2019 – Kev Carmody – Helpmann Award Speech

July 15, 2019

I first met Kev in the late 1980s at a Rock For Land Rights concert in Sydney. His first record, Pillars of Society, had just come out and he sang a song called Thou Shalt Not Steal which began with the lines….

“In 1788 down Sydney Cove 

The first boat-people land 

Said sorry boys, our gain’s your loss 

We gonna steal your land”    

He played his guitar like a machine gun as he howled, curled and hurled is words into the air. A bull of a man. A man who meant business.

We became friends and I soon found out he had a whole swag of songs – stories of stockmen, drovers and their wives, miners, drifters, warriors, junkies and brothel madams. Stinging polemics that tore strips of the establishment. And hymns, paeans of praise to the land, the natural world and its wonders, all stitched together with rich, poetic language.

The songs didn’t come out of nowhere. Kev grew up in a droving family. His dad second generation Irish-Australian, his mother a Bunjalung Lama Lama woman, her father a traditional man from Cape York in the far north. Kev’s first language was a kind of Creole. As a child he spent a lot of time in mustering camps all throughout the great plains of western Queensland; slept in a swag under stars that went forever.      

At the age of ten he went to school and learnt proper English; and as a young man moved to the big lights of Toowomba, became a welder and was picked to play rugby union for the Queensland Country team. He found his way to university, studied politics and devoured books; started writing songs for his thesis as a form of oral history. And the songs have kept on coming.

His body of work is one of Australia’s enduring cultural treasures, combining oral history, politics, poetry and prayer.

His sense of humour, straight-talking and rapport with all kinds of people have made him a natural mentor and this is borne out by the number of workshops and community projects he’s been involved in over the years. Kev is “uncle’ to many young songwriters and bands in Australia and his music continues to influence new generations of musicians.

In his song Eulogy For a Black Person – a will in musical form – he sings

“Make no monuments or mortal crowns

Or speak my name again when you lay me down.”

I’m sorry Kev, with all respect, we’re going to be speaking your name and singing your songs long after they lay you down.

But for now, please keep our stories coming. 

It is my great honour to present the J C Williamson prize to Kev Carmody!