The man with the guitar.

Sydney Road shoots straight out of Melbourne like an arrow and becomes the Hume Highway, an ant trail of roaring B-double trucks on four, six or eight lanes connecting the two cities.

The concert was in a venue about twelve miles out of town; one of those places that does big outer-suburban weddings. It was raining when I drove through the hipster suburbs where they ask you five questions before they make your coffee. About 7 p.m. I passed the border, which used to be Bell Street and then Gaffney Street; but which is now Camp Road where a checkpoint charlie stops cool people getting out and non-hipsters getting in. It's called Campbellfield.

Then Campbellfield's yellow brick veneers gave way to concrete depots, and empty manufacturing plants, and breaker's lots, and half-built orthodox churches, and signs spruiking new suburbs with names like Eden Rise. I did a U-turn just south of Craigieburn where Supreme Caravans stares across Gasoline Way to Northern Fleet Care and the Metro Service Station and Truck Wash. In heavy rain I followed the glistening southbound carriageway a few hundred metres, turning left down a long dark driveway and crunching to a stop outside an large pale building with curving lines and giant porthole windows and another for a door. It looked like a grounded cruise liner. We shut the car and ran towards the circle of light.

It was like walking into another world. The vast interior was entirely lined with drapes sufficient to wrap the Sydney Opera House. At the far end of the reception area a head waiter was consulting a map of the floor plan and delegating in turn each of about a hundred waiters to take guests to their table. Ours was a five minute walk away. Or is the passage of time making me exaggerate? We must have walked halfway back to Fawkner. Most of tables were full. Everyone was talking Spanish. It seemed the entire Latin population of Melbourne was there. Talking, shouting, gesticulating, laughing. (I should point out this was the last great era before mobile devices killed society.)

After a while some drinks appeared from somewhere borne by a waiter with a tray joined to his left arm, and then battalions of waiters served entrees and, later, main courses. I forget what we ate. I was distracted by the entertainment.

The waiters disappeared. A man with a guitar came out from one of the Christo drapes, stepped on to the low stage and sat on a chair. Small frame, longish hair, dark glasses, denim.

Right foot onto a stool, a flick of the guitar onto his knee, and then he started singing.

An eerie hush came over the crowd. It wasn't the usual let's-be-quiet-and-give-the-poor-guy-a-chance hush where you still hear the odd clinking fork and pinging glass and a cough here and there and a laugh or two from already drunk patrons. It was sudden, absolute, total silence, as if the crowd had been struck dumb and rendered incapable of movement. There was not even the regulation clang of a waiter dropping a fork as he pushed through the swing door to the kitchen. Nothing.

I forget what he sang. His voice had that Latin quality that compresses rhythm and releases it again, something that made someone invent bossa nova and Sergio Mendes and sunshine. His voice chased the notes around and teased them and caught them where they didn't want to be caught and afterwards the crowd destroyed the silence and the man took his guitar and smiled to the audience and left the building.

*

That was more than ten years ago. The other day I drove up the Hume Highway and just when I passed the long driveway a song came on the radio. Jose Feliciano was still stalking the notes like a lion.