Wollongong singer-songwriter David Beniuk has penned loads of tunes since he started in the late 1980s.

He’s released five solo CDs full of original songs, and one or two as a part of bands like The Culprits and Merry Widows.

One of the oldest and one that still resonates decades after he wrote it in about 1988 is Four Weeks Notice.

“I wrote it at uni in my first year and I wrote it as a duet to sing with a young woman that I was keen on, thinking that would be an impressive move,” Beniuk remembered.

“Of course they thought I was completely weird, because who did that stuff? So I ended up singing it on my own.”

It’s not the most appropriate song with which to woo a woman – it details a steelworker coming home to his family to find a letter in the mail telling him he’s been sacked.

In just over five minutes, it’s a powerful document of the city’s economic past – and perhaps its present as redundancies at the steelworks continued through the years.

So it’s surprising that a guy still in his teens at the time, still living at home, who had never worked at the steelworks a day in his life managed to come up with a tune that still rings true today.

Beniuk said it was partially because he grew up in a family where there was a focus on current affairs, where the TV was “welded” to the ABC.

So he mightn’t have lived it, but he saw enough to imagine what it would be like.

“I think it mostly came from that constant barrage of bad news in Wollongong in the 1980s where all we ever seemed to hear about was recessions and job losses in the steelworks or the coalmines,” he said.

“That just seemed to be ongoing through the ’80s. The economic news seemed to be continually bad and family members went through some of those things.”

In perhaps a sign of the times, it’s a tune that organisers at folk festivals were entirely pleased with.

The story of a sacked worker was right up the folkies’ alley. It was the swearing they didn’t care for.

“The swearing in it got me into trouble a few times at folk festivals,” he said.

“I think now they wouldn’t care but 20 years ago the f-bomb was still at times frowned upon.

“And it got me in trouble with my mum too.”

Now living in Tasmania, Beniuk still plays the song – it serves as an effective introduction to his home town for interstate audiences.

It also appeared on his debut solo CD Port, which has finally been re-released after 21 years. And to sweeten the deal for those who already own it, there are eight alternate versions of album tracks, an excerpt from the night of the CD launch and a cover of an obscure Billy Bragg song.

And it won’t cost you a cent – the 22-track album has been released online at Soundcloud where you can listen to it for free.

Back in 1996, he pressed 500 copies and sold them all.  But since then, Port hadn’t been available.

There was a couple of reasons not to re-press it back then – one was the assumption that, with 500 copies sold, everyone who wanted one had already bought it.

And there was the other thing.

“One might say when you start seeing it turning up in second-hand record shops that you know its time to not re-press it,” he said. “That happened once or twice in Wollongong.”

But time marches on and last year, Beniuk thought it might be a good idea to re-release Port for its 20^th birthday, partially to let people (and perhaps especially those responsible for booking folk festivals) that he’s still around and doing this music thing.

“When you’re in my position and you've got a lot of other things on your plate and you live away from your base and you’re dipping in and out of the scene, it’s about your identity,” he said.

“You just want to keep it ticking over. You want to remind people that you’re still doing it, that it’s still part of your life, still part of who you are.”

But then life got in the way and he missed that 20th anniversary year.

Luckily for him, the following year was its 21st birthday – which is also a significant milestone.

Giving it away for free rather than putting out a CD and charging for it came about because the economics didn't really stack up and, well, it would have been a bit of a hassle.

“It wasn’t about selling it, it was about putting it out there with a few extras and hoping people can enjoy it,” Beniuk said.

“I had hoped it would get a bit of a response but it’s got more of a response than I thought it would, so that’s been pleasing.”

Port was recorded in 1996 after a break of sorts from music. A member of the Merry Widows for three years, they’d broken up a year earlier after it became a grind with the band unable to move beyond being “the perennial support band”.

So he largely stepped away from music for a while, finishing his university thesis on Aboriginal songwriters and then headed overseas for four months.

When he returned he was ready to rejoin the music scene and so headed into the studio with his guitar and 12 songs – some new, some that had been performed in earlier bands and others (like Four Weeks Notice) came from an even earlier time.

“It’s got a lot of energy on it for an acoustic album,” Beniuk said.

“And it was live in the studio, there were no overdubs. I had to be practiced and just go in and crank it out.

“There wasn’t a great deal of thought about whether that was a good move or not, that was just how it was going to be done.”

Recording in 1996 was a very different proposition to today, where you can buy a bit of equipment and make an album in your bedroom.

Back then, you needed a proper recording studio and either a lot of money to pay to hire the place for as long as you needed or the ability to get the songs down quickly.

“It’s funny because because now it’s so easy to overdub at home,” Beniuk said.

“You can put down three or four guitar tracks in a couple of hours and have all this other stuff going on.

“Back then you were always conscious of the money and the clock ticking and how much you were spending as well. So it was about getting something done within your budget too.”

Musically, Beniuk said he’s still a going concern. He’s penned a number of songs as part of a songwriters circle he co-ordinates.

He estimates he has at least 20 new songs floating around, certainly enough for the new release he plans to record at home.

“Some people seem to get it out of their system and put the guitar down for a long time,” he said.

“I don’t seem to be able to do that. It’s part of me and I just have to keep doing it.”