Goanna's Shane Howard has lost none of his energy as he plots a return to the stage, celebrating 40 years since Spirit of Place was released.
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The band will play the Wendouree Performing Arts Centre on November 6, part of a massive nation-wide tour, supported by Neil Murray from the Warumpi Band.
Spirit of Place featured perhaps the band's most beloved song, 'Solid Rock' - as well as standing the test of time as one of Australia's greatest pub rock singalongs, it's a powerful battlecry for Indigenous land rights.
Howard said he distinctly remembered how the song came together, even after all these years.
"I wasn't naive to what was going on in the country," he said, of his youth in south-west Victoria.
"I can draw a line from being influenced by Bob Dylan at 10 years of age, I can draw a line between Paul Revere and the Raiders and 'Cherokee Nation', draw a line between Teddy Egan's 'Gurindji Blues' - the songs pulled back at me."
As a young man, Howard said he hitchhiked from Melbourne up the east coast, meeting Indigenous communities.
"And I had a more mature - well, you know, a young man's understanding that things were really quite wrong in this country, particularly in Queensland," he said.
"So I understood politically, that there was a great injustice in this country - what I'd come across was essentially East Coast logic, or thinking, and that was where colonisation has impacted the most historically, and where people have lost their song, their dance, their language, to a large extent, it been deeply impacted by the colonial imposition."
It was a trip to Uluru that truly inspired the song. "I really went deep, to go looking to the heart of the country, for the soul of the country," he said.
"I wanted to know, if culture was still practiced, and people still speak language, were the traditional songs and dances still a thing, and I found that by almost just a quirk of coincidence - I happen to intersect when I arrived with a group of people from the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) lands, who had gone back to Uluru to reconnect with their ancestral country.
"And they set up a little canvas tent near the climb, to sell artifacts to try and make a bit of capital, and also to reconnect with that country.
"One of the first things they did was a song and dance, and I was able to witness that, and it was a profoundly moving experience, you know, being a shadow of a rock, the sun going down, the moon rising out of the back, the stars, but that incredible feeling of the 'you're of that place'.
"This deep, deep cultural reality that was still alive in their country."
Howard knew he was coming from an outsider perspective, but he said the experience touched "something very old, very ancient".
"Something very deep that went right right down for 10,000 years, 1000s of generations. And I realized I knew very little," he said. "It really began a journey for me that's continued my entire life - and yeah, the song that spawned from that was really 'Solid Rock'."
That said, the song went through a few iterations before its release in 1982.
"I also went back after that experience in Alice Springs, where I saw the racism, I saw the neglect, the abuse, alcoholism, the despair - and it became an angry song," he said.
"And I asked people, I guess, the listener, to imagine standing on the shore one day when the aliens arrive and just take over your country.
"I didn't think it would be commercially successful, and I don't the record company did either. But I thought strongly about it being the first thing we made as a statement by the band."
Tickets are on sale through the band's website.
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