1989

The landmark Turn Back the Tide concert at Bondi Beach in 1989 is widely regarded as a turning point in the Australian environmental movement.

More than 200,000 people attended the event that included Midnight Oil, INXS, Jimmy Barnes, Rose Tattoo, Joe Walsh, Christopher Cross, the Divinyls, Noiseworks, Screaming Tribesmen, Machinations, Icehouse, Richard Clapton and Glen Shorrick.

It raised $80,000 to help end pollution of Sydney's famous beaches by ocean sewage outfalls.

Musician Todd Hunter from the band Dragon, who lived in Bondi, recalled: ‘We were … thinking what we could do as part of the music industry to fight this problem. We stopped swimming a year or two ago … you can't swim in one of the greatest beaches. People in music are concerned about these things.’

Concert organiser Richard Clugston described how ‘viruses capable of causing meningitis … and fish with high mercury levels have been discovered off Bondi, all due to a significant sewage pipe dumping waste north of Bondi, giving the beach a reputation for effluent in the surf’.

‘Politicians will learn they will lose elections if they continue to pollute the ocean.’ Clugston said the music industry happily supported the concert. ‘We didn't have a single no.’

Singer John Farnham told the crowd he had met the NSW environmental minister and Water Board and ‘they told us that the sewage they pumped into the sea was diluted one part in 10. They expect us to swim in that?’

Marc Hunter, from Dragon, said: ‘We are living in slime and don't like it. Kids today are much more sober and aware of what's going on, they know … the earth is not a renewable resource … If we mess up the Pacific, it's gone.’

Sydney DJ Jonathon Coleman described the concert as ‘Australia’s Woodstock against poo’.

Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett said the concert showed that ‘the conservation movement has come in from the fringes and is now making its claim - which cannot be ignored - to have its values and concerns reflected in the political and social policies of the nation.’

Images courtesy the Sydney Morning Herald and the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.