IF you ever spent time sipping lattes in cafes around Bondi Beach, there's a decent chance you might have bumped into Luka Bloom.
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The Irish folk troubadour is a frequent visitor to our shores. Thirteen times, to be precise, since his maiden tour in 1992.
As per his usual routine, Bloom arrived in Australia from his hometown of Newbridge in County Kildare five days before his media engagements and gigs began.
Some of that time was spent drinking chai tea in Bondi cafes and even providing impromptu songs for fellow customers.
But mostly, it was spent engaging with Aussies, who he holds a deep affinity for.
"I do call Australians Paddies with suntans," Bloom says. "There's this dark humour in Australia that really appeals to me and I also love the way Australians, a bit like the Irish, speak English with a deep irrelevance for the language and just play with it and come out with these phrases nobody would understand anywhere else."
However, this latest trip to Australia could be Bloom's last. The 63-year-old admits he's unsure whether he can commit to another lengthy tour.
"Don't get me wrong, I still love my job very much and I'm still in reasonably good shape," he says.
"It was a very casual observation I made to my publicist. We were in the middle of a conversation about many things and I might have just said, 'this is precious to me because it could be my last one'.
"I think there's no harm to reflect on that because that way you don't take it for granted and you realise how special it is and it makes you grateful for every opportunity you get to come here."
While Bloom is considering scaling back his touring commitments, his prolific songwriting output shows no signs of abating.
In the 41 years since Bloom released his debut album Treaty Stone under his real name Barry Moore, he's produced more than 20 records.
Arguably his career high marks remain his 1990 album Riverside its follow-up The Acoustic Motorbike (1992), which produced the tracks You Couldn't Have Come At A Better Time and Exploring The Blue respectively.
But his latest studio album 2017's Refuge maintained Bloom's high standards and saw his songwriting take interest in greater political concerns.
"It was in response to the challenges of 2016 with Brexit, Mr Trump and the passing of people like David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen and I went into a really reflective kind of space and these songs emerged," Bloom says.
"I decided to do a very raw, simple album. I never really had any huge aspirations for it but it's been very well received actually."
Last September Bloom began writing the follow-up to Refuge and he is again taking inspiration from politics. This time the focus is climate change, and namely, the future of the planet for the youth.
This line of thinking has been spurred by the campaign launched by 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
Last August the then ninth-grade student refused to attend school until following the Sweden general election in September after heat waves and wildfires ravaged the Scandinavian nation. Thunberg also demanded Sweden reduce its carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.
Since then Thunberg has continued to campaign for action on climate change and has inspired thousands of students around the world to hold similar strikes. Australian students rallied in November and plan to strike again on March 15.
Bloom has at least two songs directly inspired by Thunberg.
"I myself have participated in the depletion of the planet and I think it is a generational thing," he says.
"In the last 50 years we've been sold a model of living that's not sustainable. Like multiple cars, multiple houses. This aspirational wealth is just unsustainable. We all participate in it to a lesser or greater degree.
"This young woman is telling us this way of living and manifestation of wealth just isn't sustainable and if we don't change we're literally going to destroy the earth.
"A really strange part of the human psyche is we'll talk about how much we love our children and our grandchildren, while we're behaving and living life in a way that suggests we don't give a damn about our children or grandchildren, because we're participating in the destruction of the only home we have.
"That's Greta's line and she's not having any of it. She's a pretty powerful young woman."
Luka Bloom returns to Lizotte's on Thursday.
Josh Leeson
Josh Leeson is an entertainment and features journalist, specialising in music, at the Newcastle Herald. He first joined the masthead in 2008 after stints at the Namoi Valley Independent and Port Stephens Examiner and has previously covered sport including the Asian Cup, A-League, Surfest, cricket and rugby league.
Josh Leeson is an entertainment and features journalist, specialising in music, at the Newcastle Herald. He first joined the masthead in 2008 after stints at the Namoi Valley Independent and Port Stephens Examiner and has previously covered sport including the Asian Cup, A-League, Surfest, cricket and rugby league.
