At the opening night of the exhibition, visitors were amazed at the depth and detail as the exhibits traced the colourful history of Wollongong's music scene, from the poppy early days of surf club dances and 1960s rock, then the Wollongong Workers' Club, through the grunge-heavy stoner rock of the 1990s, and the punk-fused hard rock that ended the last millennium.

But in the packed rooms of the gallery that night, not everyone in the crowd was a long-haired rocker forged in the grunge carnival of the '90s. Some of them were grandparents, and some of them were members of the first bands featured in the show.

The night also served as a reunion for the three members of the Shalamars, a pop-rock group from Wollongong who were among the first to head over to England and try to make it with their musical abilities.

They had formed in 1964 around the Wollongong beach music scene. Mick Chamberlain, the group's drummer and sometime vocalist, had been playing in a band called the Surfside Four, but when he met up with saxophonist and singer Dave Scholes and pianist John Henderson, they became the Shalamars.

It's a unique band name in Australia, and there's a modest body of scholarship about what that word actually means. The best guess seems to be that it's an Arabian word to do with buildings. But for our purposes, suffice to say there was a restaurant in Corrimal called Shalimar's, where these guys used to play many gigs. They couldn't lift the name letter for letter, so a small change was made and voila: the Shalamars.

Now 71, Chamberlain gets that look in his eye that many Baby Boomers do when they're remembering the golden age. He recalls the Wollongong music scene in the early '60s, when there was such a thing as a "surf dance", and life was not complicated. Nor was it formal.

"Just fabulous," he says.

"You can wear a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, or a pair of thongs, and just start dancing on the beach.

"The place would be packed. Nowadays there's trouble with big crowds - there was no trouble with big crowds then. Just a fun night.

"It was more innocent - people would have a few too many beers and go to sleep. Just a fun time. It was a great lot of fun. I met my wife actually playing in a band."

They always fall for the drummer.

Mick and Valerie married a few months before the band left for England, and they all went together. The Shalamars were not the only band from the colonies to go back to old England, of course. The Bee Gees, the Saints, the Birthday Party (later to evolve into Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) are among the best known.

While the Shalamars' success may have been more modest than some of the other tourists, that was hardly the point. For these young musicians from Wollongong it was all about having a good time - an adventure.

In those days, no-one thought they were entitled to have it all - to have a wonderful time for a while was swell enough. They managed to see the world without having to join the army.

Chamberlain tells how their mission and motivation was pretty simple: "We were having fun here, why not try overseas and we'll have some more fun over there?"

The Shalamars' greatest moments on stage in the UK came not at the festivals of Glastonbury or the Isle of Wight but at a family holiday camp on the mid-north coast of England.

Chamberlain said that when they first arrived in London in 1966, they had a good contact - Ozzie Byrne, who had encouraged them to try Old Blighty, and at whose Tarrawanna studio they had recorded the only track they would cut. It was an instrumental number called Perfidio, which in its short play vinyl form featured in the display case dedicated to the Shalamars at the Steel City Sound exhibition.

Byrne happened to be the producer for another Australian act trying to make it in London - the Gibb brothers, better known as the Bee Gees. That was a good start for the Shalamars, who visited the Bee Gees at Byrne's flat in London, which was becoming something of a jumping-off point for Australian newcomers.

But they were looking less for major stardom, more for a good time, and they found a place to reside, by the seaside. Fresh off the boat and full of beans, they scored a few gigs in the city, then got a job at a holiday camp - Pontin's Holiday Camp at Great Yarmouth, on the beach on the mid-east coast of England, among the patchwork of small farms in Norfolk county. It's the chilly North Sea, but it's still a beach - and if you've never left England and don't know any better, it's probably pretty awesome.

The members of the Shalamars had known some of the best beaches in the world, and had played gigs at the surf clubs behind the dunes.

But in England they had found jobs playing music for the whole summer, and it turned out to be a couple of years. They were among friends, and they were loving the journey. Yarmouth was an adventure, and it was fantastic.

They weren't trying to change the music world overnight. Theirs was a sound grown from the surf club parties and restaurant gigs of Wollongong. Sometimes instrumental, sometimes covering popular songs of the time, sometimes the Beatles.

When it came to playing in England, they threw in as many Aussie songs as they could. Convict songs, like Botany Bay, and of course Waltzing Matilda. The rousing ditty of the sheep thief who did himself in rather than face the music was a big hit in Great Yarmouth, a town which, centuries earlier, had given its fair share of petty criminals to the Sydney Cove experiment.

Warren Wheeler, the Wollongong music historian who put together the Steel City Sound exhibition, explains why he chose the Shalamars to be in the show.

"It was a universal story of young men going on an adventure overseas, and doing what they loved: playing music," he said.

"They established lifelong friendships, between themselves and also other performers. Whatever happened afterwards, it was certainly a life-defining experience for them."

When they came home, two years later than expected, they formed the Esquires, which played for several years at the famous Wollongong Workers' Club.

Chamberlain describes the music as "dance music", but it's unrecognisable from the doof-doof that owns that title today.

"You can throw in a couple of waltzes and quicksteps and then go back to a couple of rock'n'roll tracks - satisfy everyone," Chamberlain said.

"It catered to young and old, it was great."

Let's ask ourselves, for a second, if we had to choose between the Bee Gees and the Shalamars, which life would we prefer to live? The Shalamars rose from humble surrounds, with humble ambitions, and had a flat-out great time on a journey that became a life-defining moment. They brushed with fame in London and rocked the house in Yarmouth.

The Bee Gees had success, that's for sure. Money, fame, groupies, fancy flares, video clips, uppers, alcohol, breakdowns, cocaine habits, heart problems, family splits.

They will always be remembered and we all know their songs. They touched the stratosphere, but were touched by tragedy too.

The Shalamars are all still alive. They may not have the mansions but they don't have the cocaine habits either.

Life in Dapto and Shellharbour is pretty good. Their kids play music and sport, and since they quit playing, they have more time on the weekends to go to a family do, to a birthday party, or to call the bingo at the Frat.

Neil Young sang "it's better to burn out than to fade away", but was he right? That's up to you - whether you dream of being an uber-famous rock star who flies high, touches the sun, then is tragically gone too soon, or whether you humbly dream of going on an adventure, having some fun, and coming back home, where the beaches are much better anyway.