SAVE THE KIMBERLEYS
BARNES IN REBEL BUSK
Woodside's new chief executive, Peter Coleman, began his new job yesterday and received a huge good-luck whack across the ears from leading Australian rock musicians. They took to city lunch-time streets across the country for a ''rebel busk'' against the company's $30 billion Browse Basin gas project north of Broome. In Market Street, Sydney, Jimmy Barnes joined Backsliders Rob Hirst and Dom Turner, while former Goanna lead singer Shane Howard teamed with Bart Willoughby, Tonchi McIntosh and Andy Reid in Melbourne's Lonsdale Street. In Perth, John Butler played in St Georges Terrace, while Steve, Alan and Naomi Pigram busked in Broome. Hirst's involvement is of little surprise. Twenty-one years ago he was drumming with Midnight Oil when the band made their stand outside Exxon Mobil in New York as the company's catastrophic oil spill off the Alaskan coast alerted the world to the dangers of oil pollution. Howard, who has retired to Victoria's west coast, said the ''rebel busk'' aimed to highlight plans by government and miners to industrialise the Kimberley that jeopardised the region's environment, community and culture. Barnes said he had spent a lot of time in Broome with Aboriginal friends and decided to get involved. ''We just decided we all had to at least make a statement and try in our own little way to make people think about the alternatives.''
The Diary - Sydney Morning Herald
Damien Murphy
May 31, 2011
