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Troy Cassar-Daley is a country musician. The 55-year-old is best known for winning 40 Golden Guitar awards. Ahead, he shares how his maternal grandmother told him yarns around the fire, his first serious relationship at 16, and meeting his now-wife, Laurel.
Troy Cassar-Daley started guitar lessons at 10.
I spent the first 10 years of my life living with my maternal grandmother, Irene, and grandfather, Henry, in Grafton. I moved there from Sydney with my mum, Irene, when my parents’ marriage broke up.
Nan was a proud Gumbaynggirr woman. She was nurturing, firm and knowledgeable. She showed me how to sew on a button and darn a sock. She took us out on Country and told us yarns in front of the fire. She told us about being afraid of the welfare man’s black car as he might take her six kids. Nan kept a wet washer in the house. If she saw the car, she got it and wiped the kids’ faces. I was 10 when Nan died and it felt like my world had caved in.
My mum was incredibly tough. She worked as a cook on the trains. Being an only child, Mum was very much the person I counted on. She was a steady influence throughout my life. I always phoned her for the best possible advice.
After losing Nan and Pop, I went into a spiral of sadness. Our Sorry Business was deep. Mum grew flowers at Halfway Creek, the 103-acre property south of Grafton she’d bought with a railway loan. We’d take the flowers to the cemetery every weekend: that was my life.
I started guitar lessons at 10. My guitar teacher, Leonie, saw that sadness, but she also saw talent in a kid who needed to be nurtured. She encouraged me and made me laugh. She gave me the same things I got from Nan, Mum and my aunties and uncles: that beautiful thing called time.
My first serious girlfriend was a headstrong Indigenous girl. I was 16, and not headstrong myself. I struggled – I’d never been in a relationship that volatile.
TROY CASSAR-DALEY
Mum remarried when I was seven. I didn’t get along with my stepfather, so I lived with my dad in Sydney. When that marriage broke down, their daughter, Michelle, went with her dad. Once my stepfather was off the scene, I lived full-time again with Mum.
Mum kept a bedroom for Michelle. It tortured me to walk past that little door, knowing that my sister was somewhere, and I couldn’t give her a cuddle. Michelle was 18 when we first met. We keep in touch, and when we talk it fills my cup.
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