Before The Presets became THE Presets, Kim Moyes and Julian Hamilton were two young scallywag mates from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, apart of a band called Prop. When asked what the moment was that really solidified their bond as a duo, Kim went into detail on an adrenaline rushed incident involving risky trespassing. The two of them embarked on a dangerous spontaneous mission to climb a, then, half built Sydney ANZAC Bridge.

Kim explains, “There was something about this night and this moment that really set us as a partnership. It was probably 1995, we went to the Balmain festival one afternoon, and at that point in time they were constructing the Anzac bridge, we were gonna go over to the Anzac bridge and see if we could walk over the construction or whatever, we got in trouble by a security guard, and they took our I.D. and could see that I wasn’t from around there, like, “What are you doing here?” and I thought that that was really weird, that you can’t go out of your zone and go climb a bridge that’s under construction.”

“It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, and then the following Wednesday we went to Goodbar, I went to that and Julian came, and he’s like, “Let’s go, let’s do it, let’s do the Anzac bridge, just the two of us.” And we climbed it.”

“We got onto the bridge and went all the way up through one of the pile ons, the one closest to Balmain, and managed to find our way all the way up to the top. And they put a massive piece of board in there with a clamp-on so no one could get through, but being young and skinny, we squeezed ourselves through and stood at the very top and we were like, “One day this town will be ours.”

Then came all the way down, got chased out by a security guard, you know, nearly died, thought we were going to go to jail. And we actually got away, we were jumping fences like gazelles, and just took on all these superhuman powers, and that’s the parallel I was trying to draw at the beginning. That’s probably where The Presets began.”

Listen to their full story in the Stoney Roads podcast. Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you’d like to hear this story, skip ahead to the six minute mark of the podcast below.