Country star Troy Cassar-Daley’s pre-publicity for a drop-in and out to meet Queanbeyan folks and promote his current Freedom Ride concert tour was unscripted but ran serendipitously as though it was.

The multi award winner gave a live half-hour interview to Rhonda Haggar on QBN FM community radio and played several songs live, including two new ones of his, Freedom Ride and Take a Walk in My Country, and a magical heartfelt acoustic rendition of an old one, River Boy (by Fred F Carter Jr).

Ms Haggar certainly knew Mr Cassar-Daley’s stuff and  took him on a musical history and travel tour of his work, with a handful of additional questions from local go-between Frog Harris.

The interview was thematic in part of the original 1965 Freedom Ride, which by the end of the journey made indigenous student Charles Perkins a national figure in the fight for his people’s rights.

Cassar-Daley and collaborator Paul Kelly recently joined the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Ride on a bus tour with some of the original riders and University of Sydney students, to Dubbo, Walgett, Moree and Kempsey, terminating at the University.

Having touched on all that with Rhonda in the interview, there was time for a quick late breakfast with Mr Harris.

They visited the local haunt, the Central Cafe (and here’s the bit that could have been scripted but wasn’t), where they bumped tables with well known indigenous activist Matilda House and a couple of family and friends.

Hug, handshakes, down the coffee, on to Canberra radio for the next chat, highlighting that his Freedom Ride album landed on the ARIA album chart at number four, his highest-ever chart debut.

His concert tour started in April in Victoria, will come through Canberra next month to the Vikings Erindale on August 15 and terminates in Tweed Heads in mid-November. He’s in top form.