Song · Icehouse
“Great Southern Land” by Icehouse
From the album Primitive Man (1982)
“Great Southern Land” by Icehouse appears on 2 radio countdowns from 2 stations between 2018 and 2025. It was first released in 1982 on the album Primitive Man. Its best result is #4 on the Triple M Ozzest 100 (2018).
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Video from YouTube (Pumpkin Priest). Pressing play loads YouTube's player. Watch on YouTube
"Great Southern Land" was the lead single from Primitive Man, the second studio album by Icehouse, released on 9 August 1982, and it's a strange, brooding portrait of a whole continent. Iva Davies, the band's singer and lead guitarist, wrote it, piecing the words together with the cut-up method William Burroughs made famous, partly as an answer to Men at Work's "Down Under", which he felt leaned on clichés about Australia. Over five minutes long on the single, unusually long for a radio hit, it still went to number five at home.
The original video was shot in a disused quarry in Wahroonga, the band lit by camp fires after dark. Triple M's listeners named it the band's most popular song in 2007, the national film and sound archive added it to its Sounds of Australia list in 2014, and the Australian cricket team walks out to it at home.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 4 | Triple M | Triple M Ozzest 100 (2018) | 100 |
| 2025 | 35 | Triple J | Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs (2025) | 100 |
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