Nationalism is not always a right-wing cause. Just look at The Bushwackers.
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The much-loved Australian bush band return to Tamworth where they will release a new album, The Hungry Mile.
It sees the band, which was found on the campus of Melbourne’s La Trobe University in the early 1970s, getting political again.
They are taking on causes such as opposing fracking on agricultural land and calling for Australia to become a republic.
Lead singer and lager phone player Dobe Newton described how the band had gone back to tackling political issues.
“We’re a bunch of fairly old, reconstructed lefties, you know. We grew up in the 60s and 70s, so politics has always been a great interest of ours in terms of its historical influence on Australia, but also on Australian music.
We grew up in the 60s and 70s, so politics has always been a great interest of ours.
- Dobe Newton
“There’s a great tradition of folk songs that actually address all sorts of political issues, almost always very much from the point of view of the working man, whether they be city or rural workers, who are being exploited by the bosses or the squatters.
“When we were thinking about the new album, we just thought of a few things that people might not remember too well, that we wanted to make sure weren’t lost, so we wrote some songs.”
The song that targets fracking, called Leave It In The Ground, urges a cautious approach to gas mining.
“The message is we don’t know enough about this, but there’s enough farmers and landowners worldwide who are worried about this that until we do know what we’re doing, why don’t we leave it in the ground.”
“It’s just saying eventually it will happen, and from our point of view, the sooner the better, basically.”
On Saturday, January 28, the new album will be launched with a concert at The Longyard Hotel.
The Hungry Mile also includes a couple of instrumentals and reworkings of a couple of old traditional songs, while the title track takes its name from the lines of men who would go down to the wharves at Darling Harbour each day during the Depression, hoping for work.
“There were thousands of men, and a few dozen jobs, and if you were lucky you got selected.”
Dobe said a painting by a Sydney artist, Bill Nix, depicting that scene from the Depression was made available for the cover art on the album.
“We got in touch with him and said, look, could we use his painting, and he was very gracious and allowed us to do that, so we’re very happy.”
