Iva's inspiration for Great Southern Land

IVA Davies visits the place that inspired his hit Great Southern Land 30 years ago.

uluru

THIRTY years ago this year, I wrote a song called Great Southern Land.

It still amazes me the way people have embraced this song, and that after all this time it continues to have resonance with not only the generation who first heard it in 1982 but that it seems to be travelling down to younger generations of listeners.

Many people over the years have suggested that I must have been in a very inspirational setting when the thoughts that I built this song with came to me.

Perhaps I was sitting on a clifftop staring out across the sea, or camped in the Outback gazing up at a starry sky?

The fact is I was in the front bedroom, which served as my studio, of a modest Federation house on a busy street in Sydney's inner-western suburb of Leichhardt. Directly outside that bedroom was a bus stop, and every 15 minutes the wall would shake as the next rattling, screeching bus pulled up. In addition, the house was directly under the international flight path so that with regular monotony the roaring of a low-flying jumbo would also shake the house.

I recently found a Polaroid photo of that front room from the period, which features the rudimentary tape recorder and equipment I used to make the demo recording of Great Southern Land and the rest of the album that it came from.

Central to the photo is a set of headphones lying on the floor next to the synthesizer, drum machine and other bits and pieces that I used.

In truth, the room was so extraordinarily noisy I had to use headphones while I was working. And for anything that involved using a microphone, like singing, I had to literally wait for breaks in between buses and planes to record anything at all.

I've often tried to recall what was going through my head as I jotted down the various fractured phrases that ended up being the lyrics of the song.

There were so many ideas, so many thoughts, and only a couple of verses and choruses to fit them in.

Uluru was not necessarily the largest front-and-centre image in mind but it was certainly one of them. It seemed to have formed in my mind as a great anchor, at the centre of a huge land mass, pinning the continent to the core of the Earth.

It slowly revolved in my mind like the hub of a great wheel, from which spun out all the haphazard features of a unique landscape, until they eventually sprawled into the surrounding sea.

So it seemed rather ironic to have to acknowledge this year that, of all the places in Australia I have been to - and I have been to a mighty lot - I had never been to Uluru.

This had happened because finally, after all this time, I was booked to visit this great icon as part of the Great Southern Land project with Tourism Australia and Qantas.

Why had it taken me so long? Perhaps part of me was slightly anxious - anxious that it might be a disappointment, a bit like finally meeting the famous singer/songwriter you had admired all your life, only to be completely underwhelmed by the experience.

A friend had asked at one point if I'd considered bringing an acoustic guitar with me, just so I could sing Great Southern Land while I was there. I had, in fact, already had that thought, but no sooner had the idea occurred to me than it seemed somehow completely inappropriate, indeed, quite wrong.

One cannot possibly escape the excitement of the flight approaching Uluru, and the sense of anticipation as the landscape starts to form itself into a setting so familiar, while at the same time, utterly alien.

The photographic images, as widely circulated as they are, do not prepare you for the way that Uluru and it's neighbouring formations, such as Kata Tjuta, completely command the attention of your eyes, and so starkly dominate an otherwise completely flat landscape.

From the moment we landed and boarded the car to head to our accommodation at Longitude, I couldn't help but wonder how anyone could concentrate on driving while Uluru was above the horizon, as it so magnetically demands your visual attention no matter in which direction you are travelling. It is omnipresent.

It is such an utterly mesmerising spectacle that one cannot look away.

The time of the year was June and, as naive as I am, it had never occurred to me that the temperature out here at that time of year often dips to zero, even during the day.

As soon as I thought about it, of course, it became screamingly obvious that this huge range in temperature, between summers of 50C heat and bitter cold in winter, perfectly reflected some of the thoughts that I'd had about Australia in my song: the vast extremes of conditions and environments here.

My first visit to Uluru was in the evening, to witness the incredible sunsets there. Sunsets never fail to impress in such a place, but it was something more that just a beautiful sight.

Uluru seemed to be sleeping, as it must have done in much the same way for millions of years, but also somehow alert and vigilant, and closely watching my insignificant presence.

The realisation of why this is a sacred place is immediate. I tried to imagine what the effect must have been on those who were walking across the landscape until this icon came into view, for the very first time.

The next morning I was up before sunrise to undertake a more detailed exploration of the place, its stories and features. I had the great fortune to be accompanied by a dedicated guide, who I understand has been working there for a long time and is absolutely committed to respecting this country, and everything in it.

Grace was a fountain of knowledge, and explained to me with loving care the subtleties of physical detail, the cultural history and stories that she is permitted to disclose, and Uluru began to take on an even greater significance.

But I think the real moment, the really special experience for me was one which perhaps is connected to that time 30 years back, when I was grappling for words that would somehow capture the feeling of a place, this country, even though I had not experienced the place I was in now.We came to the base of Uluru, in a place where there was a small forest of low, sparse eucalypts screening an area next to Uluru, so that standing at its base we seemed to be almost in a private room, among trees, facing an enormous red rock wall.

There were other visitors, of course, walking the pathways and low wooden bridges that create the track around Uluru. But where we were was slightly off the track, away from the noise of chatting people and clicking cameras. Against the red wall, carved out of the base of the rock by millions of years of rainfall that had cascaded down the sides of Uluru, was a small pool of water, a few metres across, and perhaps only half a metre deep. Grace told me that although it hadn't rained for months, this waterhole is always there, filled with water. It fascinated me.I said to Grace: "I'd just like to sit here quietly for a while, very still. I want to listen to this place very carefully. I know that it will have a kind of, well, voice, or perhaps music."

So we squatted down there, next to the waterhole very quietly, for quite some time. It had occurred to me ever since I'd arrived, that I had seen almost no signs of wildlife at all. During a day-long trek through Kata Tjuta, I hadn't noticed one single sign of life, even in the skies above.

It was just very still, and very quiet. Eventually, as we squatted there in silence, there began a very slight movement in the trees, and the faintest whisper of a breeze and a rustling of the leaves in the forest surrounding us and as I watched, my eyes glued on the water and pool, the tiniest bird suddenly landed, at the edge of the pool, and meekly drank, undisturbed and oblivious to us.

In moments a lizard emerged from under cover to do the same, just drinking in the shade of overhanging branches, while the trees continued their quiet whisper.

On the way back to the car, we were quiet for a long time but, eventually, I told Grace that of all my experiences of Uluru, this had been my favourite place, the waterhole.

I don't know why but I felt compelled to try to explain to her why that was so. I quoted to her these lines from the second verse of my song.

"So you look into the land and it will tell you a story, a story about a journey ended long ago, listen to the motion of the wind in the mountains, maybe you can hear them talking like I do."

Grace stopped our walk suddenly, and said to me with animation: "But that's it! That's it! The land is a story! How did you know that? How did you know that then, 30 years ago, when you wrote that song?"

I said to her in honesty: "I don't know. I was only 25. I don't know where that came from."

The fact is that I really don't know where those thoughts came from, any more than I could have imagined that 30 years later I would still be asking myself where they came from. Perhaps the fact that it remains a mystery to me is the whole point, in much the same way that the power of the presence of Uluru will always remain a mystery, and that it will forever keep the stories it could tell, secret.

See youtube.com/watch?v=UHYnkWjApiU &feature=youtu.be to watch the Tourism Australia Great Southern Land clip in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the iconic Icehouse song.
 

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