to play [the didgeridoo], and about his culture,” Tristan says.

“He said he would help me and that he’d kick me in the head if he caught me taking drugs.”

Dallas made Tristan walk him home each day – 45 minutes up a steep hill.

“He said it was because his missus didn’t like him walking home alone,” Tristan says.

Dallas was trying to wear Tristan out in the hope that he wouldn’t feel the need to use marijuana to help him sleep.

It worked.

“He took me under his wing. It was a turning point in my life,” Tristan says.

Three months after their fateful meeting in a Cairns shop, a drug-free Tristan left Dallas and his rainforest hideaway with a simple plan – to focus all of his energy on his new-found passion for didgeridoos.

Searching for someone to teach him how to make his own, Tristan was introduced to an Aboriginal man named Uncle George.

Uncle George was cheeky with a big belly full of laughter and a reputation for buying dodgy cars and selling them for two or three times their value.

He somewhat reluctantly agreed to take Tristan up past Cooktown and through the Daintree for his first didgeridoo harvest.

From that moment, Tristan was hooked.

“It was exciting. I knew nothing,” he says.

“At first, he was very reluctant to teach me anything, so I’d just watch.”

Tristan continued to bug Uncle George to take him out on cutting trips.

“Eventually, he opened up to me,” Tristan says.

“The old fella taught me a lot about the commercial side of didge-making as well.

“He would say, ‘Tristan, you’re too slow, you’ll never make any money’.”

But Tristan persisted.

His passion for making didgeridoos grew and he started heading out on his own, harvesting “woolybutt” trees on a property a couple of hours southeast of Darwin.

Tristan set up a workshop in Wilsons Creek, near Byron Bay, where he spends eight months a year crafting didgeridoos.

Reno Safarian, of Sydney didgeridoo retailer Spirit Gallery, says Tristan is now one of the finest didgeridoo craftsmen in Australia.

“More excitingly, he is the youngest of the top didge makers and in that sense he will be around for a while and represents the future of high-quality instrument crafting in this country,” Mr Safarian says.

The remainder of the year he spends touring the summer festival circuit in Europe playing his own distinctively Australian brand of blues and roots music.

He has sold more than 10,000 albums worldwide and one of his songs, Walking With You, was recently featured on the HBO documentary, Paycheck to Paycheck.

An Interview with Tristan O'Meara