Great Southern Land

The first time I heard Great Southern Land on the radio in 1982, I didn’t quite understand what it was about. But something in its sound grabbed me: that mix of cold synthesizers with guitars that sound like the desert, that rhythm that never quite fits into any common time signature. The song has an unusual length for a hit of the era—it runs over five minutes in its original version—and that alone made it stand out. Iva Davies used a writing technique called *cut-up*, borrowed from writers like William Burroughs, to craft the lyrics. Instead of catchy rhymes, he sought something more abstract, like a puzzle of Australian imagery: deserts, fire, open skies. It wasn’t the typical song about the country, but an invitation to feel it from within, with that mix of pride and mystery that only a place like Australia can hold.

He recorded it in Australia with Keith Forsey as producer, just after Icehouse—then known as Flowers—began gaining traction outside Sydney. The track was released on August 9, 1982, as a preview of Primitive Man, their second album, and within a month it was already in the Top 5 of local charts. But the most curious part is that, years later, it became an unexpected symbol: it appeared in the film Young Einstein (1988), in a 1989 remix that played on German radio, and even inspired Peter Weir to ask Davies to compose the soundtrack for Master and Commander after seeing it on the screen of the Sydney Opera House. In 2014, the Australia National Sound Archive included it in its list of historic recordings, and in 2018 it ranked fourth in Triple M’s list of “the most Australian song of all time.” Even the cricket team uses it as their entrance music. It’s not just a song: it’s a piece of identity that reinvents itself every time it plays.