Single:
Great Southern Land entered the Australian singles chart* on 30 August 1982 and peaked at #5. It was #56 on the Top 100 of 1982.
Album:
The song is on Primitive Man which entered the Australian albums chart* on 20 September 1982 and peaked at #3.
Songwriter:
Iva Davies
Producers:
Iva Davies, Keith Forsey
Record label of Australian release:
Regular
*Kent Music Report / Australian Chart Book. See About.
Wikipedia:
Great Southern Land was released on 30 August 1982 as the lead single from the second studio album by Icehouse, Primitive Man. It was later featured in the 1988 Yahoo Serious film Young Einstein, and remains their most popular song according to many music polls.
At the 1982 Countdown Music Awards, the song was nominated for Best Australian Single.
In 1999, Iva Davies was commissioned by Spectak Productions on behalf of the City of Sydney Council to create a musical score to ring in the new Millennium in the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. Iva took his song Great Southern Land and created a new version dubbed The Ghost of Time.
In November 2014 the song was selected for inclusion on the Australian National Film & Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia list.
Qantas added eight 787-9 Dreamliners to its fleet in 2017. The airlines named each Dreamliner from suggestions and votes from the public. The name Great Southern Land was chosen for the first aircraft out of 45,000 suggestions from the public.
Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Southern_Land
Lyrics:
Standing at the limit of an endless ocean
Stranded like a runaway lost at sea
City on a rainy day down in the harbor
Watching as the gray clouds shadow the bay
Looking everywhere ’cause I had to find you
This is not the way that I remember it here
Anyone will tell you it’s a prisoner island
Hidden in the summer for a million years
Click for full lyrics
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