Detective Inspector Jon Rouse spends each weekday tracking down online paedophiles. It’s dirty work, painstaking and heartbreaking. He has to piece together thousands of clues in his quest to rescue children who are locked into lives of sexual abuse. “But then come Saturday night, I’m into ‘gig’ mode,” explains the 58-year-old manager of covert operations at the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation .
owners might be “average at best”, those high-disposal incomes and a shortage of time means they don’t want to muck about. COVID has amplified that. “In fact, they’ve been keeping my business going.”Jon Rouse has always been a musician on the side. In the 1980s, he worked backstage on a number of gigs; in 2003, he met the band Duran Duran after their show at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
“We’ve got more gear than The Rolling Stones! It’s great, because you can have quality instruments that you never would have been able to afford when you were younger.” Known as the Nobbs, Davis played bass alongside pianist Susan Wright and lead guitarist Rod Neilsen. Davis’s day job was as director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the most senior public servant in Queensland – and he admits to being somewhat disconcerted when he learnt the band had been booked to play at a government Christmas party.
But COVID has provided an impetus for others to return to music. While stores selling band equipment capitalised on a boom, particularly in guitar sales, lockdown challenged the managing director of workplace mediation company iHR Australia, Stephen Bell, to focus on what was important to him – and he began writing, recording and distributing his tunes. It’s not a full-time gig, but part of a planned exit from a tough job the 59-year-old has been doing for decades.