A couple of months before Richard Gill died, he rang me in great excitement to tell me about a new school planned for Muswellbrook, to be built around his vision of a curriculum with music and physical education at its very heart. Details were still under wraps at this point but he was ecstatic about the project and asked if he could write about it for his October Limelight column rather than the subject we’d discussed. Naturally I said yes. A week or so later, he rang with more information and we agreed that he would write a follow-up to run in our November issue. He promptly delivered both columns.

“Is it too soon to canonise Martin Rush?” he wrote of the Mayor of Muswellbrook. “This is my 55th year of work as a musician and it has been worth the wait to meet this man, his staff, his town...