“It is the most meaningful way to live in this land. If you want to live in and be part of it, you’ve got to be part of that culture – you don’t need to be an Aboriginal bloke to do that,” Murray said.   

Growing up in the land of the Djabwurrung language, west of the Grampians in western Victoria where there was a “brutal dispossession” in the late 1800s, he always felt a connection with Indigenous culture and wanted to find somewhere where its language and lore was still intact. 

“There was something in me, telling me I had to find those people and be with them, it was like a calling,” he said. 

In those days it was unusual for a European Australian to search out Indigenous culture and the question of why did he do so is the most common one asked by people of European descent. 

“Indigenous people never ask me that, I don’t have to explain it to them,” Murray said. 

While the days of the Warumpi Band are “a long time ago now”, they had immense success, releasing such hits as Blackfella Whitefella and Jailanguru Pakarnu - the first song written in an Indigenous Australian language to receive widespread airplay. 

“We fell into the style of mainstream at the time. Our plan was to leave [audiences] with a message they couldn’t forget… the need to talk about the truth of the Indigenous struggle and experience,” Murray said. 

In the early 1980s they would play in childcare centres, backyards, sheds, or wherever they could get people to come. 

Back in those days, Murray said Indigenous bands would sometimes turn up at a venue and be told they could not play because of the colour of their skin, which happened to the Warumpi Band two or three times – even once to Murray himself when he was touring as a solo act due to his association. 

Now a solo artist, Murray’s songs describe an inner landscape to the heart of the nation - a journey that has done much to strengthen Australia’s contemporary musical heritage.

In January, he ran a three-day workshop in the Bega Valley focusing on Dhurga language retrieval, with the aim of using language to develop songwriting and performance skills and will perform several songs from the workshop at the festival. 

“Part of the idea of songs of language is that it helps retrieval and inspires ongoing retrieval,” he said. 

The writer of the iconic song My Island Home will perform at the Cobargo Folk Festival on February 26-28 at the Cobargo Showground. 

Related coverage: