Early in 2025 I discovered two South Australian singers were going to compete in the Adelaide Eisteddfod, in the same section with the same song of mine. And it was my fault! One singer, the really marvelous tenor Jiacheng Ding had contacted me the year before asking for a suitable song, but then hadn’t competed due to illness. I sent him a song I thought would suit him gorgeously, Say If You Will.

I completely forgot about this, when a year later the second singer baritone Macintyre Howie-Reeves contacted me for a suitable song and I sent him the same song, just down a third for a baritone, not realising Jaicheng who had long since recovered, planned to re-enter the same section with the same song.

Thankfully I discovered in time. After a short panic, I talked with Mac, who after all had asked second, to see if he’d like a new song instead. He was happy enough with this. He wanted a song about '"men working on ships” and I had an existing poem quite close to this brief, which I thought might set well.

MacIntyre “Mac” has this wonderful, classic lyric-but-big baritone voice that just sounds fuller and more exciting every time I hear it, and that thing I just love so much in singers - his phrasing is to die for. He is also a splendid performer and director, and I wanted to give him some moments to ‘go big or go home’ and just enjoy the character and the story.

When the ocean is involved, I like to give it to the piano, and have the tensions between human and ocean expressed between the two instruments.