In 1902, a lively young man – known to his mates as Mickey Brennan – started work on the Mount Kembla Coal Mine high on the stunning NSW South Coast escarpment, known to the local indigenous Dharawal people as ‘Jumbulla’ – a good place for hunting wallaby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After just one week on the job, Mickey – seeing the complete disregard for safety and care for its workers – told his boss he was ‘out of there’ – and as he entered the mine for what was to be his last day – a large pocket of unventilated coal seam gas hit an exposed candle flame causing a devastating explosion that claimed 96 souls in, what is still to this day, Australia’s worst mining disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 12 years on, we are still putting our hunger for coal, gas and ultimately ‘profit’ over the health and well-being of not just our miners and surrounding communities, but the entire planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mickey Brennan’s body was the only one never recovered from the disaster but many witnesses claim his ghost still resides in the cellar of the local Mount Kembla Pub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There’s a lot we don’t know about the soul – sometimes it can’t move on until the truth’s been told!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hopefully this song ‘Hey Jumbulla (The Ghost of Mickey Brennan)’ allows Mickey to find some long overdue peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The song was written by Luke O’Shea and Zane Banks after a conversation they had late one night about Zane’s great-great grandfather and uncles who were working inside the mine that day and miraculously survived the explosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“My mother’s family lived on Mt Kembla for several generations dating back to the early Victorian period,” Zane said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“My great-grandmother, Agnes Perry (1899-2007) acquired many fascinating tales about the area, its history and local characters over the course of her long life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“She was the last living person who was on Mt Kembla when the coal mine exploded on 31\/7\/1902 and one of the stories she told me – which left an impression – was the tragedy of Mickey Brennan and his ghost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s a tale which has been worthy of a song for over a century but was meeting Luke in 2022 in which I found the person to sing such a tune.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the second single to be lifted from sixteen-time Golden Guitar winner Luke O’Shea’s highly anticipated new album, ‘Next Best Thing’, to be released later in the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1902, a lively young man – known to his mates as Mickey Brennan – started work on the Mount Kembla Coal Mine high on the stunning NSW South Coast escarpment, known to the local indigenous Dharawal people as ‘Jumbulla’ – a good place for hunting wallaby. After just one week on the job, Mickey … Continue reading “Luke O’Shea – Hey Jumbulla (The Ghost Of Mickey Brennan)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zfmcountry.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}