Kate Ceberano on what it was like behind the scenes of the famous Australian Made tour

Ahead of her national Australian Made shows, Kate Ceberano shares how she had to prove herself to the giants of rock on the original 80s tour.

Kate Ceberano’s voice has long been celebrated as one of Australia’s greatest musical treasures but her drum skills serve as a defiant middle finger to the industry gatekeepers who tried to stop her getting behind the kit.

As the Pash superstar launches her new Australian Made tour, she reveals she was told early in her solo career that she wouldn’t get gigs if she continued to play drums at her shows.

“A certain someone told me they would never book me gigs if I continued to play the drums,” she said.

“He said ‘Nobody wants to see a woman on drums. Nobody wants to see a singer sitting down and playing drums, it’s boring. And also, don’t play piano’.

“I was being told to not be clever and multidisciplinary. You just have to keep doing what you do for long enough that people stop thinking about how you look doing it, and just rate you on how you’re doing it.”

Kate Ceberano still playing drums despite industry pressure. Picture: Supplied

That defiance was partly forged by her experiences on the seminal Australian Made tour during the summer of 1986-87, which has inspired the title and setlist of Ceberano’s 2025 shows.

The ambitious 80s festival, featuring Jimmy Barnes, INXS, the Divinyls, Models, The Saints, I’m Talking, Mental As Anything and The Triffids, was staged as a protest against concert promoters who flooded the country with international tours, claiming Australian acts couldn’t fill big venues.

Australian Made proved to be a watershed moment for the local music industry, drawing tens of thousands of fans to outdoor venues around the country, with Ceberano performing with her band I’m Talking.

The Australian Made crew on tour. Picture: Bob King/Supplied

Ceberano was just 20 when she joined such towering figures as Barnes, Michael Hutchence and Chrissy Amphlett on the road, and treated the tour as a masterclass in performance.

There were a handful of women in the travelling circus - Amphlett, I’m Talking’s Ceberano and Zan Abeyratne and bassist Barbara Hogarth and Models backing vocalists who included Wendy Matthews.

Michael Hutchence posing in front of Ceberano at a press conference. Picture: Bob King/Supplied

“It was understood back then that Australian culture only produced male rock, even though we had Renee Geyer and Chrissy,” she said.

“I think there is a fascination for Australians about what it was like - before social media - to hang out at an event like that with Michael Hutchence and tell the story of how beautiful he actually was as a human, so thoughtful.

“Jimmy was Mr Family Man but back then, he was also like an angry, wounded animal who’d be throwing sh*t around and spitting off to the side.

“And so was Chrissy; she was like a caged animal. This was the era of in-your-face rock’n’roll and it was so exciting being with these wild and crazy animals.”

Zan and Kate from I’m Talking singing with Jimmy Barnes at an Australian made show. Picture: Bob King/Supplied

Ceberano fought to hold her own against such towering personalities. There was no “warm and fuzzy and maternal” bonding. Prove yourself on stage and you were accepted into the club.

“It was like ‘What are you, upstart? Are you going to prove to be something or are you simply just annoying,’” she said.

“My desire at Australian Made probably was to try to be liked by everyone and kind of be entertaining. That was in my nature at that age because I was so much younger than them all.

“Chrissy was territorial, she wasn’t maternal. Friendly, but it wasn’t the responsibility of an artist to do that, she was being true to Chrissy. To watch her was a masterclass in integrity.”

Ceberano heads out on tour in June. Picture: Supplied

While there was bonhomie among the artists as they travelled around the country on the same plane, there was a backstage pecking order established by the wheelings and dealings of the promoters and managers backing the tour.

“There were huge disparities amongst us all about who got what and whose rooms were bigger and all that sh*t,” she said.

“Still to this day, I was just so glad to be on the bill that I would have paid to have been on it.”

The shows are a love letter to the Australian soundtrack. Picture: Gladys Smith/Supplied

Ceberano said the setlist for her Australian Made shows in June and July will draw from most of the historic festival line-up as well as classics from John Farnham, Icehouse, Sia, Australian Crawl, Paul Kelly, Jimmy Little, Bernard Fanning, The Church, Renee Geyer, Silverchair and more.

She describes it as the soundtrack to a Tim Winton novel, a love letter to the artists she has travelled all over the country with over 40 years.

“I want you to be able to hear the bloodlines between one song to the next because I love seeing the songlines as they evolved in Australia,” she said.

“I want to make it the sound of those big, open touring roads.”

For all tour dates and ticket details,https://www.kateceberano.com/

Originally published as Kate Ceberano on what it was like behind the scenes of the famous Australian Made tour