JOHN PAUL YOUNG leans into the microphone to sing, just as he’s done thousands of times before. The Australian music icon, known simply as JPY, is a king of the stage – a position he’s held for half a century. But on this August day, his auditorium is one without walls. He stands in the shade of a solitary gum tree, his shoes beating time in the dust. Behind him, the flat, burnished land stretches on, punctuated by a sprinkling of trees.
This time JPY’s audience is small compared with what he’s used to, perhaps fewer than 100. But these people have travelled from far and wide to be here, to sit on the ground or stand quietly in a community reserve on the edge of a town called Goodooga, in north-western New South Wales, not far from the Queensland border.
John’s long-time musical director and close friend, Warren ‘Pig’ Morgan, begins playing a portable electronic keyboard, and JPY’s soulful tenor blooms. He’s not singing “Yesterday’s Hero”, or his international smash “Love Is in the Air” – but a song called “The Coloured Digger”.
“He proved he’s still a warrior,” John hollers. “In action, not afraid.” In a way, both the soldier whose story is told in the song and his best friend are here.
John and Warren are performing before a war memorial. Here, on blocks of granite, in a shape reminiscent of a boomerang, is a line of plaques. One reads that this memorial honours “all those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who, from all branches of the military, have served
