The Australian music icon is bringing his 'Winding Back' tour to Warrnambool before calling time on regular live performances.

He assures fans he's not looking to retire just yet, but scaling down.

"It's just a warning that I might not do the smaller venues from now on," Williamson said.

"Before COVID we called it the Winding Back tour but then I got 11 months off and now I'm energised again now," he added with a laugh.

"I'll never retire until I'm not doing the job I want to do, but that will happen eventually. At 75 I tend to drift a bit.

"I'm surprised everything is selling out as quick as it ever has, it's like going back to when Mallee Boy was a huge album.

"It's going to be hard to slow down too much but I'm just warning people that I won't do as many shows from next year."

Williamson has carved his place in the Australian psyche over the last 52 years since he walked into Richmond's GTV9 studios in 1970 with a guitar under his arm.

Little did the Mallee farmer realise he'd make a long career out of singing and performing. His performance of 'Old Man Emu', the first song he had ever written, on Channel Nine's popular New Faces program resulted in a number one single and a record deal.

It also marked the appearance of a striking new talent: an unofficial custodian of Australian stories.

Last year during lockdown Williamson wrote and released 'The Great Divide', a song about the pandemic, and 'Picking Fruit', a yet-to-be-released song about encouraging young people to get out on farms to work.

"It's about getting out and enjoying being out in the country, a bit of hard work wouldn't hurt anybody," he said.

"I don't need to write too many more songs, I only do it because it's fun to do so and it helps me practice because it's more fun practicing with a new song than an old one.

"I've got a very creative place up here above the Gold Coast and I've been developing more things around our cottage and I've really enjoyed it.

"I'm looking over the Numinbah Valley now to the next ridge as the crow flies, where there's a house about the size of a pin head. It's beautiful."

Williamson is no stranger to windy Warrnambool, having played in town on many occasions and even writing a song about the Great Ocean Road.

"I'd say I've done the theatre in Warrnambool as much as any other theatre in the country over the years," he said.

"It's a good theatre and good district to gather people in from. I know there's a lot of bushies who are into the music in that area."

He is playing at The Lighthouse Theatre to a sold-out crowd on Thursday May 27 and returning Saturday May 29 for a 1pm show, with tickets selling fast.

"We're going and coming back, I don't think I've ever done that before," he said.

Williamson has made an art of expertly capturing Australia in song.

Painting lyrical pictures of our unique fauna and flora, landscapes and people, he has encapsulated the beauty, wonder and, sometimes, heartbreak of life Down Under.

From boabs to billabongs and snowy mountains to sandy beaches, the Mallee-born songwriter's 52 albums-including 20 original studio albums-have traversed Australia like a dust-covered road train, deftly moving between larrikin humour and touching pathos.

Perhaps his greatest legacy is making Australians proud of their country and of who they are.

"There's quite a number of songs I never leave out and when I'm in different areas I pick songs that are closer to them in that area," he said.

"I just want people to feel what I feel about the country, I'm not into states I'm into Australia as a whole. That's what Great Divide's all about.

"In my business probably more than the rock 'n' rollers, in the country folk scene you get around the country a lot - inland as well as the coast. In my business I've got to see a hell of a lot of it.

"We've been on all sorts of roads that people wouldn't go on.

"It's really sharing my experiences."

He also released a picture book adaptation of Old Man Emu at the end of 2020.

"My wife Meg gets annoyed because we can never bring enough books, she's in charge of merchandise and had to buy a bunch from a book shop the other day because we couldn't get enough," he said with a chuckle.

With his honours including the ARIA Hall of Fame, an Order of Australia, 28 Golden Guitar Awards, Australian Roll of Renown induction, not to mention over five million albums sold and thousands of shows performed, it's hard to begrudge the 75-year-old a less hectic schedule.

"There's a lot of songs that mean different things to different people over the years; whether it's a song they played for their kids while they're travelling around the country, or relates to their farming experiences, or about a district they know - I take them everywhere.

"The show has experiences from all over the country.

"If I look over the 50-odd years and analyse it there's just so many sections; the first few years I was a one-hit screamer with Old Man Emu for quite a while and doing covers.

"Eventually I realised I didn't want to do anything that wasn't Australian so I'd go into pubs with a little wheel-in stage and stand on top of it. I sat on an old drawer for a seat and filled it up with cassettes and sold them.

"Slowly but surely I replaced covers with my own songs, I recorded Mallee Boy and everything just took off."

In November 2020, Williamson's True Blue was inducted into the National Film and Sound Archives 'Sounds Of Australia', recognising its significance as an iconic Australian song.

"A song like True Blue, people bury their family to the song, it's used by the cricket team when they win, I sang it at the AFL last year... Any song that works for the audience is a favourite for me because that's what it's all about.

"It's very gratifying to know people are singing along and you can see the enjoyment."

Across his extensive discography, he said 'Galleries of Pink Galahs' is perhaps his favourite song of all.

"It's one that means a lot to me, it's about me leaving the farm - I guess I still would have been there if I hadn't written Old Man Emu," he said.

"I guess I was relieved in a way because while it was a great lifestyle there was a lot of heartache involved as a wheat farmer.

"You can do quite well but you have your sad years when you could have been sitting on your bum for 12 months and it wouldn't have made any difference because of drought and such."

He hopes people will come and enjoy the Warrnambool show.

"I'll be well and truly warmed up by the time I get back to Warrnambool," he said.

"I'm looking forward to getting back there and seeing those smiling faces, hopefully not wearing masks because last few shows did audience had masks on their faces. It was a very unusual experience."

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