SOMETHING remarkable happened at the Ashes Test in Adelaide – and it wasn’t the result.
Before the game began last Wednesday, an 80-year-old bloke sang a song and it brought the house down.
It was a song about who Australians are, how we see ourselves and how we hold true to the things that matter to us.
And it kick-started our recovery from the awful, dreadful, incomprehensible horrors of the Bondi Beach massacre — our fightback from the despair, pain and unfathomable hurt inflicted by a couple of demented IS-inspired madmen.
We can be a weird mob, Down Under. But we are also resilient.
We despise oppression, we look askance at authority, particularly of the arrogant kind, and we like to do things our way.
The right way.
We honour our parents, love our families. We like to be seen as honest, open, welcoming and willing to offer a helping hand to mates.
We call it being true blue.
True Blue. That’s the name of the song penned by John Williamson, an ocker troubadour who is the personification of Australia — laconic, down-to-earth, open and honest.
I’ve known him for years and featured him in a book I wrote about Australia.
He told me he wrote True Blue because, “I’m Australian and bloody proud of it”.
Before the Ashes teams lined up at the Adelaide Oval for the start of the Third Test, someone from Cricket Australia had the bright idea of inviting John to sing True Blue.
There was a minute of silence among the 52,000 people at the Oval, broken by the strumming of Willo’s guitar and the opening, “Hey, True Blue . . .”
This song is peppered with ocker colloquialisms mixed and matched to provoke images of mateship, fairness, colour-blind humanity and love of country.
Everyone knew — and felt — the connection to Bondi and with it a kind of cathartic release that the horror was behind us and the rebuilding was about to begin.
Of all Willo’s work — more than 50 albums and millions of sales over half a century — True Blue is his most iconic.
True Blue, is it me and you
Is it Mum and Dad, is it a cockatoo
Is it standin’ by your mate when he’s in a fight
Or just Vegemite
True Blue, I’m a-asking you
When it ended, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Everyone knew — and felt — the connection to Bondi and with it a kind of cathartic release that the horror was behind us and the rebuilding was about to begin.
Make no mistake, the blame game will go on, the political point-scoring will continue for months, perhaps years, as slow-moving but relentless investigations plough on.
Perfect platform
The Australian and New South Wales governments are changing laws, redefining hate speech (as in the UK) and putting tighter limits on hate preachers and marches.
But the people are ahead of all this.
We are determined that while the Bondi massacre hurt us, it will not define us.
It bloodied the sands of Bondi, but the tides of time and the determination of its people will return it to being a gathering place for princes and paupers, united in a love of the surf, sand and freedom.
John Williamson opened the batting on this process and the cricket was the perfect platform, because True Blue is part of the Aussies’ cherished dressing-room traditions.
Our former top batsman and national team coach, Justin Langer, revealed that after each victory the Aussie team formed a circle, linked arms and sang three lusty songs — Cold Chisel’s Khe Sanh, about recovery after war, Williamson’s True Blue and the 150-year-old slightly ribald chant Under The Southern Cross I Stand, drawn from a ditty by the 19th Century Bush poet Henry Lawson.
Together, they were saying: ‘We, not terrorists, will define who we are.’
Langer says those ten minutes of victorious post-match singing are “what I miss most about being in the Australian cricket team”.
Days after the events at Bondi, public attention swerved away from the horror and began to focus on the amazing work of police, lifesavers, ambo paramedics and ordinary folk who rushed into the face of danger.
Their stories enveloped the Anzac spirit — against all odds we will fight on, put our bodies on the line and refuse to let our country be taken away from us.
As Langer said: “Last week has tested every Australian. We are allowed to be angry, sad and confused.
“Hopefully we can direct our anger, sadness and confusion at those two murderous individuals, not tear our wonderful country and people apart because of them.”
On Saturday, a week on, members of the Surf Life Saving organisation — yes, those blokes in yellow and red you see on TV in Bondi Rescue — did something quite remarkable.
They lined up, shoulder to shoulder, hundreds of them, in a symbol of defiance that stretched in an unbroken curve for more than a kilometre.
For three minutes, there was silence. Salty tears fell on the sand. The only noise was the sound of waves whooshing in, breaking in bubbles on the shore, then receding. And again. And again.
By doing this, the life savers were, on our behalf, reclaiming their land and taking back their unshakeable connection to a lifestyle envied around the world.
Together, they were saying: “We, not terrorists, will define who we are.”
Amen to that. And here’s to a much better 2026.
