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00:00The very first images I ever saw of this country were the ones that were
00:24bent into my living room on the television peace has still not returned to the streets of saigon
00:33australia was fighting a war in vietnam north vietnamese units have charged the hill as the
00:39communists kept attacking by the 1970s it had generated the biggest protest movement the
00:45country had ever seen the execution of a vietcong was 30 tons of bomb it's not the vietcong
00:52but after the last australian troops left vietnam in 1973
01:00the story just seemed to stop it's like everybody just wanted to forget until
01:12one song broke the silence and another only nine broke our hearts
01:21but could these two songs help those who hadn't been to war finally understand those who had
01:34i'm rachel griffiths and i believe that when it comes to understanding war art is our secret weapon
01:42so in this series i'm putting this theory to the test one war and one artwork at a time
01:53because while journalists tell us what happened they left in scenes that are now part of television's
01:58history it's our performance when the song was released it was banned yeah filmmakers peter weir
02:06okay writers the narrow road to the deep north artists i was the only one not carrying a weapon and
02:14musicians if it's too risky to say sing it who help us make sense of it holy this is incredible
02:24art is the magnifying glass and the mirror this was a pub rock song that changed our lives that's what
02:37art can do this is when the war is over
02:49the dead
02:57on countdown tonight cold chisel right well while we're having something to eat you know uh buggy um
03:04i want to ask you some questions if you don't mind no one at this table knows it yet but these two
03:10young artists read a lot of comics will go on to sell over 7 million albums with their band
03:18cold chisel well one thing i just want to say just before you go and last night absolutely
03:23confirmed in my book well maybe the guy in the kimono has an inkling without a reserve
03:28doubt i think you're the best rock and roll band in the country
03:40and this was the song that started it all
03:52you see people singing k-san and everyone's got a smile on their face which i think is really
03:56kind of interesting because you might have had no experience of the war it's just kind of become
04:02this song that's gone beyond the australian experience in the vietnam war and become strangely
04:08this anthem released in 1978 k-san is written from the perspective of a restless vietnam veteran
04:32i think the really weird thing about this song is i only recently realized that k-san was a battle that
04:38australians didn't have troops on the ground
04:43this particular song was came from a certain ignorance about the war because i i had no idea
04:51on a rainy afternoon that there were no australians at k-san i was just writing
04:58neither songwriter don walker or singer jimmy barnes had ever been to vietnam
05:03but they knew young men who had k-san really captures the story of that post vietnam
05:12coming home where did that occur to you as something that needed to be sung about
05:17this particular song was came from my rural background i had gone from a kid on a very small farm
05:27where other kids typically went to vietnam to uh being on a university campus where all my city friends
05:36were getting locked up for being in anti-war marches so then you get this disconnect it's a song about um
05:45a guy after war yeah people who went to vietnam they were sent back and and and suddenly they were the
05:53first people who'd represented us as soldiers who weren't sort of welcomed home as heroes
06:03when the war began many australians were in favor of supporting america's war
06:08we were told it would prevent south vietnam and the rest of southeast asia falling to communism like dominoes
06:19some 60 000 australian troops fought in the war and somehow when he was singing k-san
06:32and it's only all the vats could understand jimmy barnes seemed to be one of them
06:38long forgotten do you remember the feeling in the early days of seeing the song of you becoming that
06:49guy because that's not your story no but i was running away from a different war not my whole life
06:56you know like that same uneasiness and and not fitting in anywhere from trauma and from fear and
07:10all that sort of stuff i could sing those lyrics with venom from the start
07:21as their debut single k-san was the band's first attempt to get played on commercial radio
07:31though they already had thousands of rowdy fans from their live shows
07:36at the time people responded well to it straight away but when the song was released it was banned
07:41yeah made a made a big thing tell me about that moment
07:45apparently there's a few um lyrics in the song that aren't no good my recollection is that 2sm was
07:55the biggest station in in the country at the time but at the time it was owned by the catholic church
07:59i think and they took offense to the lyrics uh the legs were often open their minds were always closed
08:04that was that's what bothered them there wasn't anything about you know the atrocities of war
08:16but of course the quickest way to make a song successful is to ban it and of course it took
08:19on a life of its own and it still is one of the most played songs on australian radio to this day
08:24so that story has been with us and been part of the fabric of who we are as australians for decades
08:30and that's something that not a lot of art can lay claim to and i think that's the beauty of a
08:37of a good lyric is that people go oh yeah yeah i'm i know this song it's about me you know something i feel
08:46singer barnes
08:52also just a moment for barnes's voice holy moly
08:57for australian actor kate mulvaney case san is more than an anthem it's personal oh my god this
09:06song that's always been part of my consciousness like that's my dad growing up kate knew little
09:12about her dad's wartime experience in vietnam it was like the words he's a vietnam bedroom be careful
09:20he's been in vietnam that was the kind of thing my dad was very very good to me as a kid but growing up
09:29he was having white outs they're called which is just a loss of time
09:35he had horrific nightmares the bed would be drenched with sweat and i just wanted to say dad
09:50what happened
09:54but soldiers don't talk
09:59and that's where years later case san comes in
10:04i was driving across the nullable with my dad i throw on a song i was country wa girl so i grew up on
10:12pub rock and i threw on case san
10:20i said do you know this song he said yeah kind of and i said listen to it
10:28how there were no heroes in 1973 and he went so quiet
10:39and he said play it again
10:44and i played it again and we listened to it play it again play it again and he played it seven times in a
10:51array and he found through these incredible don walker lyrics and barnes's voice his story
11:12for the first time felt like i had a conversation with my father through someone else's words
11:21it turns out kate's dad denny never chose to fight in vietnam
11:27inside here today were 181 marbles representing birthdays
11:33from 1965 any 20-year-old man whose birthday was drawn from this lottery could be sent to fight
11:41overseas
11:49over 15 000 20-year-old men were conscripted to fight in vietnam
11:56a daunting prospect for those approaching caller page
12:01i remember went from my number coming up and i was sort of thinking what would i do because you
12:05know i was quite happy to fight in the street but i didn't fancy going to war
12:08i had a couple of mates that had gone to vietnam in the 60s and for one of them it didn't end up well
12:17when he came back and and when you're seeing that and realize what you're going to be and you're going
12:22to be conscripted into it wasn't like rah rah rah let's go and fight for our country it was holy hell
12:27this is the area where most of the australians were based
12:42and i've come to walk in their footsteps with their recently recorded stories
12:48we were being watched all the time you never knew who was an enemy and who wasn't we knew them were mines
12:59but we had no idea where they were then i heard the bang
13:07rush of air and i feel them up in the air thump on the ground
13:13when you listen to those first-hand accounts and walk through the type of terrain that the australian
13:22soldiers were patrolling through the idea that any step could be your last
13:29you know you're being watched but you can't see them but also if you've been that alert for such a
13:36long period of time never knowing where your enemy is and i think that constant vigilance we see in
13:45k-san what that does to a guy when he comes home
13:54there's something immensely powerful about k-san i mean beautiful and very incisive and instructive
14:03so i think k-san kicked the door open john schumann and his band red gum would soon release a song
14:10that was almost a prequel to k-san it was about the innocent boy who went to vietnam rather than the
14:18haunted man who came home but they were the last people you'd expect to be writing from a soldier's
14:25perspective we came from you know the the left side of politics red gum officially described
14:35themselves as a political folk rock band all of whom were totally opposed to the war in vietnam
14:43although returning vets had been hailed as heroes in the early days of the conflict
14:48as the years passed tv brought war's brutal reality into living rooms like mine for the first time
14:58and public outrage led to the biggest protest movement the country had ever seen
15:05i think that the problem was when it's on television and we're actually seeing the absolute horrors mostly
15:11unnecessary horrors of war it's so easy to just point the finger at the guy who's come back or the woman who's
15:17come back i mean i think part of what drove me um to to write the song was when those soldiers
15:28marched and people threw bloodstained stuff at them i thought that was appalling
15:37civilians were very confused about where you put your hatred so i said i really want to write a song
15:45about vietnam and vietnam veterans but i don't nobody will talk to me
15:52so when john's new brother-in-law mick turned out to be a vietnam vet he seized the moment
15:59to my surprise and everybody else's surprise he said yes
16:04the pair ended up talking for hours and john recorded it all i'd been playing
16:11those cassettes uh on my walkman and this sort of like got into my head almost subconsciously
16:20i went out in this tiny little backyard in station street carlton i had on my guitar a cup of coffee
16:28and i wrote i was only 19 in about 15 minutes wow you put your pen down do you kind of go i think i
16:37might be on to something sort of i didn't have any idea of you know how powerful this song was going
16:44to be or where it was going to go i had no idea here's the man you want
16:49great job
17:04politics and propaganda aside red gum has certainly hit a nerve with ex-servicemen all over the country
17:11i'm sure i'm sure anybody who hears that song has been in vietnam it'll sound a chill down his back
17:16that song
17:25here was a song that veterans could relate to because it told a story about one disastrous day
17:41three platoon of the 6th battalion the royal australian regiment was involved in a mine
17:45explosion near the long high mountains in southern fuktuwi province this week
17:49now john schumann's brother-in-law mick was actually here that day and it's
17:53the details that he recounts that really brings the song to life
17:59frankie kicked a mine day that mankind kicked the moon god help me
18:08he was going home in june
18:10the m26 landmine the jumping jack that red gum sing about actually detonated right here on this spot
18:27one man was killed another 18 were wounded including frankie from the song
18:40of course the long shadow of this war stretches beyond those that fought in it
18:48by the war's end around two million vietnamese civilians had lost their lives
18:56and when communist forces seized south vietnam in 75
19:02almost two million more would be forced to flee
19:05they left him scenes that are now part of television's history
19:14among them were the parents of hip-hop artist min yuen aka chong ali
19:24today he writes about the long tale of the war but when he was an 80s kid in this neighborhood
19:31k-san and only 19 filled the airwaves
19:36this one hits this one hits
19:43i love the songwriting in this like as far as lyrically
19:46and denny saw the passing out paraded paka panyol
19:52names places from cadets it's so visual
19:56from the paper shows us young and strong and clean god built me
20:04imagine being 19. i was only 19. going through this it does such a good job of representing
20:11um you know the australian perspective and a soldier's perspective but i guess whatever i can
20:20do through my art to contribute to the other side of that as well you know to sort of round out the
20:25picture um yeah that's what my goal is yeah i want to hear some so can you tell this is um the song
20:34goodbye is basically um me telling the story of my parents coming to this country
20:56i guess my primary goal with it is to tell the story right to tell and carry the story and
21:04leave a mark a tiny young with tens of thousands of refugees and all of them were viet with some
21:10former ptsd your family didn't just lose the war they lost a country yeah yeah the reason why i think
21:22we still feel the impact of the war is because we are still displaced it's like you're sort of stuck
21:28in between these worlds i love doing this one live it's so much fun what do you think the power of art
21:49like where does it lie for you we have an opportunity especially in in with rap music
21:56to tell our story in our language in the way we choose to do so so i think art is such a good
22:03vehicle for that to you know bring everybody together some songs just have a unique alchemy that strikes a
22:11common chord i'd like to single out one record and that was i was only 19 by red gum
22:26i was only 19 stayed in the charts for four months
22:32i've always thought that buying that single was ordinary australian saying you know we're sorry
22:39we're sorry we didn't welcome you home i was only 19. the tone of john's voice is both it's of
22:54acceptance but also shock and dismay it's like hang on a minute i was a kid you threw me into there as a
23:02kid thank god red gum put those words in that song and thank god don walker put that energy
23:12into case and because without those songs and without those references the conversations within
23:17our family wouldn't have started which means we wouldn't have gone outside the family to say hey
23:22to our governments we need we need to talk
23:25all these vietnam veterans who had not shared the fact that they had been in vietnam with anybody
23:33else outside their family actually felt suddenly empowered to be able to declare themselves as
23:40as vietnam veterans can you tell me doctor why i still can't get to sleep night time's just a jungle
23:49dark and a barking m16 and if you hadn't been so specific like if these details hadn't have somehow
23:57resonated and he made all these guys go i'm not alone i'm not alone how does he i thought it's just me
24:04has this guy know me it's crazy gaining strength in numbers vietnam vets began agitating for counseling
24:15health services and recognition the scars still run deep so the veterans themselves have organized a
24:22welcome home parade through the streets of sydney to replace the one they never had
24:33an estimated 110 000 people thronged the streets of sydney
24:47and what was it like to play that day oh it was extraordinary i remember very clearly
25:06sitting in the back of a cab and i saw the march was underway and had a bit of a weep very emotional
25:17mum and dad and denny saw the passing out paraded pucker panyol
25:24it was a long march from cadets and frank was in a wheelchair at the time and his kids wheeled him on stage
25:31while i'm playing this thing you know that was a powerful moment for me to realize that you know
25:49it had such an effect in such a deeply personal way there's me and me slouch hat with me slr and greens
25:59god help me
26:03i was only 19
26:11welcome home
26:12do you think your song was part of that even happening at all i would like to think the welcome
26:27home march could have happened and should have happened without 19 but i think what 19 did
26:34was demonstrate to all of us that you can oppose a war that our government gets us into if that's what
26:43your conscience demands of you but it doesn't mean that you don't support and respect the servicemen
26:50and women that our government send to fight that war war often asks us to think in black and white
27:01but it's art that invites us to see all the colors in between
27:13this was a pub rock song that changed our lives
27:15that's what art can do two iconic songs changed the conversation that the australian public could
27:27have about the experience of those that fought in vietnam and the war they brought home with them
27:33you and i've both been artists for for a very long time and probably started with a lot of idealism
27:42about the power of storytelling and art to change the world
27:45do you still believe that yeah i do don't ever ever tell me that songs can't change the world
28:02next time the official war artists can be as political as they want art that pushes the boundaries
28:09this is incredible oh and reveals the true cost of our most recent war
28:15this stopped our politicians in their tracks they miss you every moment of every day
28:21oh my god
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