Oils play reef-themed set for Barrier Reef benefit

Midnight Oil excavated through their extensive back catalogue to find the best songs related to the Great Barrier Reef, during their benefit show at the Tank Arts Centre in Cairns last Friday night.

The set was totally different to the hits-packed one on their current Great Circle World Tour, even throwing in some obscurities for the diehard Oils fans.

Opening with ’Surfing With A Spoon’ from their 1978 self-titled debut album, others included ’Blue Sky Mine’, ’Koala Sprint’, ’Shakers and Movers’, ’Sometimes’, ’Dreamworld’ and finally ’Progress’ which finished off the show.

“Some of you haven’t heard some of these songs, and that’s the point,” Peter Garrett told the crowd.

The show was to raise funds for Great Barrier Reef Legacy and the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), with a “Coral Not Coal” banner hanging from the ceiling.

Earlier the band had joined environmentalists, marine scientists and media on charter boats Aroona and Flying Fish to sail two hours from Cairns to spectacularly picturesque Vlasoff Sand Cay, which sits in the middle of the Reef.

The visit was recorded to feature in TV and radio specials to air on Foxtel’s MAX and Triple M over coming weeks

Throughout the Tanks Art Centre show, the Oils had a recurring theme – it’s not just to save the Reef but to stop the Adani company’s proposed Carmichael coal mine.

Punters were urged to sign the AMCS petition at the Fight For Our Reef website.

Garrett also hit out at politicians as Tony Abbott and Pauline Hanson who want to ’pull our country back into the dark ages’, and the need for more renewable power.

“Some of us have been talking about renewable energy for a long time,” he emphasised.

He noted that reef tourism creates sustainable jobs in greater numbers than largely automated coal mines and does so without needing to divert a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to an overseas corporation.

Wryly calling himself an ’ancient eucalypt’ who remembered early moves to protect the Reef and the Daintree rainforests 40 years ago, Garrett asked younger patrons to maintain the rage at future anti-coal mining benefits.

“This is the generation that’s got to do the hard work,” he said to cheers.

“We wanted to be able to show everybody that we can’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg, that provides all these jobs, contributes to the economy, is responsible for healthy oceans and gives people so much joy.

“We can’t kill that, we can’t let that go.”

The next night, Midnight Oil resumed their Great Circle set at the Kuranda Amphitheatre in the rainforests near Cairns, before heading this week for sold out shows in Townsville and Rockhampton.