Charlie McMahon
Encyclopedia
Charlie McMahon is an Australia
n didgeridoo
player. The founder of the group Gondwanaland
, McMahon was one of the first non-Aboriginal
musicians to gain fame as a professional player of the instrument.
He is also the inventor of the didjeribone
, a sliding didgeridoo made from two lengths of plastic tubing and played somewhat in the manner of a trombone
(hence its name).
, the first Australian feature movie filmed in colour, was released, and the McMahons, living in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney, were just one Australian family among many who went to see it. The film was notable for being the first mainstream Australian movie to have Aboriginal actors in the lead roles and characters that acknowledged the existence of, and identification with, an indigenous culture. This was confronting for an audience living in a social climate where Aboriginal history, beliefs and tradition were deliberately ignored under the misguided 1950s government policy of "assimilation" and where the only indigenous people they saw on the screen were usually shot by cowboys.
Jedda, in the screenplay, is an Aboriginal girl adopted by a white station owner's wife to replace her own child that had died (coincidentally, the station owner's surname, McMann, is a variation of the Irish surname McMahon). Deliberately isolated from all contact with her birth family and relations, Jedda, is unsure of her identity until she meets Marbuck, a tribal Aboriginal man in trouble with the European system of justice. She is seduced by his intense didgeridoo playing but their elopement into the wilderness ends in tragedy when Marbuck's tribe rejects him for having broken its own laws regarding marriage. Marbuck, spurned by both the old and the new cultures, jumps off a cliff and takes Jedda with him.
The movie was also significant for its presentation of panoramic outback
scenery and its mixture of documentary and fiction (curiously, the destruction of the last reel of the film in a plane crash meant the movie's dramatic climax had to be refilmed in McMahon's home environment, the Blue Mountains).
After the show young Charlie McMahon had been so absorbed by his cinema experience he tried to imitate the gut-stirring didge sound he heard in the movie by blowing into a garden hose and various hollow household objects like vacuum cleaner nozzles.He also developed an ongoing fascination with Aboriginals and their lives an unlikely interest for a four year old as "there weren't any black fellas living near us".
He also took to running away and wandering in the scrub for comparatively long periods. Later, when he got older, he used to live off the land for a night and generally "went native" whenever he could.[1]
During 1958, when he was 7 years old, the McMahon family relocated from the Blue Mountains to the tough outer western suburb of Blacktown
near Sydney, but McMahon still managed to find ways to "go bush" regularly.[2]
In 1962 a single by the British instrumental group The Tornados
opened both his emotional (the melodic A side "Telstar") and his tribal imagination (the heavily rhythmic B side "Jungle Fever").[3]
In 1967, McMahon blew off his right arm experimenting with a homemade rocket in a friend's backyard at Seven Hills
, a neighbouring suburb of Blacktown
. The Sydney Morning Herald
newspaper report of the incident stated that the friend, Ron Carley, had some of his fingers amputated so presumably both boys were holding the cylinder at the time it exploded.[4]
During a lengthy recuperation period getting used to his new metal arm (which, true to character, he wrapped in goanna
hide) McMahon reactivated his earlier interest in didgeridoo playing, this time as therapy. At the same time he concentrated on previously neglected school work. During study breaks McMahon used to relax by going off to the sand flats of the Windsor River with his bongo
playing brother Phil and some mates and the "westie tribe" would dress up in loincloths, paint their faces and have a corroboree
.[5]
With the wild side of his nature given an occasional outlet McMahon settled into study and won a university scholarship, achieving an honorary degree in Arts and Town Planning
which led to him becoming, for a year, a lecturer and tutor in Town Planning at The University of Sydney
. McMahon has said he became interested in studying town planning as a possible future way of correcting the all too obvious mistakes he found in the running of Blacktown. He wrote a treatise on the subject but became disillusioned when he realised the many political and vested interests trying to prevent the ideal becoming a reality.[6]
One fateful weekend at Australia's equivalent of Woodstock, the 1973 Nimbin
Aquarius Festival
, McMahon found himself intrigued by the performance of The White Company an experimental Theatre Troupe featuring a number of alternative culture artists including one Peter Carolan, a 25-year-old actor with roles in Australian TV's Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, The Rovers, and stage productions such as Servant of Two Masters, and Graham Bond's Drip Dry Dreams) [Carolan came from a musical family. His mother played classical piano; his father was a professional jazz musician who performed on accordion, piano, organ, and synthesiser; and his paternal grandfather, Bart Carolan, was a composer and arranger who worked for a time at the BBC
. The Carolan family had immigrated to Australia from England when Peter was 18. At the time his gift for creating flowing melodies "with spine" was noticed by McMahon, Carolan was playing lap dulcimer
, an instrument to which he was attracted because of its simplicity - "a primal drone, a strummed rhythm and a monophonic melody that could change mode by tuning"]. No direct communication between the two musicians was made at the festival but they had both noticed each others presence.
In 1974 a three day arts festival season by the White Company at Sydney's Arts Castle venue included a performance by McMahon. After a productive post-show dulcimer and didgeridoo improvisation session in a dome on the roof of the venue the two players realised they had many attitudes towards music in common: McMahon was attracted to music with "atmosphere" while Peter had become interested in composing music that evoked a sense of "place" after hearing Maurice Jarre
's 1962 score for the film Lawrence of Arabia
. The two players made a vague promise to "do something in music together sometime in the future."[7]
In 1974, back at his day job, McMahon was growing increasingly disillusioned with what he later described as the "too much talk" atmosphere of campus academic life. During one particularly stifling lecture in a dungeon-like library basement with no windows and bare walls McMahon and his assistant interrupted their discussion of map interpretation with the impulsive act of encouraging the students to join them in painting the walls. This behaviour was seen by the University Chancellor as the ultimate act of confrontation and defiance of authority by an untameable teacher and McMahon was dismissed.[8]
He decided to do something more practical so he bought a 40 acres (161,874.4 m²) property in a thickly forested valley on the south coast of New South Wales
with two of his brothers and settled down to building a house the hard way by hand (and hook), all the time learning more about bush craft and living in a natural environment—skills that would come in handy for his next cycle of experience in the desert regions of Central Australia
.[9]
In early 1978, McMahon jumped on stage during a Midnight Oil
performance at French's Tavern in Sydney and added his didge sounds to their song "Stand In Line." This marked the beginning of a friendship that was to last throughout both their music careers (in 1978 Midnight Oil had only played a half dozen or so gigs under that name).[10]
After two and a half years of labouring and living on his diminishing savings he finished his bush retreat and was fortunate to be offered a job working for the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs in the position of a Development Coordinator in the Northern Territory
, supervising outstation work grants to tribal people living hundreds of kilometres west of Alice Springs at the settlements of Kintore
, Kiwirrkurra Community, Western Australia, and Papunya
(the 1971 birthplace of the Australian Aboriginal dot painting revival).[11]
An important part of McMahon's initial work program to supervise the building of a store and meeting place for the local people as the levelling of an air strip for the Royal Flying Doctor Service
. He also helped construct a 400 km chain of windmills and water bores in the Great Sandy Desert
area, many times driving a three ton water truck with only a thrown right hook to stabilise the steering wheel in rough country. Because of his obvious sincerity and work for the tribal communities McMahon was sometimes invited to observe traditional ceremonies held under the resplendent starlight of nighttime Central Australia.[12]
After 18 months he took some time off to gig with Midnight Oil
, where he learned set dynamics and the art of talking to an audience from watching frontman Peter Garrett.[13]
(an Australian alternative music radio station), McMahon sold his Toyota Land Cruiser
work truck and embarked on a two month exploratory holiday to the United States starting in San Francisco
, then going on to Los Angeles
and Fresno
. Some soundtrack work beckoned in Hollywood on a 1981 horror film called Wolfen
but a musician's strike delayed the recording and, returning to San Francisco, McMahon, in the same week, missed his plane flight home and had his wallet, containing all his money, stolen creating the urgent need to find some way to earn a living wage and save for the air trip back to Australia.[14]
He found gigs on the daunting (and taunting) San Francisco punk club circuit and survived spectacularly with an improvised solo act alternating original didgeridoo compositions with stories based on memories of his desert experiences. He also involved himself musically on stage with whoever else was performing at the same venue. One such partnership resulted when McMahon was invited to join Timothy Leary
's 1980 lecture tour for a few gigs. McMahon formed a band with some musicians he met in San Francisco: Mark Isham
, Kurt Wortman, and Pat Cooley. They performed under the name The Yidaki Brothers and they did their own improvised acid rock
take on the subjects of some of McMahon's stories. Another notable combination was with punk electronics group Indoor Life whose songs of urban frustration "buried in cement" were dominated by the sound of a trombone fed through a synthesizer.[15]
After five months of work he found himself earning about 500 dollars a week and quickly developing a fan base but, having reached one goal, financial, it was time to aim for the next one, creative, which for McMahon meant the recording of an album which he felt could only be done in Australia, the source of his musical inspiration.[16]
McMahon returned to Sydney and, in 1981, received his first major Australia-wide publicity when the Adelaide
music paper Roadrunner published a lengthy article with the intriguing heading "This Years Thing? One Armed Didgerdu Players?!? It's No Joke Says Miranda Brown."[17]
As McMahon later stated, "I realised what I wanted to do was work with a good synth player - a very good synth player. So I mucked around with a few guys in Sydney but their range was too narrow then I remembered hearing Peter Carolan's playing ten years ago. He was playing a dulcimer in the bush and when I heard he was now playing synth I knew straight away this was the melody man to compose that key part of Gondwanland." They worked on their first composition, "Pulse," inspired by the sound of a heartbeat.[18]
In the following months Carolan continued to create ideal music settings for McMahon's didgeridoo and expanded on his key image ideas such as an emu
running, a drought, an eagle flying, and a landscape stretching beyond the horizon. Carolan's use of simple but powerful melodies linked to intelligently emotional arrangements openly conveyed in sound those poetic moments "when time stops and the joys, and mysteries of life are felt."[19]
In 1984 McMahon and Carolan assembled a small studio band of musician friends and recorded the first Gondwanaland album under the title Terra Incognita. When released on the small independent Hot label it was a critical and popular success.[20]
In October 1984, shortly after the debut of the first album, McMahon went "on the swag" again, only to be caught up in a sensationalist media drama when a group of nine Aboriginals were encountered near the last of a chain of water bores he had been overseeing between Kintore and "the remotest outpost in Australia"--Kiwirrkurra. A visiting journalist hyped the incident into a biblical "finding of the lost tribe" but the people concerned were not "lost" but had instead "gone walkabout" after rejecting attempts by 1950s Woomera
rocket range personnel to resettle them at Papuna. The small tribal group managed to go through their usual birth, initiation, marriage, and death rituals for decades, living off the natural resources of their desert environment before "coming in" to face the anger, and relief, of their relatives. McMahon's diary at the time noted "Tomorrow [16 Oct 1984] we will find the two men's tracks and maybe they will spend their last night free of the modern world".[21]
In April 1985 McMahon was flown to London to perform with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
on the recording of Maurice Jarre's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
soundtrack.[22]
When he returned a month later an advertisement was placed in a music paper "Gondwana Wana Drummer." Only one reply was received - from an energetic multi - format percussionist called Eddy Duquemin as equally at home on electric pad drums as he was on acoustic "skins'. He joined the live Gondwanaland band and McMahon decided to make the group his full time occupation. Because of his restless stage presence, Duquemin was soon given the nickname "Brolga" by McMahon—the brolga
being an Australian outback bird that is renowned for its dancing; Carolan had already been dubbed "Lizard," although this was later changed to "Professor."[23]
In November 1985, Midnight Oil commenced a 26-date local tour starting in Dubbo with Gondwanaland supporting. As well as feeding them to the mosh
pit, this gave the newly constituted three piece some "tour of duty" exposure [if not exactly the type of audience they were hoping to attract].[24]
In 1986, Let the Dog Out, Gondwanaland's second album, was released. It contained a bracket of aggressive, up-tempo numbers followed by two extended compositions, the first of which, "Ephemeral Lakes," later became a regular choice for meditative ambient music compilations.[25]
Midnight Oil's Black Fella/White Fella tour of remote Northern Territory Aboriginal settlements in July 1986 recruited McMahon with the task of "co-ordinating the tour group's camping and guiding requirements and [contributing] plenty of common sense and a touch of sanity as well" A tour book entitled Strict Rules, by Andrew McMillan, and a video: "Black Fella White Fella," were subsequently released and McMahon features in both.[26]
In 1987, after a year of extensive live work in Sydney and an Arts Council sponsored four week tour of the Northern Territory, the third album, self titled Gondwanaland was released. It had taken many months to record and while the prolonged touring helped tighten the arrangements some of the groups intense live energy was diluted by the usual studio technique of making a separate recording of each member's instrumental part before a final mix. Despite this limitation the album won the Australian music industry's ARIA Award
for best indigenous album of 1988. One track from this collection, the outstanding "Landmark," features a dramatic use of McMahon's invention, the multi-tone, slide didgeridoo called "didjeribone."[27]
In November 1988 Gondwanaland performed during the "Tomita
Sound Cloud In Sydney - Hymn To Mankind," a AUS $3 million, Japanese government sponsored, light and sound, opera spectacular held on Sydney Harbour
as part of the Australian Bicentennial celebrations. The concert attracted an audience of over 120,000 an Australian record for a live music event.[28]
In 1994, after the great leap forward of Wide Skies, McMahon formed a second band, Gondwana, with an emphasis on rhythm and increasingly dominant bass and experimental didge sounds. The band released three albums: Travelling, Xenophon, and Bone Man, with the last two featuring another McMahon innovation: the mouth-held use of a geologist's seismic microphone to amplify the growling subsonic didge dynamics. This approach to music gave McMahon a new audience: the trance/dance crowd. A success evidenced by the placing of a Gondwana tune in the all important opening track position on each of the two volumes of highly successful Australian trance/dance compilation series.[30]
In 2005 McMahon experienced a bizarre case of déjà vu when he found himself, 20 years after his 1985 London Mad Max soundtrack work, in Russia
with a new manager associated with a Mad Max Smash and Crash "theme park." The episode was made the subject of a quirky Foreign Correspondent
report in March 2006. A statement in the video that McMahon was not been paid for his gigs in Russia is incorrect.[31]
In 2006 Peter Carolan released a sampler CD called Overland, collecting examples, old and new, of his various music explorations. Two of the new tracks, "Airwaves" and "Dragonflies," have a strong Gondwanaland feel to them, and even though only samples of McMahon's didgeridoo are used, Carolan's Gondwanaland composing style, abandoned when McMahon left Australia and took to touring international big city venues 12 years ago, now appeared to be reactivated and continuing where it left off, this time influenced by the recent Gondwana albums.[32]
For over 20 years McMahon's assertive didgeridoo playing style has remained an obvious (and usually unacknowledged) influence for many well known didgeridoo players, both black and white. Currently he can be seen performing, mainly solo, on the world music festival circuit in Europe, Japan, Russia, the United States, and Australia. He has two acts: one set featuring the seismic sensor he calls the Face Bass[1]; the other is a playful exploration of the musical and experimental tone possibilities of the didjeribone.[33] In August 2008 McMahon released a DVD storage disc library of over 800 didge samples under the title "Rhythm Organism".
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n didgeridoo
Didgeridoo
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument developed by Indigenous Australians of northern Australia around 1,500 years ago and still in widespread usage today both in Australia and around the world. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe"...
player. The founder of the group Gondwanaland
Gondwanaland (band)
Gondwanaland, originally billed as Gondwanaland Project, were an ARIA Award winning Australian musical ensemble which combined indigenous Australian instruments such as didgeridoo and bullroarer with western instruments such as synthesizer and guitar....
, McMahon was one of the first non-Aboriginal
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
musicians to gain fame as a professional player of the instrument.
He is also the inventor of the didjeribone
Modern didgeridoo designs
Modern didgeridoo designs are distinct from the traditional Australian Aboriginal didgeridoo, and are innovations recognized by musicologists. Didgeridoo design innovation started in the late 20th Century using non-traditional materials and non-traditional shapes...
, a sliding didgeridoo made from two lengths of plastic tubing and played somewhat in the manner of a trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
(hence its name).
Early life
In 1955, JeddaJedda
Jedda was the last movie made by the Australian filmmaker Charles Chauvel. The film is most notable for being the first to star two Aboriginal actors in the leading roles, and also to be the first Australian film shot in colour...
, the first Australian feature movie filmed in colour, was released, and the McMahons, living in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney, were just one Australian family among many who went to see it. The film was notable for being the first mainstream Australian movie to have Aboriginal actors in the lead roles and characters that acknowledged the existence of, and identification with, an indigenous culture. This was confronting for an audience living in a social climate where Aboriginal history, beliefs and tradition were deliberately ignored under the misguided 1950s government policy of "assimilation" and where the only indigenous people they saw on the screen were usually shot by cowboys.
Jedda, in the screenplay, is an Aboriginal girl adopted by a white station owner's wife to replace her own child that had died (coincidentally, the station owner's surname, McMann, is a variation of the Irish surname McMahon). Deliberately isolated from all contact with her birth family and relations, Jedda, is unsure of her identity until she meets Marbuck, a tribal Aboriginal man in trouble with the European system of justice. She is seduced by his intense didgeridoo playing but their elopement into the wilderness ends in tragedy when Marbuck's tribe rejects him for having broken its own laws regarding marriage. Marbuck, spurned by both the old and the new cultures, jumps off a cliff and takes Jedda with him.
The movie was also significant for its presentation of panoramic outback
Outback
The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...
scenery and its mixture of documentary and fiction (curiously, the destruction of the last reel of the film in a plane crash meant the movie's dramatic climax had to be refilmed in McMahon's home environment, the Blue Mountains).
After the show young Charlie McMahon had been so absorbed by his cinema experience he tried to imitate the gut-stirring didge sound he heard in the movie by blowing into a garden hose and various hollow household objects like vacuum cleaner nozzles.He also developed an ongoing fascination with Aboriginals and their lives an unlikely interest for a four year old as "there weren't any black fellas living near us".
He also took to running away and wandering in the scrub for comparatively long periods. Later, when he got older, he used to live off the land for a night and generally "went native" whenever he could.[1]
During 1958, when he was 7 years old, the McMahon family relocated from the Blue Mountains to the tough outer western suburb of Blacktown
City of Blacktown
The City of Blacktown is a Local Government Area in the heart of Western Sydney, situated on the Cumberland Plain, approximately 35 km from Sydney CBD. It is bounded by the Local Government Areas of Penrith, Parramatta, Fairfield, Holroyd, Hawkesbury and The Hills Shire. It occupies an area...
near Sydney, but McMahon still managed to find ways to "go bush" regularly.[2]
In 1962 a single by the British instrumental group The Tornados
The Tornados
The Tornados were an English instrumental group of the 1960s that acted as backing group for many of record producer Joe Meek's productions and also for singer Billy Fury. They enjoyed several chart hits in their own right, including the UK and U.S. Number One "Telstar" , the first U.S...
opened both his emotional (the melodic A side "Telstar") and his tribal imagination (the heavily rhythmic B side "Jungle Fever").[3]
In 1967, McMahon blew off his right arm experimenting with a homemade rocket in a friend's backyard at Seven Hills
Seven Hills, New South Wales
Seven Hills is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Seven Hills is located 34 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Blacktown. Seven Hills is part of the Greater Western Sydney region...
, a neighbouring suburb of Blacktown
City of Blacktown
The City of Blacktown is a Local Government Area in the heart of Western Sydney, situated on the Cumberland Plain, approximately 35 km from Sydney CBD. It is bounded by the Local Government Areas of Penrith, Parramatta, Fairfield, Holroyd, Hawkesbury and The Hills Shire. It occupies an area...
. The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
newspaper report of the incident stated that the friend, Ron Carley, had some of his fingers amputated so presumably both boys were holding the cylinder at the time it exploded.[4]
During a lengthy recuperation period getting used to his new metal arm (which, true to character, he wrapped in goanna
Goanna
Goanna is the name used to refer to any number of Australian monitor lizards of the genus Varanus, as well as to certain species from Southeast Asia.There are around 30 species of goanna, 25 of which are found in Australia...
hide) McMahon reactivated his earlier interest in didgeridoo playing, this time as therapy. At the same time he concentrated on previously neglected school work. During study breaks McMahon used to relax by going off to the sand flats of the Windsor River with his bongo
Bongo drum
Bongo or bongos are a Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of single-headed, open-ended drums attached to each other. The drums are of different size: the larger drum is called in Spanish the hembra and the smaller the macho...
playing brother Phil and some mates and the "westie tribe" would dress up in loincloths, paint their faces and have a corroboree
Corroboree
A corroboree is a ceremonial meeting of Australian Aborigines. The word was coined by the European settlers of Australia in imitation of the Aboriginal word caribberie. At a corroboree Aborigines interact with the Dreamtime through dance, music and costume. Many ceremonies act out events from the...
.[5]
With the wild side of his nature given an occasional outlet McMahon settled into study and won a university scholarship, achieving an honorary degree in Arts and Town Planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
which led to him becoming, for a year, a lecturer and tutor in Town Planning at The University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
. McMahon has said he became interested in studying town planning as a possible future way of correcting the all too obvious mistakes he found in the running of Blacktown. He wrote a treatise on the subject but became disillusioned when he realised the many political and vested interests trying to prevent the ideal becoming a reality.[6]
One fateful weekend at Australia's equivalent of Woodstock, the 1973 Nimbin
Nimbin, New South Wales
Nimbin is a village in the Northern Rivers area of the Australian state of New South Wales, approximately 30 km north of Lismore, 33 km southeast of Kyogle, and 70 km west of Byron Bay....
Aquarius Festival
Aquarius Festival
The Aquarius Festival was a counter-cultural arts and music festival organised by the Australian Union of Students and sponsored by Peter Stuyvesant and held at Nimbin...
, McMahon found himself intrigued by the performance of The White Company an experimental Theatre Troupe featuring a number of alternative culture artists including one Peter Carolan, a 25-year-old actor with roles in Australian TV's Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, The Rovers, and stage productions such as Servant of Two Masters, and Graham Bond's Drip Dry Dreams) [Carolan came from a musical family. His mother played classical piano; his father was a professional jazz musician who performed on accordion, piano, organ, and synthesiser; and his paternal grandfather, Bart Carolan, was a composer and arranger who worked for a time at the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. The Carolan family had immigrated to Australia from England when Peter was 18. At the time his gift for creating flowing melodies "with spine" was noticed by McMahon, Carolan was playing lap dulcimer
Appalachian dulcimer
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings. It is native to the Appalachian region of the United States...
, an instrument to which he was attracted because of its simplicity - "a primal drone, a strummed rhythm and a monophonic melody that could change mode by tuning"]. No direct communication between the two musicians was made at the festival but they had both noticed each others presence.
In 1974 a three day arts festival season by the White Company at Sydney's Arts Castle venue included a performance by McMahon. After a productive post-show dulcimer and didgeridoo improvisation session in a dome on the roof of the venue the two players realised they had many attitudes towards music in common: McMahon was attracted to music with "atmosphere" while Peter had become interested in composing music that evoked a sense of "place" after hearing Maurice Jarre
Maurice Jarre
Maurice-Alexis Jarre was a French composer and conductor.Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores, and is particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia...
's 1962 score for the film Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia (film)
Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the title role. It is widely...
. The two players made a vague promise to "do something in music together sometime in the future."[7]
In 1974, back at his day job, McMahon was growing increasingly disillusioned with what he later described as the "too much talk" atmosphere of campus academic life. During one particularly stifling lecture in a dungeon-like library basement with no windows and bare walls McMahon and his assistant interrupted their discussion of map interpretation with the impulsive act of encouraging the students to join them in painting the walls. This behaviour was seen by the University Chancellor as the ultimate act of confrontation and defiance of authority by an untameable teacher and McMahon was dismissed.[8]
He decided to do something more practical so he bought a 40 acres (161,874.4 m²) property in a thickly forested valley on the south coast of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
with two of his brothers and settled down to building a house the hard way by hand (and hook), all the time learning more about bush craft and living in a natural environment—skills that would come in handy for his next cycle of experience in the desert regions of Central Australia
Central Australia
Central Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs in Australia. It is sometimes referred to as Centralia; likewise the people of the area are sometimes called Centralians...
.[9]
In early 1978, McMahon jumped on stage during a Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
performance at French's Tavern in Sydney and added his didge sounds to their song "Stand In Line." This marked the beginning of a friendship that was to last throughout both their music careers (in 1978 Midnight Oil had only played a half dozen or so gigs under that name).[10]
After two and a half years of labouring and living on his diminishing savings he finished his bush retreat and was fortunate to be offered a job working for the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs in the position of a Development Coordinator in the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
, supervising outstation work grants to tribal people living hundreds of kilometres west of Alice Springs at the settlements of Kintore
Kintore, Northern Territory
Kintore is a remote settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia, located approximately 530 km west of Alice Springs and close to the border with Western Australia. At the 2001 census, Kintore had a population of 691, of which 95% identified themselves as Aboriginal...
, Kiwirrkurra Community, Western Australia, and Papunya
Papunya, Northern Territory
Papunya is a small Indigenous Australian community of about 299 people roughly 240 km northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia...
(the 1971 birthplace of the Australian Aboriginal dot painting revival).[11]
An important part of McMahon's initial work program to supervise the building of a store and meeting place for the local people as the levelling of an air strip for the Royal Flying Doctor Service
Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia
The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia is an emergency and primary health care service for those living in rural, remote and regional areas of Australia...
. He also helped construct a 400 km chain of windmills and water bores in the Great Sandy Desert
Great Sandy Desert
The Great Sandy Desert is a desert located in the North West of Western Australia straddling the Pilbara and southern Kimberley regions. It is the second largest desert in Australia after the Great Victoria Desert and encompasses an area of...
area, many times driving a three ton water truck with only a thrown right hook to stabilise the steering wheel in rough country. Because of his obvious sincerity and work for the tribal communities McMahon was sometimes invited to observe traditional ceremonies held under the resplendent starlight of nighttime Central Australia.[12]
After 18 months he took some time off to gig with Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil , were an Australian rock band from Sydney originally performing as Farm from 1972 with drummer Rob Hirst, bass guitarist Andrew James and keyboard player/lead guitarist Jim Moginie...
, where he learned set dynamics and the art of talking to an audience from watching frontman Peter Garrett.[13]
1980s
In 1980, encouraged by Tony Walker, an announcer from Triple JTriple J
triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
(an Australian alternative music radio station), McMahon sold his Toyota Land Cruiser
Toyota Land Cruiser
The is a series of four-wheel drive vehicles produced by the Japanese car maker Toyota Motor Corporation. It is not related to the Studebaker Land Cruiser car produced in the US from 1934-1954....
work truck and embarked on a two month exploratory holiday to the United States starting in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, then going on to Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
and Fresno
Fresno, California
Fresno is a city in central California, United States, the county seat of Fresno County. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 510,365, making it the fifth largest city in California, the largest inland city in California, and the 34th largest in the nation...
. Some soundtrack work beckoned in Hollywood on a 1981 horror film called Wolfen
Wolfen (film)
Wolfen is the title of a 1981 horror film starring Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory Hines and Edward James Olmos based on Whitley Strieber's 1978 novel The Wolfen...
but a musician's strike delayed the recording and, returning to San Francisco, McMahon, in the same week, missed his plane flight home and had his wallet, containing all his money, stolen creating the urgent need to find some way to earn a living wage and save for the air trip back to Australia.[14]
He found gigs on the daunting (and taunting) San Francisco punk club circuit and survived spectacularly with an improvised solo act alternating original didgeridoo compositions with stories based on memories of his desert experiences. He also involved himself musically on stage with whoever else was performing at the same venue. One such partnership resulted when McMahon was invited to join Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
's 1980 lecture tour for a few gigs. McMahon formed a band with some musicians he met in San Francisco: Mark Isham
Mark Isham
Mark Isham is an American trumpeter, synthesist, and film composer. He works in a variety of genres, including jazz, electronic, and film.-Life and career:...
, Kurt Wortman, and Pat Cooley. They performed under the name The Yidaki Brothers and they did their own improvised acid rock
Acid rock
Acid rock is a form of psychedelic rock, which is characterized with long instrumental solos, few lyrics and musical improvisation. Tom Wolfe describes the LSD-influenced music of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Iron Butterfly, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Cream,...
take on the subjects of some of McMahon's stories. Another notable combination was with punk electronics group Indoor Life whose songs of urban frustration "buried in cement" were dominated by the sound of a trombone fed through a synthesizer.[15]
After five months of work he found himself earning about 500 dollars a week and quickly developing a fan base but, having reached one goal, financial, it was time to aim for the next one, creative, which for McMahon meant the recording of an album which he felt could only be done in Australia, the source of his musical inspiration.[16]
McMahon returned to Sydney and, in 1981, received his first major Australia-wide publicity when the Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
music paper Roadrunner published a lengthy article with the intriguing heading "This Years Thing? One Armed Didgerdu Players?!? It's No Joke Says Miranda Brown."[17]
As McMahon later stated, "I realised what I wanted to do was work with a good synth player - a very good synth player. So I mucked around with a few guys in Sydney but their range was too narrow then I remembered hearing Peter Carolan's playing ten years ago. He was playing a dulcimer in the bush and when I heard he was now playing synth I knew straight away this was the melody man to compose that key part of Gondwanland." They worked on their first composition, "Pulse," inspired by the sound of a heartbeat.[18]
In the following months Carolan continued to create ideal music settings for McMahon's didgeridoo and expanded on his key image ideas such as an emu
Emu
The Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae) is the largest bird native to Australia and the only extant member of the genus Dromaius. It is the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich. There are three subspecies of Emus in Australia...
running, a drought, an eagle flying, and a landscape stretching beyond the horizon. Carolan's use of simple but powerful melodies linked to intelligently emotional arrangements openly conveyed in sound those poetic moments "when time stops and the joys, and mysteries of life are felt."[19]
In 1984 McMahon and Carolan assembled a small studio band of musician friends and recorded the first Gondwanaland album under the title Terra Incognita. When released on the small independent Hot label it was a critical and popular success.[20]
In October 1984, shortly after the debut of the first album, McMahon went "on the swag" again, only to be caught up in a sensationalist media drama when a group of nine Aboriginals were encountered near the last of a chain of water bores he had been overseeing between Kintore and "the remotest outpost in Australia"--Kiwirrkurra. A visiting journalist hyped the incident into a biblical "finding of the lost tribe" but the people concerned were not "lost" but had instead "gone walkabout" after rejecting attempts by 1950s Woomera
Woomera, South Australia
The town, or village, of Woomera is located in the south east corner of the Woomera Prohibited Area ; colloquially known as the Woomera Rocket Range...
rocket range personnel to resettle them at Papuna. The small tribal group managed to go through their usual birth, initiation, marriage, and death rituals for decades, living off the natural resources of their desert environment before "coming in" to face the anger, and relief, of their relatives. McMahon's diary at the time noted "Tomorrow [16 Oct 1984] we will find the two men's tracks and maybe they will spend their last night free of the modern world".[21]
In April 1985 McMahon was flown to London to perform with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
on the recording of Maurice Jarre's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a 1985 Australian post-apocalyptic film directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie, written by Miller, Doug Mitchell and Terry Hayes, and starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner. It is the third installment in the action movie Mad Max franchise...
soundtrack.[22]
When he returned a month later an advertisement was placed in a music paper "Gondwana Wana Drummer." Only one reply was received - from an energetic multi - format percussionist called Eddy Duquemin as equally at home on electric pad drums as he was on acoustic "skins'. He joined the live Gondwanaland band and McMahon decided to make the group his full time occupation. Because of his restless stage presence, Duquemin was soon given the nickname "Brolga" by McMahon—the brolga
Brolga
The Brolga , formerly known as the "Native Companion", is a bird in the crane family. The bird has also been given the name "Australian Crane", a term coined in 1865 by well-known ornithological artist John Gould in his Birds of Australia.The Brolga is a common gregarious wetland bird species in...
being an Australian outback bird that is renowned for its dancing; Carolan had already been dubbed "Lizard," although this was later changed to "Professor."[23]
In November 1985, Midnight Oil commenced a 26-date local tour starting in Dubbo with Gondwanaland supporting. As well as feeding them to the mosh
Mosh
Moshing is a dance in which participants push or slam into each other. They also flail their limbs to breakdowns of hardcore punk and its sub-genres. It is most associated with aggressive music genres, such as hardcore punk and heavy metal...
pit, this gave the newly constituted three piece some "tour of duty" exposure [if not exactly the type of audience they were hoping to attract].[24]
In 1986, Let the Dog Out, Gondwanaland's second album, was released. It contained a bracket of aggressive, up-tempo numbers followed by two extended compositions, the first of which, "Ephemeral Lakes," later became a regular choice for meditative ambient music compilations.[25]
Midnight Oil's Black Fella/White Fella tour of remote Northern Territory Aboriginal settlements in July 1986 recruited McMahon with the task of "co-ordinating the tour group's camping and guiding requirements and [contributing] plenty of common sense and a touch of sanity as well" A tour book entitled Strict Rules, by Andrew McMillan, and a video: "Black Fella White Fella," were subsequently released and McMahon features in both.[26]
In 1987, after a year of extensive live work in Sydney and an Arts Council sponsored four week tour of the Northern Territory, the third album, self titled Gondwanaland was released. It had taken many months to record and while the prolonged touring helped tighten the arrangements some of the groups intense live energy was diluted by the usual studio technique of making a separate recording of each member's instrumental part before a final mix. Despite this limitation the album won the Australian music industry's ARIA Award
ARIA Music Awards
The Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards is an annual series of awards nights celebrating the Australian music industry, put on by the Australian Recording Industry Association...
for best indigenous album of 1988. One track from this collection, the outstanding "Landmark," features a dramatic use of McMahon's invention, the multi-tone, slide didgeridoo called "didjeribone."[27]
In November 1988 Gondwanaland performed during the "Tomita
Isao Tomita
, often known simply as Tomita, is a Japanese music composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements...
Sound Cloud In Sydney - Hymn To Mankind," a AUS $3 million, Japanese government sponsored, light and sound, opera spectacular held on Sydney Harbour
Port Jackson
Port Jackson, containing Sydney Harbour, is the natural harbour of Sydney, Australia. It is known for its beauty, and in particular, as the location of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge...
as part of the Australian Bicentennial celebrations. The concert attracted an audience of over 120,000 an Australian record for a live music event.[28]
1990s to the present
In 1991, Gondwanaland's Wide Skies was released and even long time followers of the band were surprised at the progression of Carolan's compositions. Gone were the earthy good time romps and quiet moments of reflection. Now complex panoramic chord clusters enveloped the arrangements in an almost overwhelming evocation of the sky and all that happens in and under it. This album's multi-layered textures and moods earned the band even greater critical respect.[29]In 1994, after the great leap forward of Wide Skies, McMahon formed a second band, Gondwana, with an emphasis on rhythm and increasingly dominant bass and experimental didge sounds. The band released three albums: Travelling, Xenophon, and Bone Man, with the last two featuring another McMahon innovation: the mouth-held use of a geologist's seismic microphone to amplify the growling subsonic didge dynamics. This approach to music gave McMahon a new audience: the trance/dance crowd. A success evidenced by the placing of a Gondwana tune in the all important opening track position on each of the two volumes of highly successful Australian trance/dance compilation series.[30]
In 2005 McMahon experienced a bizarre case of déjà vu when he found himself, 20 years after his 1985 London Mad Max soundtrack work, in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
with a new manager associated with a Mad Max Smash and Crash "theme park." The episode was made the subject of a quirky Foreign Correspondent
Foreign Correspondent (TV series)
Foreign Correspondent is a weekly Australian documentary series and current affairs program screened on ABC1, Tuesday at . Premiering at on Saturday 14 March 1992, the aim is to give informed information about the happenings in other countries either on the light side of life or during crisis.-...
report in March 2006. A statement in the video that McMahon was not been paid for his gigs in Russia is incorrect.[31]
In 2006 Peter Carolan released a sampler CD called Overland, collecting examples, old and new, of his various music explorations. Two of the new tracks, "Airwaves" and "Dragonflies," have a strong Gondwanaland feel to them, and even though only samples of McMahon's didgeridoo are used, Carolan's Gondwanaland composing style, abandoned when McMahon left Australia and took to touring international big city venues 12 years ago, now appeared to be reactivated and continuing where it left off, this time influenced by the recent Gondwana albums.[32]
For over 20 years McMahon's assertive didgeridoo playing style has remained an obvious (and usually unacknowledged) influence for many well known didgeridoo players, both black and white. Currently he can be seen performing, mainly solo, on the world music festival circuit in Europe, Japan, Russia, the United States, and Australia. He has two acts: one set featuring the seismic sensor he calls the Face Bass[1]; the other is a playful exploration of the musical and experimental tone possibilities of the didjeribone.[33] In August 2008 McMahon released a DVD storage disc library of over 800 didge samples under the title "Rhythm Organism".
On his accident
"It knocked out most of the vision in one eye, perforated my eardrums, knocked out some front teeth. I awoke in a plum tree with one arm missing below the elbow and realised I had to change my lifestyle. I think it motivated me, it awakened my intellect. If it hadn't happened I probably would have left school when I was 16 and just got any sort of job, hung around with me mates ...Blacktown is that sort of environment."[34]On his dismissal from university
"Normally they don't kick people out... For me it was straight out the front gate. And I don't believe it was for simply painting a wall. I believe that the Vice Chancellor was p***ed off with my lack of protocol. I remember once sending him a memo on the back of a pie bag. That kind of thing isn't done."[35]On playing for Aborigines
"That's a funny story. I was with this fella down in Alices Springs and I'd been playing by the river. We were walking back when we noticed this mob of blackfellas in a circle about a hundred yards to our right. They motioned me to play without speaking. I sat down and played a little bit and they started laughing. I'd always had this reservation about my first encounter with top dog players and I thought they were rubbishing me, but with traditional black people communication always happens very slowly and that's how it was. After a while I got to understand that they were pleased at seeing it being played by a whitefella with his own spirit. Aboriginal people say I play walla walla didgeridu. very fast, attack style."[36]On tribal initiation
"The most important thing is the inculcation of tribal values and stories... The older you get the more fulfilled you become. In fact your initiation [only] finishes when you die..."[37]On mystical experience in the desert
"At one death ceremony…I had this feeling that - it was so dark, about an hour before dawn - in that sky there, so clearly lit by the stars - I had this feeling of seeing all the spirits at once of all the animals and all the people that had run in that particular bit of country and …was it dense! everywhere, thousands of them. I didn't know what was going on but I could see and feel all those silhouettes."[38]On the Terra Incognita Album
"Playing the 'didj' is very physical whereas the synthesiser requires a mental input… One is powered by bodily rhythm, the other by an electric current."[39]On the original satellite map cover of Terra Incognita
"A satellite map is a beautiful thing. I ALWAYS look at that first when I open a newspaper because it's a read out of the elements, the currents, and wind patterns that determine our survival."[40]On recording and touring with Gondwanaland
"I've always loved the Australian countryside and the irony about being involved with music is that now it has drawn me into these big studios in the big city. Of course people will still make sincere music and great sounds wherever they might be. In the end what counts is what's in their hearts but I, myself, am very affected by my surrounds. Definitely some of our more fun gigs have been in the bush."[41]On experimentation
"I'll often hear things, melodies and you go to do them on piano and you can't. There are things that you can do where you can sing an overtone over the drone. It's amazing and its a bit like a voice. I'm looking at the theories of soundwaves and extending the range."[42]Unreleased early Charlie McMahon live tape compilation
- 'Long Way My Country Journey Home; Blue Wren At Waterhole; Swooped By Eagles; Spirit Dawn [McMahon]; Trek; Campsite [McMahon / Yidaki Brothers] Recorded San Francisco USA Various Venues December 1980
Cassette
- 1981 - Didge/Synth [cover illustration: an Emu mesmerised by an Eye In The Sky] Hot
CDs
- Terra Incognita - Gondwanaland [Hot / Log] 1984 / 1987
- Let The Dog Out - Gondwanaland [Hot /Log] 1986 / 1987
- Gondwanaland / Big Land - Gondwanaland [WEA] 1987 [LOG] 1993
- Wild Life - Live - Gondwanaland [WEA] 1989
- Wide Skies - Gondwanaland [Log] 1991
- Travelling - Gondwana [Log] 1994
- Tjilatjila - Charlie McMahon [Log] 1996
- Xenophon - Gondwana [Log] 1998
- Over Gondwanaland - Compilation [Latisphere] 2000
- Spirit Of Gondwana - Compilation [Latisphere] 2000
- Bone Man - Gondwana [Log] 2002
- Overland - Peter Carolan sampler album [McMahon on "Airwaves" and "Dragonflies"] [Origin] 2006
Unreleased Gondwanaland tracks
- 1986 - Oosh - The Alice Springs Camel Race
- 1986 - Land of the Lightning Brothers Soundtrack - Ancient Mysteries; Legend; Visiting The Gallery; Land Of The Lightning Brothers; Battle of the Lightning Brothers; Protecting the Paintings; Boomerangs
- 1987 - Ochre Dusk Dance Suite - World's End; Time Flies; Homelands
- 1988 - Trob
Other media
- 1987 - Bedrock [Video clip]
- 1987 - Land Of the Lightning Brothers [Film Australia video]
- 1987 - Ochre Dusk [Original Gondwanaland dance score for Dance North Company]
- 1988 - Sound Cloud Spectacular with Tomita, Sydney Harbour [Gondwanaland performance]
- 1988 - A Big Country - Charlie McMahon [60 minute special ABC television]
- 1989 - Gondwanaland - Live at Kuranda [unreleased 2 hour video]
- 1991 - Nature of Australia [ABC DVD of 5 hour TV series with Gondwanaland score]
- 1991 - Until the End of the World [Gondwanaland appearance] Village Roadshow Film
- 1992 - Didjeridu With Charlie McMahon [dir. Jeni Kendell and Paul Tait] Gaia Films
- 1997 - The Didjeridu from Arnhem Land to Internet [pp. 123–37] John Libbey 1997
- 1999 - Swarm, Sydney Youth Orchestra and Gondwana, Australia Day Lunch, Sydney
- 2000 - Gondwana performance Australian Pavilion, World Expo, Hannover
- 2000 - Gondwana performance Opening Ceremony, Sydney Paralympic Games
- 2006 - Mad Max Goes to Moscow - [ABC TV Foreign Correspondent Series]
- 2006 - The ABC Of Our Lives - 50 Years Of Television - [5 November Australian TV special mentioned that the 1991 Nature Of Australia documentary series, with an extensive Gondwanaland score, has been seen - and heard - by an estimated 100+ million people worldwide]
Source documents
Note: Published information on McMahon's early life is elusive. Many of the press clippings cited are obscure and could only be found as a single copy in a casually collected fan archive. Most of these fan cuttings did not record full or part origin details but these will be added when they are known. In the following list if a date is missing the year the article was written is worked out from other references in the text [if this is possible].- "Art For the Ear" - Bob Hudson review of Terra Incognita, RAM music paper? [Australia] 1984
- "Beds Are Burning" - Mark Dodshon Viking / Penguin Group Australia 2004
- "Blast Costs Boys Arm" - Sydney Morning Herald 1967
- Conversation with McMahon by writer of this article - Sydney - May 1982
- "Charlie's King of the Didgeridoo" by Chris Blanche, unidentified newspaper [Aust.] 1986
- Charlie McMahon Home Page 2006
- Cinemedia Net Home Page "Jedda"
- "Didge Sythn" Cassette cover - 1984
- "Didgeridoo Trance Dance Vol 1 + Vol 2" CD - Music Mosaic
- "Down To Earth Music Highlights Album" - Kay Hartley unknown newspaper [Aust.] 1984
- "Dreamtime Punk" - People Magazine [Aust.] 1986
- Email Replies From Peter Carolan & Charlie McMahon September 2006
- Gary Morris Agency Press Release - 1986
- "How Do You Cook A Kangaroo?" - unidentified USA newspaper 1981
- Hot Records Press Release - 1984
- "Interview 2006" - phone interview with McMahon August 2006
- IMDb Home Page - Jedda - Credited Cast
- "Last Of The Nomads" - the Bulletin Home Page 2006
- "Live tapes" - Charlie McMahon cassette collection USA 1980
- "Look One Hand" by Dave Dawson - unidentified Australian newspaper 1982
- "Mad Max Goes To Moscow" - Foreign Correspondent transcript ABC home page 2006
- "Midnight Oil Live Review" - home page list of MO live performances
- "Performance And Bush Art" by Andy Symaniz - Sonics Magazine [p16] [aust] month? 1994
- Summary - based on a number of newspaper and magazine clipping sources
- "Tune of the Outback" by Genny Coloughlin - unidentified, undated Australian newspaper 1982
- "Tune For The Last Frontier" by Edwaina Shannon - unidentified, undated Australian newspaper
- "The Leaping Yo Yo" by Brian Patterson - Juke Music paper [Aust.] 2.9.1989
- "The Didjeridu From Arnhem Land to Internet" Chapter 8 "Terra Incognita" - Shane Homan
- "This Years Thing" by Miranda Brown - Road Runner Vol 4 No 6 July 1981 Adelaide, Australia p12
- "Wildbird Dreaming" [book review] - The Australian newspaper, unknown date