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‘Dear Australia: I Want You To Understand This Message. All You Need Is Air, Water, Shelter And Food’
A timely letter from an Irish folk singer who visited New South Wales and fell in love with it, then later watched the area burn in the bush fires.
Have you ever visited a place that takes up a little piece of your heart forever? Sometimes it happens because of something that makes you feel warm and contented, so that you never quite sever the ties that bind.
This happened here in Australia to an Irish folk singer who was touring. His name is Luka Bloom.
He visited in April of 2019. Often, when you are an entertainer, your travels are a whirlwind of performance, and shows, and you see very little of the actual country you’re working in.
But folk singers are an inspired mob. Their songs spring from history, wars and loss, personal experience, from sentiment and despair. They write from the heart, so they’re always on the lookout for a bit of tragedy.
So it came as no surprise to me, a lover of folk music, that he’d had a good look around, and had fallen in love.
“One of our drives was from Katoomba to Sydney, down the coast…