Fronted by Killarney songman Shane Howard, the tour will mark 40 years since Spirit of Place.

It will be the group's first full-band shows in more than 20 years. The band emerged from Geelong during Australian rock's golden age in the 1980s and helped forge a new national identity.

Before Midnight Oil and Paul Kelly addressed similar issues, the iconic Solid Rock stoked a fire for Indigenous rights that hasn't gone out, while the latter anthem Let The Franklin Flow was a call to arms for the emerging environmental movement.

Soulful, lyrical, brimming with musicality and creative volatility, Goanna mixed classic folk song craft with spirited and rootsy rocking, helping to establish a musical thread that remains vital and ubiquitous in Australian music today.

"What is a kid from Dennington, from a town of 300 people back then, doing writing a song like Solid Rock?" frontman Shane Howard said.

"Aboriginal people were a fact of life growing up in and around Warrnambool between the old Framlingham Mission and the old Lake Condah Mission - Aboriginal people were our reality.

"We saw that hardship, we saw the racism.

"My mum and dad were very, very aware people in terms of social justice and they very much shaped our thinking as a family."

In 2022 the core trio of Goanna - Shane Howard, Rose Bygrave, and Marcia Howard - together with Spirit of Place guitarist Graham Davidge and several special guests, embark on a new journey; paying homage to their classic songs and reigniting the Goanna spirit once more.

Solid Rock remains one of the most resonant songs in Australian music.

Howard opened the nationally-broadcast January 26 live concert this year, performing the song with master didjeridu/yidaki player William Barton, Emma Donovan, the Kari Singers and Iwiri Choir, along with a traditional Ngintaka (Goanna) Inma (song and dance) led by Anangu cultural artists, Tapaya Edwards and Rene Kulitja.

The Goanna Band, as they were originally called, first appeared in south-west Victoria in 1977.

It had a commitment to the planet and its people and a passionate romanticism that rubbed against both the grog-sodden debauchery of beer barn rock and the cool cynicism of the burgeoning new wave.

Indeed, its global outlook reflected the roots in the alternative coastal surf community, while its political and social engagement seemed more at home on university campuses.

Howard recalls early tours throughout the south-west and beyond.

"Once Goanna got moving we would regularly come back to Lady Bay which was a great music venue at the time," he said.

"I remember we played the Capitol Theatre in Warrnambool which felt very much like a triumphant homecoming, as well as Portland.

"Aunty Tina Saunders used to come to those shows. She's a very respected Elder and she said 'come to the mission, we'll talk and play music' and in many ways, she opened the door for me into Aboriginal Australia and I'm forever grateful for that."

After securing the support spot on a national tour by American singer-songwriter James Taylor as an unsigned band - unheard of in those days - Goanna signed to Warner Music in 1982.

With the production assistance of Australian folkie Trevor Lucas Goanna recorded the classic debut album Spirit of Place that year.

For the album, Goanna were Shane Howard, his sister Marcia Howard on backing vocals, Rose Bygrave on keyboards, Peter Coughlan on bass guitar, Graham Davidge and Warwick Harwood on guitars, Robbie Ross on drums and the late Mick 'The Reverend' O'Connor on keyboards.

Released in September 1982, the arresting first single Solid Rock struck a chord immediately with its rattling drums, dynamic chording and anthemic chorus.

Its use of didjeridu - played by Billy Inda of Indigenous rock-reggae outfit No Fixed Address and Bobby Jabanungga - made it recognisably Australian.

But its lyrical concerns would have the greatest lasting impact.

In fact, the record company had been worried it was too confronting.

The song came to Howard after he had a "spiritual awakening" which lit a "fire in his belly" about injustices suffered by Australia's Indigenous peoples.

The awakening came on a camping trip to Uluru in 1981.

"I reassessed my whole relationship with the land and the landscape and understanding that we had come from somewhere else, and we had disempowered a whole race of people when we arrived," Howard said.

"I realised that this country that I grew up in, that I thought was my country, wasn't."

Solid Rock quickly reached number one nationally and remained in the top 50 for 26 weeks. Spirit Of Place followed in December.

"It's a heavy song, it talks about genocide and I didn't think it would be commercially acceptable or popular for radio," Howard said of Solid Rock.

"But I felt very strongly about it being the first thing that the band released and I thought we might get a bit of airplay and get to travel to Sydney.

"The marketing people at Warner didn't want to release it, but I stuck to my guns and eventually the head of the company, he said to me 'Shane, the artists, the poets, the painters, the writers - they paint it and sing it and 15 years later, it's legislation'.

"He backed me and he was right; within 10 years we had the Mabo decision and terra nullius was legally a declared a lie.

"So his backing enabled that song to get support and the rest is history. Then Australia and Australians made it popular."

Spirit Of Place debuted on the Melbourne charts at number one - the first Australian album to do so since Skyhooks' 1975 record-breaking blockbuster Living In The Seventies.

In April '83 Goanna got political again, recording and releasing the song Let The Franklin Flow to support the campaign against the damming of Tasmania's Franklin River.

It was a huge moment, one that galvanised the conservation and green movement in Australia, and Goanna provided the soundtrack.

Future Greens leader Dr Bob Brown, who headed the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, wrote the single's B-side.

"Here we are finding ourselves in this critical time of the realities of climate change, and as a father and a grandfather now, as an old man looking back, we are on the verge of the precipice of possibly consigning our children and grandchildren to a living hell on earth," Howard said.

"These things are real. Aboriginal people remain the most incarcerated people.

"We have come a long way, but we've got a long way to go."

Goanna would disband in 1987 after countless more line-up changes. Members who came and went included much-loved Daddy Cool guitarist Ross Hannaford, and a volatile relationship with its record company.

Several US tours ultimately failed to put the group on the international stage.

A second album, 1985's Oceania produced by Little Feat's Bill Payne after lengthy discussions with Mark Knopfler failed to overcome conflicting schedules, only just cracking the top 30.

After the release of Oceania, the group toured solidly for nearly a year and then virtually disappeared.

Burdened by debt, exhaustion and personal collapse, Goanna splintered. A farewell tour ended with a performance at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in January 1987.

A disillusioned Howard disappeared into Aboriginal Australia, between Central Australia, The Kimberley and North Queensland.

He would soon embark on a prolific solo career and continue his association with Indigenous artists, most notably as a producer for The Pigram Brothers, Jimmy Chi, Joe Geia, and as co-producer with Nash Chambers of Archie Roach's 2006 album Journey.

Marcia Howard would undertake a solo career of her own early in the new millennium. She was named Artist of the Year at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in 2016.

In 1998, Goanna released a third album Spirits Return, for which the trio were joined by a new line-up including former Country Radio and Dingoes guitarist Kerryn Tolhust.

The album reflected the band's ongoing interest in what it means to be Australian and in the world around us and included Song for East Timor.

Marcia Howard's Sorry addressed the stolen generation, and Goanna performed the song at the first National Sorry Day at Parliament House in Canberra that year.

Soon after the group performed two shows for the Melbourne International Arts Festival at Concert Hall, and then in 2002, a benefit in Geelong for the Balinese victims of the Bali Bombing. In 2006, Shane performed Solid Rock as part of the Countdown Spectacular tour.

Goanna's legacy remains and their impact not only endures but grows greater with time.

"In the 40 years since Goanna stopped playing I haven't played many of those songs in that time, so I rediscovered those songs again and all that youthful optimism," Howard said.

"There's a lot to love there."

Howard's Killarney home in south-west Victoria continues to influence his music today.

"My understanding of this country has been so deepened by Aboriginal awareness and stories, culture and same locally - I've come to understand at such a deep level where I live and that I'm in an Aboriginal landscape," Howard said.

"There's very powerful stories across our country all the way from Killarney Beach to Dunkeld. Songlines that come from Tasmania that crisscross the country.

"This Peek Whurrong, Kirrae Whurrung Country so informs who I am and I'm incredibly privileged to have been able to grow into a deeper understanding of the place.

"This country made me; the people of this country, the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal history - its Irish history and Scottish history too. This is who we are.

"We are making a story based on an old, old story.

"This is us, this is south-west Victoria. Think globally, act locally."

The band will play at Warrnambool's Lighthouse Theatre on October 28.

Listen to our wrap of the 2022 Port Fairy Folk Festival:

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