Bill Montgomery, Monty to his friends, is a well-recognised face in the Illawarra folk community and at festivals around the country. Bill retired from the Queensland police force in 1997 and opted for the cooler climate of Kiama on the south coast of New South Wales. Here he has become an active member of the Illawarra Folk Club and the Wongawilli Dance Club, playing fiddle whenever he can for dances and sessions.

William Montgomery was born in Penicuik (about 10 miles south of Edinburgh, Scotland) in 1942. His grandfather, a coalminer, started him on the fiddle at about 7 years old, but the old man’s permanently bent fingers restricted what he could show the eager boy so he was sent to a ‘proper teacher’. Bill remembers being taught to read music in primary school along with the three r’s. Students were also encouraged to try different instruments and to take them up according to talents and inclination. Those that weren’t suited to a real musical instrument were assigned to the pipe band and those that couldn’t play the pipes were put on the drums. He noted with a wry laugh that when he was directed to the drums he flatly refused saying he ‘would na sink so low’. He kept up his fiddle lessons and from the age of 11 till about 17 he was playing in a local dance band. Then rock and roll took the crowds and in 1958 Bill swore off playing ever again.

But as fate would have it his musical career was not over.
He moved to London in 1966, met and married Hazel Brock from Goovidgen in the Calide Valley and together they moved to Australia, where her parents had previously migrated during the War to escape the London Blitz. The newly-weds settled in Brisbane where Bill worked in the Holden factory for about two years before joining the Queensland Police Service in 1970. The force was keen to recruit the young Scot acting under the impression he could play the bagpipes. Well, he was a musician and Scottish so that made him a piper, didn’t it?
In the folk scene he met the iconic Stan Arthur and later, an Ayrshire accordionist called Bill Scott, (not the poet/author) who encouraged him to take up the fiddle again. He played with Bill’s ceilidh band for about fifteen years, and recalls getting ten to twelve dollars for a job at a time when his weekly wage as a copper was only about fifty.
Busking was frowned on in Queensland, especially for a copper, but Bill took the risk and made a few bob on the side.

In 1981 Bill began supporting the cabaret act of Tim Connor both as musician and driver, as Tim had lost his licence. Tim was quite a prolific songwriter and Monty was urged to compose his own tunes. The death of Jimmy Mahoney, a senior officer, who Monty greatly respected, provided the inspiration and tunes just tumbled out - reels, marches, polkas and a Highland schottische. Bill laments that he hasn’t been able to do it again since.
As a player, Bill plays an unusual fiddle. A hand injury made the size of a viola more comfortable to play. But he still wanted the tuning of a fiddle, so he had to experiment to achieve the standard pitch. Now he uses three heavier gauge violin strings and one guitar string. The overall effect is quite mellow, even haunting.

Monty's Tunes

The White Sands of Caloundra (24 bar single reel in D)
Tibrogargan (16 bar Highland Schottische in G) named for the prominent geological outcrop of the Glasshouse Mountains.
Jimmy Mahoney’s Reel (32 bar reel in G), after Jimmy Mahoney who as his senior officer looked after Bill as a young recruit.
Queensland My Home (32 bar quickstep in D)
Pumpkin Scones (32 bar reel in G) made to Flo’s own recipe.
Terence Lewis’ Triumphal March to the Gates of Boggo Road (16 bar march in D) was named for a corrupt police commissioner who was sent to Boggo Road prison.
MacAllister Hoose (32 bar polka in G) after the rambling house in New Zealand where Yvonne, Bill’s partner, came from.

Download Monty's Tunes (pdf)