GORDON HUGHES, A BLIND VIOLINIST, LOSES HIS SIGHT IN HIS MID TEENS DUE TO A TRAGIC ACCIDENT.

Born in Moonta in 1896 to a family of fishermen, Gordon shows an early talent for music, playing both the violin and pedal-organ with an ambition to become an orchestral conductor, contrary to his father’s wishes.

After his loss of sight Gordon experiences disappointment, hardship, romance and eventually gains successes and wisdom from the multiple characters he meets and works with along the way.

Gordon spends his earlier teenage years as a student attending the ‘The School for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb’ founded in 1874 at Brighton, South Australia, and later to be known as Townsend House, before then attending the ‘Blind School’ at North Adelaide where he learns basket weaving, the usual occupation for the unsighted in those times.

On leaving boarding school, Gordon has to now face the hardships of not only being unsighted, but of finding suitable accommodation and fending for himself in a sometimes harsh world.