Beach to Birdsville, Kilbey goes under the Milky Way

Church frontman Steve Kilbey has been opening his mind to new music frontiers, the latest being the Big Red Bash.

Hands up who wants to go to the outback? Not Steve Kilbey, but he’s going anyway. Picture: John Feder

In his heart, Steve Kilbey is a coastal man. The singer, songwriter and bassist of rock band The Church lives four streets from the beach at Coogee, and submerges himself in the ocean every day.

Yet next week, he’ll be joining thousands travelling to Australia’s red centre for the Big Red Bash, a music festival outside the tiny western Queensland town of Birdsville.

For Kilbey, the desert locale wasn’t exactly part of the attraction. “It’s not my ambition to see the big red interior of Australia,” he said. “I’m not jazzed about the location, or about getting there — but I’m jazzed about doing the gig. To be a part of a big festival, playing to a lot of people? That appealed to me.”

Since it began in 2013 as a John Williamson concert for about 500 people in the shadow of a sand dune known as Big Red, the winter event has become a significant driver of outback tourism.

Midnight Oil are the headliners.

“Anyone who said they were going to start off a music festival and get 10,000 people out into the desert near Birdsville would have to have rocks in their head, really,” Big Red Bash founder Greg Donovan laughed.

“It’s just so unlikely.”

Yet that number is what Donovan is expecting to accommodate from Tuesday next week, when the first night of live entertainment begins.

Last year’s program was headlined by John Farnham and attracted about 9000 tourists, while next week’s event — headlined by evergreen rockers Midnight Oil, in their only major Australian show this year — is an even bigger lure for the festival’s middle-aged demographic. On a line-up also featuring country singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers and Melbourne rock act The Living End, Kilbey claims he’ll be a fish out of water, not least because of his coastal preferences.

Kasey Chambers will also be performing.

Yet after the promoter made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, the musician is heading into the desert he’s thus far managed to avoid. Having recently performed in Israel after years of resistance, he’s open to changing his mind.

“I was totally wrong about what I thought Israel was,” said Kilbey. “I had the biggest ball and blast that I’ve ever had, and I didn’t want to leave.

“It could be that’s what I’ll say about the Big Red Bash, and next week I’ll be moving from Coogee to Birdsville.”