Music
This is a story about a farmer and his passion.
The farmer is Harvey Dixon.
His passion is music and his obsession is Elvis Presley.
Come on sugar.
Elvis just had a Christmas.
When Elvis walked onto the stage he didn't have to do anything.
The people used to go mad.
You could hear them screaming and clapping.
He never said anything. It was just his Christmas.
It was Elvis Presley.
Music
Now it only takes one look at Harvey Dixon to realise this farmer is no ordinary Elvis fan.
Anyway I heard that music and I loved it.
It was the sort of music of what I liked, our era.
And I started buying Elvis records and I was buying Elvis records right up to the day he died.
Music
This is what Elvis, I mean Harvey, calls his record room.
To outsiders it looks every bit like a shrine to the dead king of rock and roll.
Music
Oh around 30 years I've been collecting Elvis records and knick knacks and all sorts of things.
We just click them in here and I just graze the commuter gate.
Music
It's wall to wall, roof to floor Elvis Presley.
Over the top, well not according to Harvey.
Isn't it an obsession?
Well I don't know. It's just something that I've always done since I was a young fella.
And you know I don't put posters up around the wall now because there's no room in here.
They haven't bought a record for years.
But it's just a hobby. This is my hobby.
Everybody has hobbies. Some people collect stamps, some people collect barbed wire, some blokes collect girlfriends.
I collect records, music, anything to do. I love that sort of thing.
Music
After 30 years of worshipping the king, the chainsaw-wielding Elvis band is now creating a monument to his other great love, country music.
Country music has sort of taken over from everything else in my life and now I'm building a country music centre.
Music
Harvey and his chainsaw have created one of Australia's most unusual performance venues.
An amphitheatre that looks like the Australian version of Stonehenge.
A Rodeo ring to seat 5,000 cowboys.
And all of this under the eye of a giant upside down gum tree playing a guitar.
What is your grand vision for how that would be used?
To have my grand, to have lots of country music shows, probably to become a country music centre in Western Australia.
That would be my goal.
Why did you choose rocks? The place looks a bit like Stonehenge almost, doesn't it?
We want to have a rock concert, we're halfway there. We've got the rocks, haven't we?
Five years from now I hope this will be one of the best rodeos in Western Australia.
And combining with my country music, I'd like to see about 8,000 people here over the whole weekend.
Well I've always said I was going to build a guitar man, 40 feet high.
And I've been saying that for years and years and years.
And ever since I got the idea it took me three years of looking to find the legs.
Guitar man's there and eventually I'm going to put a 30,000 years of contrast right across the sky out there.
For a third generation farmer it seems a bizarre exercise in farm diversification.
But as Harvey Dixon walks and talks and talks about his dream, he's sure the big days are coming.
You can see now, going past the road, they can see what I'm, I don't know what I'm doing,
but they can see I'm doing something and it's coming together.
Where years ago I'd just go out in the bush and I'd get a tree and turn it upside down,
and seal up the paddock and do something else and they'd say,
oh Dixon's gone now and he's got another tree upside down.
But they didn't see the vision I had.
Well, they all died. Way on down, way on down.