Meet the locals: Musician and tourism operator Tom Curtain

In fact, he only learnt to play guitar as an adult after he moved to a cattle station around 500km from Katherine from the Queensland town of Kingaroy around two decades ago.

"I learned the guitar out on the cattle station when I came to the Territory," he said.

"Another bloke [on the station] showed me three chords, I still only know three chords.

"So, every night around the campfire I just played the guitar and learned from there and started writing songs while mustering cattle each day."

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When the Australian Government's live cattle export ban was announced in 2011, Tom was left without work as a horse trainer.

The silver lining was that it pushed him to combine his love of animal training and music to start the Katherine Outback Experience.

The Katherine Outback Experience, which Tom now runs with his wife Annabel, now operates up to 10 shows a week during the dry season and has become one of the NT's must-see attractions.

"It's sort of very real and raw...It's not really a polished show, it's all about when it all hits the fan, how we try to recover," he said.

"A lot of mates said no one's going to come to your show to watch dogs jump on drums or train horses. You've got rocks in your head,

"I probably do, but I just had a gut instinct that it could work."

All the while, Tom's career as a singer/songwriter was growing too.

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His third album Territory Time which debuted at No. 1 on the Australian iTunes Country Music Charts before he won two Golden Guitars at the 2018 Tamworth Country Music Awards. However, uncertainty around borders because of Australia's COVID situation and the fact that he has young children mean Tom will not make it to Tamworth this year.

One of his most well-known songs is Speak Up, a tribute to Katherine girl Dolly Everett who died by suicide in 2014 after being bullied online.

"When little Dolly passed away, she wrote the words 'speak, even if your voice shakes,'" he said.

"And I just saw that ...and I was touring, but I thought, Man, I've got to help people out.""

All the proceeds of the song were donated to Dolly's Dream - the charity established by Dolly's parents, Tick and Kate, which works to prevent suicide and raise awareness about online safety.

"We drop into a lot of schools as we travel, talk about bullying, sing a few songs.

"We speak wherever we can... it's really just about trying to help out along the way."

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