Over the years singer-songwriter Neil Murray has been part of Australia's musical landscape, he has explored the feelings that arise from the themes of belonging and identity, which have formed the basis for many of his songs.
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"I think if you accept and make peace with where you are from, then there's a sense of freedom from that," he said.
"Cultures aren't static things, you know.
"I don't subscribe to anyone's culture as being a thing that exists in isolation, they are continually evolving and they are organic.
"But I've had a strong desire to do things with Aboriginal people as they've been here the longest and they do things the best.
"Aboriginal cultural heritage is the cornerstone of this country's cultural heritage."
A founding member of the acclaimed Warumpi Band, responsible for 1980s hits such as My Island Home and Blackfella/Whitefella, Murray was speaking to Australian Community Media from Djab Wurrung country in western Victoria, where a campaign has been underway to save 800-year-old sacred birthing trees from a highway extension.
It is the land the award-winning songman was raised in, before he ventured to the Northern Territory where his career in music really began.
But he had to return to western Victoria as Indigenous Australian people in the territory had told him that as it was his country, if he wanted to learn more about it he had to go back, sit down and listen to the land and what it taught him.
There, he took part in healing walks and wrote a couple of songs in Djab Wurrung language, but he also had to reconcile with his physiological, Scottish ancestry.
"People tell me I look Scottish, I've been to Scotland and I love that country, but I'm not from there any more," the 62-year-old said.
"There's a thing inside me that's from this land.
"Aboriginal elders have told me skin colour is nothing.
"What matters is what's in your heart, in your mind.
"That's what's been taught to me, and that's what comes out in my songs, I think."
He has released his ninth original studio album Blood & Longing, which is a line that comes from novelist Cormac McCarthy and reminds Murray of how everywhere he goes in Australia he feels a sense of the old people that lived there.
But he said it is hard to talk about what the songs on it are about, as he feels that limits them.
"I feel what they evoke in a person is their own truths; that's why they're songs," he said.
"When someone tells me this is what a song is about I never refute them: that is the truth to them."
Neil Murray will perform, with his partner Rachel Taylor on harmony vocals, on Friday, September 27 from 7pm at the Murrah Hall, 2989 Tathra-Bermagui Rd.
Tickets can be bought online and are $30.