Offered management and financial support by businessman Hamis Henry, Fraternity moved to South Australia where, as Vince Lovegrove reported in Go-Set magazine in June 1971, the lived "like no other band in Australia, in a house in the hills 17 miles from Adelaide. It's surrounded by seven acres of bushland. They're from everything but nature. What a buzz! Once a week they come into the city to have a meeting with their management and collect their pay. They only leave their pad to play gigs.

"Bon Scott, vocalist, recorder and timbala player, is constantly in a dream world of his own but he's having a ball. He says: 'The point is, the dollar sign is not the ultimate. We want to try and help each other develop and live. So that the thing inside of us, whether it be creative or not, is satisfied. Something makes us tick and it's up to people to satisfy that something. We are satisfying ourselves and others by creating an environment."

Fraternity took their environment back to Sydney at regular intervals. Although well received live, their cosmic recordings on the Adelaide independent label Sweet Peach (notably the album Livestock) made little impact. Guitarist John Robinson wrote the brooding Seasons of Change for them but it was the version by his own band, Blackfeather, which cracked the charts.

Even their unexpected win of the all-important Hoadley's National Battle Of The Sounds in 1971 failed to assist their chart fortunes. "Fraternity came on and nearly rocked themselves off stage and half the audience nearly rocked themselves onto the stage" reported Go-Set of the Grand Final. "Superb harmonica and superb vocals by that guy out of the old Valentines. What's his name again?...oh you know him."

Fraternity left Sweet Peach late in 1971, cut some singles for the independent Raven label (no relationship to this fine imprint) and then put down a second album. The powerful Flaming Galah was a whole different kettle of fish. The metaphysical meanderings had largely been replaced by solid, thumping rock and Bon Scott was able to give a hint of the sort of tempest he would command in AC/DC a couple of years later.

During 1972, Fraternity took advantage of their Battle of the Sounds prize and travelled to London. From there they worked in Britain and Europe, although little is known about this time. Shortly after the band's return to Adelaide in 1973, Bon suffered severe injuries in a motorcycle accident. Fraternity continued on with a new formation that happened to include John 'Swanee' Swan and his brother Jimmy Barnes, but that's another story.

By 1974, Bon was healed and healthy, and working in Sydney as an occasional roadie for AC/DC, an interesting new band formed by Angus and Malcolm Young, junior siblings of Easybeat George Young, the man who had penned three tracks recorded by The Valentines in the 60's. When the band's vocalist went off to form Rabbit, widely experienced Bon seemed the logical replacement.

From the first day that Bon trod the boards with AC/DC, there was not the slightest cloud of suspicion that the outfit would not turn the world upside down with their rib-crushing, blood curdling, brain damaging, skin blistering, no bullshit rock'n'roll. Throughout the next five years. AC/DC's vision of rock to fight, fuck and drink by, survived unscathed. Single handedly they led an international renaissance of power rock, though none of their copyists ever aspired to even a hint of the awesome global popularity that Acca Dacca commanded (indeed still do) among working class kids.

Original text by Glenn A. Baker