Adventurer Pat Burgess returns with songs from a crowded life

Adventurer, barrister, human rights lawyer, surfer, scriptwriter: Pat Burgess has crammed a lot into his 60 years.

Pat Burgess returns to his old neighbourhood, Manly in Sydney, with a new album that draws on his adventurous life. Picture: Hollie Adams

Adventurer, barrister, human rights lawyer, surfer, television scriptwriter — Pat Burgess has crammed a lot of living into his 60 years, so it’s perfectly reasonable, to him, that he should turn those life experiences into songs.

Burgess, who is based in Indonesia, will return on Saturday to his old neighbourhood, Sydney’s Manly, to perform songs from his new album, Ground Zero. Their titles, such as Cambodia, Baghdad Sky and Everything I Am, give some clue to the extraordinary life Burgess has led, at times in the front line of war zones and refugee crises in places such as Rwanda, East Timor and Afghanistan.

“I like to be busy,” Burgess said yesterday. “I’ve been lucky to have different doors open to me and to take advantage of that.”

Son of the famous Australian Vietnam War correspondent of the same name, Burgess runs human rights organisation Asian Justice and Rights with his wife, Galuh Wandita.

That not-for-profit body is the latest of many to which the multi-tasker has brought his legal skills and humani­tarian aid to victims of war, atrocities and dictatorships across the world, often risking his own life in the process.

Now with a young family, Burgess contents himself with passing on his knowledge and experience through AJAR’s training program.

“We focus on transitions to democracy from dictatorships, international law, crimes against humanity, helping victims of human rights abuse such as torture and rape.”

Burgess played music around Manly while studying law in Sydney in the 1970s, but his life took a turn when he began travelling and living in places such as Mexico, Tibet, Nepal and Kolkata — where he worked for a time at Mother Teresa’s hospice.

“That opened my mind to doing ­humanitarian work,” he said.

For fun he crossed Africa by ­bicycle and canoe and sailed the Pacific as a crew member on a yacht. “I probably have a bit of the gypsy adventurer blood in me,” Burgess said.

“My father was a war correspondent who was always away when I was young. I always try and learn the languages where I am. I remember my father, when he was an embedded journalist in Vietnam … he had his little books of Vietnamese language, so I picked up a bit of that from him.”

Recently Burgess, at the invitation of Myanmar’s ForeignMinister Aung San Suu Kyi, co-wrote a television soap opera, The Sun, the Moon and the Truth, based on themes of human rights.

This week, however, his focus is on winning over the crowd at Manly Boatshed on Saturday. “I’m pleased with the reaction to the songs so far,” he said, “and it helps get the message across about human rights.”