anjo was a bit of a dag. Strange how nicknames tend to be absurd contradictions, he was tone deaf, would have had more chance getting a tune out of a kettle than a musical instrument, yet, Banjo it was.

A dependable cove, born into a hard life, the runt of the litter as it were, running wild in Noble Street, surrounded by a rag-tag group of siblings living in an Australia growing out of the innocent 50's and jumping into the 60's with a passion.

He was my mate and I loved him.

You know what I mean, those friendships that grow through the first tadpole hunt, the penny bungers blowing the shit out of the letterbox up the road, the kite flying on winter afternoons and the first realization of voices changing and hair appearing where it wasn't prior.

It's safe to say I learnt all there was to learn with Banjo by my side.

I think it is the first car that really changes relationships. We were born within months of each other so it was a common interest for the arbitrary two years young men seem to spend dreaming of their license prior to the fact.

The old Ford Zephyr and Holden FE, both polished to showroom condition and ready to travel, monuments to a new order.

That was when we started to not be together, when the wedge was pushed into the crack in the granite, the rock of friendship that heretheto would stand any test time or person could throw at it… smashing any attempt to break it apart.

It snuck up on us. Initially it was threesomes, Me, Banjo and a girl, she being either my friend or his. Then foursomes and finally, like some law of diminishing returns, twosomes, traveling in different directions.

Banjo was my best man and I his. We kept close for a while but the pressures of day to day life seemed to act like the cordite rammed into the crack made by the wedge and burnt with a priming wick the way they used to do it at Sedgeman's Masonry And Monuments in Villamanta Street.

I can remember we would stand at the fence, our knees dirty from the adventures that only ten-year-olds can have and watch the old bloke as he lit the wick with the end of a "rolly" that always hanged from the corner of his mouth.

A sputter and a gentle poof and the blocks would just part, a perfectly straight split, the granite, solid and impermeable… split like meringue.

We fell like those blocks. Just tumbled apart in slow motion.

We went the way of young men on the move. Banjo dragged himself out of the caste his roots had set him. His family was hill-billy stock, the Barrabool Hill mob I think they were called. I promise this is said with no derision, it was just fact.

My mum always had a place for those kids and I remember loving her for that.

I can recall her saying something to a neighbour in defense of them after a comment was made that would definitely not stand the test of today's political correctness. Something like "...they might be wild but they always say please and thank you..." mum used to gauge a hell of a lot on please and thank you.

Banjo was clever. He could make things. He worked his way through Uni and ended up an engineer of considerable note. I worked in the new science of computers and our interests remained concurrent albeit in different disciplines.

I remember I felt sick when I was told. His brother John... saw him on the street, we talked... "Jack The Dancer" he said.

Banjo died last week. I was asked to sit with the family, seems he told his wife he wanted it so.

My son came in from footy the other day, a strapping 15-year-old... Steve was with him… they are inseparable. I turned to them as they drank cordial straight from the bottle, a very special "mum irritant" that one, and said softly "...have you ever seen how they split granite?"

Saturday, I'm going to take the boys to Sedgeman's, I spoke to the manager and he said they'd be happy to put on a show for us.