I grew up on a sheep farm in Buangor, near Ararat in Western Victoria, so I had that classic Australian childhood running around on a farm. When I was 12, the family moved to Canberra.

I come from a musical family. My mother and her sisters used to sing around the piano and my grandmother was a pianist. My mother’s eldest sister, my aunt Mary, was a very fine pianist who played by ear. She ran a dance band during the Second World War in Queenscliff when the men went to war. 

David Bates

David Bates. Photo © Claudio Raschellá

I started playing the piano when I was six or seven and continued studying music at high school. While there, I started to get involved in theatre restaurants, and began working professionally when I was 15.

After I left school, I worked with the Jigsaw Theatre Company. The Artistic Director at the time was a guy called Joe Woodward. We produced a couple of David Williamson plays – Don’s Party and The Club – but did them in an eating-drinking cabaret environment, so they played to audiences who would never be seen dead in a theatre...