Broome to Broadway and back again

Leaving behind Broadway, where they shared the stage with Hugh Jackman in New York City, Kimberley musicians Paul Boon and Olive Knight are back on the pindan, rubbing glitter from their eyes.

Knight, from Wangkatjungka in the West Kimberley and Boon, from Broome, performed in the 10- week run of the Hugh Jackman Back on Broadway hit, which grossed a record $2.04 million in its final week.

“It was possibly the first time language was heard and the didgeridoo played on Broadway,” said Knight, who sang evocative verses in her native Walmatjarri, accompanied by her son Clifton Bieundurry, and Boon on didgeridoo.

“Singing on a Broadway stage backed by an 18-piece orchestra, visiting New York’s blues and jazz clubs … security guards, private chauffers ... it was a dream. You have to pinch yourself,” Knight said from home at her remote Kimberley community last week.

The school cultural liaison officer, whose debut album, Gospel Blues at the Edge of the Desert, was released in March last year, said her return to community life, the bleached blue sky and hot red rocks of home was bliss.

But receiving standing ovations for a duet with Hugh Jackman will stay with her forever, as will meeting celebrities like Kirk Douglas, who she knew only as the mutinous slave in Spartacus, backstage.

“He was a real gentleman,” she said.

Of Jackman, Knight said he was passionate, philanthropic and “does a great Peter Allan impression”. Boon too, is thawing out in the sunshine at his art gallery, the Old Broome Lock Up.

“Someone’s got to sweep the floors, pull out the weeds and get art up on walls,” he said.

Recalling the jam-packed sidewalks of midtown Manhattan and Time Square under late October snow, Boon remembers noise.

“Sirens, honking horns, it’s intense, and constant," he said. “There is probably as much energy used in keeping all those Time Square televisions, lights and billboards alive as is required to power the whole of Broome.”

Boon’s relationship to the wooden wind instruments that have rocketed him to stardom stems from his youth, where he taught himself to play in the acoustically favourable “tiled cave” of his bathroom.

“I was lucky enough to go out bush, doing early exploration for a gold mining company, and cut my first didgeridoos.”

Around that time he met a guy called John Butler who was busking around Fremantle. Together their sets took Boon from bathroom to Big Day Out.

But it was his friendship, years later, with fashion photographer Russell James and an involvement with arts organisation Nomad Two Worlds which linked Boon, along with Bieundurry and Knight, to the production.

The intimate Back on Broadway show featured a dozen musical theatre songs, and Jackman joked with the audience, sharing stories of his life, his family and his career.

“Hugh would give the Kimberley the best shout out every night.

Telling the audience to put this place on their bucket list,” Boon said.

“We’re all custodians of that and we have to be really vigilant about preserving the Kimberley and keeping what is important to us as an artistic community.”

The Australians performed every night over two months, on New Years and Christmas Day, with Saturday matinees and one day off per week.

“It’s only when you stop, take stock and realise you were involved in one of the number one shows on Broadway, that you get a chance to think, ‘that was pretty cool’,” Boon said.

“It’s like the best hobby you can have, when you can jump on a plane, take your didgeridoo and play on all these stages ... meet a ridiculous amount of famous people and then come back to Broome.”