Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very honoured this morning to rise and recognise and pay tribute to the life of Joy McKean. Joy was born in Singleton in January 1930 and became a very famous early country act with her sister, Heather, the McKean Sisters. In 1951 she married Slim Dusty. Slim had already been on his way as a country star; his first hit, 'When the Rain Tumbles Down in July', I believe, was in 1947. So this was the start of a duo, a team, that dominated country music in Australia for decades to come. In their private life, Slim and Joy had two children: Anne Kirkpatrick, who is a very accomplished recorded country music star; and David Kirkpatrick, who is a doctor.

Joy is probably best known for her songwriting for many songs that Slim performed. She won one of the first Golden Guitars at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in 1973. I remember it very well; I was actually a student at Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School in 1973, and that was the very first Tamworth Country Music Festival. Up until the point where Slim and Joy started to dominate, country music in Australia was considered hillbilly song that was heavily influenced by American performers, and Joy's words and Slim's singing put a real Australian slant on it. Her famous first Golden Guitar winning song, 'Lights on the Hill', was inspired by her driving through New England on a rainy night, with the lights dazzling her as she was in a car towing a caravan. It really sums up their life. They didn't play major stadiums and they weren't on Countdown every Sunday night, but they travelled extensively around regional Australia, and particularly to remote Aboriginal communities. The greatest fans of Joy and Slim were the Aboriginal communities in quite remote locations.

Many of her songs and have been covered by others, such as Lee Kernaghan, Keith Urban, Lee Greenwood, the Wolfe Brothers and even Mental As Anything. Her words are timeless. Sometimes my enthusiasm for country music and the work of Joy and Slim is not shared by everyone in my family or indeed my staff. Now that my car no longer has a CD, we are on the Spotify account. The beauty of these songs is that you can hear them time and time again, and they tell a story. They're entertaining, they're easy to listen to and they are very quintessentially Australian. There's 'Kelly's Offsider'; one of the songs that I think could be a theme song for many in this House, 'The Biggest Disappointment', which goes around and around; 'Ringer from the Top End'; 'The Angel of Goulburn Hill'; 'Christmas on the Station'; 'Wind-Up Gramophone'; and one of my favourites, 'Peppimenarti Cradle'. They are great stories and great songs.

The passing of Joy is really the end of an era. Those who have followed along in the country music scene have a lot to look up to and be grateful for, because they really pointed out that it wasn't a cringe to be Australian. We didn't have to replicate Americans and we didn't have to have big black cowboy hats to be a country star; we could just be Australian. In this place some years ago I pushed to make 13 June a national holiday to recognise Slim Dusty's birthday, with some very strong support from a very small number of people. We weren't successful in that, but I would like to see some sort of permanent reminder. I'm sure that the country music fraternity will do something ongoing to recognise the work of Joy, and also her partnership with Slim, because there's no-one else in Australia who can say that they have published 106 albums. That's hundreds of songs. One-hundred-and-six albums—no one has come close to that.

Vale, Joy McKean, you were truly an Australian legend. Your legacy will live on for generations to come, and I'm deeply honoured to be part of this commemoration in parliament this morning.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'It's a long straight road and the engine is deep. I can't help thinkin' of a good night's sleep. And the long, long roads of my life are a-callin' me'—that's the start of one of the most famous songs, one of the most iconic songs, in country music, and it was written by Joy McKean. As has been said previously, Joy McKean was born in Singleton. Her mother was a dairy farmer and her father was a school teacher. At a young age she learned to play the steel guitar, the accordion and the piano. Her sister played the ukulele.

This is an incredible songwriter, and what has been mentioned and what we love about Joy McKean, who married Slim Dusty, but I will just focus on Joy, is that she was Australian. There was no doubt about it. Her songs—'Ringer from the Top End', which she wrote the lyrics for; 'Indian Pacific', which she wrote the lyrics for—were Australian. They showed that we didn't have a cultural cringe, that we could be our own people and write about our own circumstances, and we didn't have to try to be Roy Rogers. That's what we liked. Joy McKean and Slim Dusty in their tours around Australia would just hook up the caravan and off they'd go. Probably where they had their biggest following was in Aboriginal communities, Indigenous communities. They really had a big following there. People saw them with lyrics that talked to Australian people, that talked to people in outback areas.

When I was growing up—I grew up, obviously, at Woolbrook and Limbri—I grew up with country music songs. They were part and parcel there. A lot of kids—their dads were truck drivers and they really did culturally identify with a lot of the music. On 'Lights on the Hill', there is a memorial in Gatton in Queensland for truck drivers and bus drivers—we think of the tragic people killed lately, unfortunately, by the alleged actions of a person who wasn't driving well. For the Gatton memorial, they asked if they could incorporate the lyrics, because that song spoke to people on long hauls. That song spoke to their lives.

Joy McKean was no fool. She went to Sydney university; she was no goose. Her first time on radio was when she was 10 years old. It was on 2GB. She went on to have a show on 2KY. It was one of those things that a lot people who liked country music tuned into, to hear the music that spoke to them. There is a statue of Joy McKean with Slim in Tamworth. She won six golden guitars in her own right and Slim won every other one. Here's the thing: on some nights it wasn't so much the Australian country music awards as the Slim Dusty commemoration—but so he should.

A lot of people, because of the style of the music, were attracted to it and were attracted to her song writing skills—even Mental as Anything. People could see the wordcraft of this person was something that they could borrow from and utilise. Later on, in the other direction, to be frank, Midnight Oil wrote lyrics for Slim Dusty in one of their songs. I think both of them—and I say this although Midnight Oil has a strong connection to the other side!—spoke on an Australian narrative, and that's why people like that sort of music.

One of the things I think Joy McKean gave us and that I hope we don't lose is that Australian lexicon, that Australian fingerprint in our music. With country music now, at times—not always—I listen to something and I think, 'You're not Nashville!' That's great, if you want to play Nashville—fine. But I don't hear an Australian song there; I hear a country music song, but I hear basically a Nashville country music song. My cousins live in Nashville, so I've got a pretty good idea of how that show works as well.

As I said, this is commemoration of the work of Joy McKean. Obviously she became Joy Kirkpatrick. Slim Dusty's real name is David Kirkpatrick. David came from Kempsey, and Joy came from Singleton, and obviously they were one of the greatest combinations in country music in Australia's history, without a shadow of a doubt. Fortunately she had a good life. She lived to 93. When she was young she had polio, and she was part of the treatment group—I can't remember the name of that nun—which at the time was pretty dynamic and controversial and others might say revolutionary. But obviously that treatment worked for Joy, and she actually went on to be quite a good swimmer as well.

What we get from this is that there's so much to a person. Sometimes you see one section. And I think where she could have been undersold is that people thought of Joy as 'Slim's wife', but Joy was vastly more than Slim's wife. She was Slim's wife and proud of it, and they had long marriage; I think it was about 50 years. But she was quite dynamic from a very young age and all the way through her life. For people in my area, yes, she had an influence on them. Every time you hear one of those songs—without making a total fool of myself by singing one at the start!—if you sing it, people say, 'Actually, I know that song; I've heard that song; I know that.' That's why I sing the songs. They're part of the narrative. I also identify them as talking to me about the Australian experience. As I've said before, 'Lights on the Hill' came from a trip from Tamworth to Warwick and up the New England Highway. Gosh, I don't know how many times I've done that run. The song is about the idea that you always see—a really simple thing—someone who doesn't dip their lights when they see you coming forward. It's this thing that is probably about Australia more than anywhere else, because of our long hauls. Slim and Joy were pulling a caravan, but obviously the empathy was for those who do long-haul truck driving.

So, I hope Joy is with her maker and back with Slim, penning songs and keeping the people around the fireplace behind the pearly gates well and truly entertained at night. All the best, and God bless Joy.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join in this condolence motion on Joy McKean and point out that in 1977 the little town of Sale, my home town, hosted a royal visit—but the royalty was Slim Dusty and Joy McKean, with the Travelling Country Band. It was the first concert I ever went to. It was at the Sale Memorial Hall—Slim Dusty and the Travelling Country Band and Joy McKean in support. And I take up the comments from the member for New England, particularly in relation to Joy's status as Slim Dusty's wife. Without any doubt it is a bit unfair that she would be remembered as such, because we've always had strong women in the bush, and Joy was one of them. It is important to remember the pioneering spirit that took Slim Dusty and Joy McKean around Australia time after time after time. They appeared in small country towns and country shows, often entertaining Indigenous communities. They were, without doubt, pioneers—a travelling country band being prepared to go out there and meet their fans, create new fans and be inspired by new stories, which they would then turn into authentically Australian songs.

I'd encourage anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to listen to any of Slim Dusty's 106 albums to take the time to tune in and hear this extraordinary voice of Australia supported by Joy McKean and her incredible songwriting skills. I'd also encourage people to take the time to go online and watch a documentary about Joy McKean made several years ago by my good friend from Gippsland Tim Lee, the ABC journalist. It really does tell the story of what trailblazers this family were in putting the caravan on the back of the car, travelling on rough roads that were even poorer than they are today and meeting their fans in some of the most remote locations in Australia.

Both the member for Parkes and the member for New England highlighted something that I think is incredibly important about the Slim Dusty-Joy McKean story, and that was their authenticity. They were authentic Australian voices. They didn't pretend to be anything other than Australian songwriters, storytellers and bush balladeers of the highest quality. Some of the songs that the members for Parkes and New England mentioned were also favourites in my household growing up: songs like 'Walk a Country Mile', 'Lights on the Hill', 'Indian Pacific' and 'The Biggest Disappointment'—all of which were written by Joy McKean. They were an incredible songwriting duo, and they were live performers of the highest order.

There is a small Gippsland link which I want to raise today as well. When they took breaks from the road, the family often stayed just down the road from my house in Lakes Entrance, in a little town called Metung. The family had a property there, and their breaks from touring were often spent around the Gippsland Lakes. Slim was known as a keen fisherman. He had good mates down there for many years. For many years, the family spent time around the Gippsland Lakes, so much so that one of their songs, 'The Johnsonville Dance', is named after a little country dance about seven or eight miles down the road from Metung. That song is still proudly sung and played today throughout Gippsland.

It is a great pleasure for members of the House to have the opportunity to say a few words in recognition of Joy McKean and her incredible life. The legacy of their music will obviously live on for decades to come. There is no question that every campfire, every truckie and every country dance will end up with a few Slim Dusty songs at different times. We look forward to hearing those songs again and remembering some incredible pioneers—country music royalty in this country—and we extend our condolences to their family and friends and, of course, the many millions of country music fans across Australia.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The McKean sisters were very famous in their own right before the coming of Reg Lindsay, who married one of the sisters, and Slim Dusty, who married the other sister, Joy McKean. For those of us who love those yodelling tunes, they were arguably the best yodellers in the world at the time. Joy—and I think if he were alive, Slim would agree with me—chose his material. She wrote his material, and she rewrote the material that he used. A lot of the great songs came from Manilla in the honourable member's electorate, from Stan Coster. Stan, like me, is a bit of a rough person, and there needed to be a little 'fining out'. But, if you want to know about Australia, then listen to Slim Dusty songs. My mother was a very sophisticated city person, and she brought us up on Slim Dusty songs. At Slim Dusty's funeral, there were two former prime ministers and a prime minister. There were three ministers. That will never ever happen again.

The first time I went along to watch a show was in Charters Towers. For 20 or 30 years, we had as big a music festival as Tamworth had later on. The singer Sherrie Austin, who ranked at No. 3 in America, got her start at Charters Towers. Lee Kernaghan got his start there as well. When I went along to see Slim that night, I couldn't get into the hall, with 500 people. It's a town of 10,000 people. I couldn't get on the footpath! I was in the middle of the road, and I thought that we've just got to ride with Slim and embrace being an Australian and being proud of being an Australian.

For the Olympic Games in Melbourne, we wanted an image for Australia and so people were in elastic sided boots, Driza-Bones and rough-rider hats. Whether city people like it or not, the essential image of Australia lies in the heartland—as it does in every country in the world, actually. If you want to know about Russia, go to the steppes. I want to quote from one of the songs. It was written by Coster, actually, but rewritten by Joy. He was in a pub speaking to an old returned serviceman, and he went home and wrote down what the serviceman said: 'You say you belong to Australia, my friend, and, like me, you'd die for this land to defend. But let us be honest, it's sad but it's true: Australia, my friend, doesn't belong to you. We've been sold out by the powers that be, to big, wealthy nations way over the sea. They tried to take us with bayonets and lead, but now they've decided to buy us instead. I wonder if the ghosts of the fallen can see the crime and corruption and vast poverty—a lost generation of youth on the dole adrift on life's oceans without any goals. I once had a dream of my country so grand, where rivers outback irrigated the land, with dams and canals in that wasteland out there, and big inland cities with work everywhere. But then I woke from dreaming to reality: Australia's wealth, it goes over the sea.'

If there's a reason why I'm in this place, it is in Slim Dusty's words, which of course were written and inspired by Joy McKean. God bless you, Joy.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy for his contribution. There being no further statements at this time, I call the Clerk.