Icehouse's Iva Davies.
In the 30 years since Great Southern Land was released, the Icehouse song has become something of an unofficial anthem for many Australians.
Icehouse singer Iva Davies, however, says he didn't realise when he was writing and recording it that the song would have the impact it did.
"I had no idea that people would react to it the way that they did," he says. "I would never have picked it as anything remarkable."
The inspiration for Great Southern Land came as Davies and his bandmates were flying to Europe on their first overseas tour.
"It was a long and gruelling tour and I got very homesick and barely survived the experience.
"The other thing that happened was that I had a lightbulb moment where I watched out the window of the plane until the landscape became pretty featureless - lots of plains and spinifex - and I went to sleep.
"I woke up two hours later and looked out the window and it looked exactly the same and at that moment I realised what a vast place it is. The sheer scale of it was the lightbulb that went off in my mind.
"When I came back the first song I wrote was Great Southern Land."
After a break of 18 years Icehouse returned to live performance last year.
This year they are on the road again with their Primitive Colours tour, marking the 30th anniversary of their second album, Primitive Man, and the 25th anniversary of their fifth album, Man of Colours.
The tour performances will feature songs from both albums, but also several of their other hits.
"We toyed with the idea [of just playing songs from Primitive Man and Man of Colours], but there's a line to walk I guess in terms of people who would like to hear something from the Flowers album and other highlights as well," Davies says.
After being off the live scene for so long, Davies says he was surprised by the enthusiasm of younger fans for the band.
"One of the most outstanding shows we did last year was in December we played Homebake," he says.
"What was remarkable was that the crowd, a great proportion of whom were obviously young people, started singing along with the first song and sang every word for the entire set.
"It was quite extraordinary."
BENJAMIN LONG
