The song Down Under is my friend. It has always been my friend, ever since it was born. I have been playing it for over 30 years, to audiences the world over, and will no doubt play it for as long as I am able. We look after each other very well. I co-wrote this song known as Down Under, with Ron Strykert, sometime in the winter of 1978. I remember because we had played the song at the Cricketers Arms Hotel in Richmond one Thursday night, and on the way home to Arthur’s Creek, just north of Melbourne, with Ron and my girlfriend Linda in the car, I fell asleep at the wheel, and ran off the road into a ditch. We ended up with the car pointing toward the sky, and we found ourselves staring through the condensation streaked windscreen at the stars above. It was cold, very cold, you know that two o’ clock in the morning Melbourne cold, the kind that chills your bones.
The Federal Court ruling of Justice Jacobson regarding Down Under, and Marion Sinclair’s song Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree, came down today. I am as we speak, wading through the 60 page document of his ruling. Clearly, I’ve had better days.
The copyright of Kookaburra is owned and controlled by Larrikin Music Publishing, more specifically by a man named Norm Lurie. Larrikin Music Publishing is owned by a multi-national corporation called Music Sales.
I only mention this as Mr Lurie is always banging on about how he’s the underdog, the little guy. Yet, he is part of a multi-national corporation just like EMI Music Publishing. It’s all about money, make no mistake. He litigated against EMI Music Publishing, who controls the copyright of Down Under, and Ron Strykert and myself, the writers of Down Under. He alleged that we appropriated a “substantial” part of Kookaburra, and in so doing, infringed upon that copyright, and incorporated it into the flute line of Men At Work’s recording of Down Under. It is indeed true, that Greg Ham, (not a writer of the song) unconsciously referenced two bars of Kookaburra on the flute, during live shows after he joined the band in 1979, and it did end up in the Men At Work recording. What’s interesting to me, is that Mr Lurie is making a claim to share in the copyright of a song, namely Down Under, which was created and existed for at least a year before Men At Work recorded it. I stand by my claim that the two appropriated bars of Kookaburra were always part of the Men At Work “arrangement”, of the already existing work and not the “composition”.
When Men At Work released the song Down Under through CBS Records, (now Sony Music), in 1982, it became extremely successful. It was and continues to be, played literally millions of times all over the world, and it is no surprise that in over twenty years, no one noticed the reference to Kookaburra. There are reasons for this. It was inadvertent, naive, unconscious, and by the time Men At Work recorded the song, it had become unrecognizable. It is also unrecognizable for many reasons. Kookaburra is written as a round in a major key, and the Men At Work version of Down Under is played with a reggae influenced “feel” in a minor key. This difference alone creates a completely different listening experience. The two bars in question had become part of a four bar flute part, thereby unconsciously creating a new musical “sentence” harmonically, and in so doing, completely changed the musical context of the line in question, and became part of the instrumentation of Men At Work’s arrangement of Down Under.
Justice Jacobson has ruled, and for the most part, not in EMI’s or my favour. What was born out of creative musical expression, became both a technical and mathematical argument. This ruling will have lasting repercussions, and I suspect not for the better.
Mr Lurie is a music publisher, and today Judge Jacobson ruled mostly in his favor. Mr Lurie claims to care only about protecting the copyright of Marion Sinclair, who sadly has passed away. I don’t believe him. It may well be noted, that Marion Sinclair herself never made any claim that we had appropriated any part of her song Kookaburra, and she wrote it, and was most definitely alive, when Men At Work’s version of Down Under was a big hit. Apparently she didn’t notice either.
I believe what has won today is opportunistic greed, and what has suffered, is creative musical endeavor. This outcome will have no real impact upon the relationship that I have with our song Down Under, for we are connected forever. When I co-wrote Down Under back in 1978, I appropriated nothing from anyone else’s song. There was no Men At Work, there was no flute, yet the song existed. That’s the truth of it, because I was there, Norm Lurie was not, and neither was Justice Jacobson. Down Under lives in my heart, and may perhaps live in yours. I claim it, and will continue to play it, for as long as you want to hear it.
Sincerely, Colin Hay
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http://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2010/men-at-work/feed/0Mining threat: Dharawal land and rock art
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Among the state’s cleanest creeks … Sharyn Cullis and Pat Durman swim in O’Hares Creek in the Dharawal State Conservation Area. Photo: Kate Geraghty
Preposterous that coal mining could destroy this region!
This pool is just like the one where spent the endless summers of my childhood, Heathcote Creek, a tributary of the Woronora River, like O’Hare’s Creek a tributary of the George’s River. I am only recently learning about the Dharawal aboriginal people who are connected to this land.
I am outraged by the proposals to destroy these areas. This must be stopped. I hope that there is a massive opposition to these offensive plans. Please comment if you know of petitions, or campaigns.
Resistance is growing to coalmine plans, writes Ben Cubby.
Full article from the SMH follows:
A VAST new coalmine planned for Sydney’s south-western outskirts will damage the city’s natural desalination plant – the ”hanging swamps” that filter pure water down into the Georges River.
More than 50 swamps in the little-known Dharawal State Conservation Area, south-east of Campbelltown, will be undercut by longwall coalmines, which the mine owner, BHP Billiton, admits are likely to crack the bedrock and drain swamps. Aboriginal rock art above the mine site is also at risk.
The proposal, being considered by the NSW Government, calls for a huge expansion of existing coalmines near Appin, which would lock in mining there for 30 years.
Opposition to the plan is growing, and a coalition of local residents and environment groups and the National Parks Association are calling for mining to be excluded from the conservation area.
”It is literally underground and metaphorically under the public radar,” said Sharyn Cullis of the Georges River Environmental Alliance. ”There should be widespread outrage or, at the very least, public debate about whether we really want the landscape desiccated … sacrificed for the sake of coal.”
The hanging swamps are shallow sandstone bowls, packed with matted sedge, native grasses and banksias that act like a sieve and a sponge, holding water in dry times and allowing it to seep out and feed some of the state’s cleanest creeks.
”I would rather they mined under my own house than in the conservation area,” said Julie Sheppard, of environment group Rivers SOS, whose home lies above another planned longwall panel near Appin.
O’Hares Creek, which flows through the conservation area and provides more than two-thirds of the water to the Georges River, is itself fed by the swamps. ”A total of 226 swamps have been identified within the entire Bulli seam project area, of which the Dharawal State Conservation Area is a part,” a BHP Billiton spokeswoman said in a statement. ”There is some potential for impact but a monitoring and management plan has been developed.”
The company said its plans had been designed to minimise impact on larger rivers.
”Illawarra Coal has not mined directly beneath rivers since 2002, and consistent with this commitment, we have positioned longwalls away from major rivers and streams in the Bulli seam project.”
A detailed study by the staff at the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change found the swamp network to be a ”priority fauna habitat” for several endangered species, including the ground parrot and the giant burrowing frog.
The area also contains dozens of Aboriginal sites.
“Once you take the coal away, there’s nothing to support the sandstone, and our artwork is cracking,” said Alan Carriage, an elder of the Wadi Wadi people.
A June 2009 report produced by Biosis Research for BHP Billiton found that 11 Aboriginal rock art sites in the southern coalfields had already been damaged by subsidence from longwall mining. But the report concluded that “overall there is a low risk of significant impact to Aboriginal cultural heritage values”.
Before damaging a recognised Aboriginal site, a mining company must obtain a “permit to destroy” under the NSW heritage protection system. However Bev Manton, of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, dismissed this process as a “regime to manage destruction”.
She said five permits allowing damage to Aboriginal heritage sites are being issued a week by the State Government, and called for a new regime that gives more power to Aborigines to protect their significant sites.
Details about the BHP Billiton proposal will be aired at a public meeting on February 17.
with Andrew Small
]]>http://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2010/dharawal/feed/0Wide brown land
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http://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2006/more-2/#commentsSun, 26 Feb 2006 22:53:00 +0000Walterhttp://psyberspace.wordpress.com/2006/02/26/more-2/Continue reading →]]>
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror �
The wide brown land for me!
We had to say this at school in the fifties – over and over and the imprinting sticks. I love the place. Went there recently for the Psychodrama Conference in Brisbane, spent a week in northern NSW, driving around, camping, the poem kept rolling through my head, especially when there were floods or sweeping pains. I saw plenty of both while there.
