The Enduring Love Affair Between Australia & The Wombats (The Band)

It all began with a flirt.

It was 2008. Kevin Rudd was the Prime Minister of Australia. Margot Robbie was still appearing as Donna on Neighbours. Gabriella Cilmi’s Sweet About Me was sitting at the top of the ARIA Charts.

March 9 at around 9 pm. The Hi-Fi in Melbourne—one of those cool venues where all the best up-and-coming bands played. A sold-out show, with the line snaking around the block. Each person felt lucky to be there. One name poked out of everyone’s lips: The Wombats.

It was the first show of their first Australian tour, a brief but memorable jaunt that would take them through small venues in Brisbane, Sydney, and finally wrap up at Splendour In The Grass, where headliners like Devo, Wolfmother, and Sigur Rós set the stage ablaze.

The Wombats were becoming the band of the moment. After exploding in the UK, the energy from their success started to spill over to other places. Australia, being one of the first ports of call, became an essential stop. The Wombats had played every tiny venue in the UK, and now the word was out.

Doors opened. A crowd of about 900 flooded into the venue with voracious intensity. A palpable sense of anticipation filled the air, thick like cigar smoke. The kind of buzz you only feel at special gigs—when you just know something unforgettable is about to happen. The inimitable feeling.

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Then it just happened.

Like a couple on a first date, or a chance meeting in the pub down the road, Australia fell in love with The Wombats.

The band remembers the gig fondly, too. Then 23, drummer Dan Haggis recalls the shock of seeing the Australian crowd singing along to every word. “When we went to Australia and played to... I don’t know what it was, maybe a thousand people in Melbourne, everyone knew all the words and was singing along, and we were just like, ‘What the hell!’” he told The Music back in 2018.

At the time, the band was in their early twenties, still fresh-faced and reeling from the sudden rise to fame. Haggis, looking back, remembers the experience as “partying all the time”, a whirlwind of new adventures, new people, and unforgettable moments. “I remember watching Sigur Rós, and we played just before Wolfmother. That whole trip was just a blurry whirlwind of emotions,” he said. This September and October, The Wombats are heading back to Australia.

These three scruffy Liverpool lads had gone from playing songs in their bedrooms to being paid thousands to perform them on stages halfway across the world. It was a dream come true.

After that, they returned to Australia in July and August of the same year, followed by yearly visits from 2010 to 2018. Then came a return in 2022 and again in 2024. In 2025, they’ll be back again. It’s truly a 17-year love affair that shows no sign of slowing down.

This time, The Wombats are touring in support of their forthcoming album, Oh! The Ocean, due for release via AWAL this Friday (February 14).

Oh! The Ocean is packed with “confessional emotional honesty” that showcases the band at their most cathartic, relatable, catchy, and playful. Their most sonically adventurous album to date, The Wombats teamed up with renowned producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Wallows, Death Cab For Cutie) to head towards a mature new phase.

Singer Matthew ‘Murph’ Murphy offered of the impending full-length, “I’ve been to many beaches and seas and coasts over the years, but for some reason, it felt like the first time I had ever seen it and was truly present. There was this revelation that I had been living a life caught up in my own head, or in some kind of racing helmet or with blinkers on. It was really a potent experience.”

He continued, “I felt like I saw everything new for the first time and was aware that I had been so selfish to not take in how crazy the world and life is. I’d been caught up in my own BS for way too long.

“The album offers up some internal questions like: Why are my head and body disconnected all the time? Why am I incapable at times of seeing any form of beauty in the world or in others? Why do I expect the world to conform to my will? Why do I never stop and smell the flowers?”

The Wombats albums have consistently debuted higher on Australian charts than in the UK or US, and they’ve had eleven entries on triple j’s Hottest 100, starting with the crowd-pleasing, yet sometimes divisive, Let’s Dance To Joy Division. They’ve played 37 shows in Australia, including three memorable sets at Splendour, numerous tours with Groovin The Moo, and countless headlining performances. They've even appeared on the Aussie soap Neighbours, performing two of their songs at the fictional Charlie’s Bar.

So, what about these deeply inoffensive scruffy Brits — Haggis, Murph, and Tord Øverland Knudsen — that has made them so beloved Down Under?

First off, they’re named after one of Australia’s most iconic marsupials: the wombat.

Regarding how the band chose their name, Murph recalls it was a bit of an accident. “We had actually never been to Australia before,” Murph told To Be Magazine last year. “Dan was making posters for our first show, and I said, ‘Call us whatever the hell you like. There will be time to change.’ We’d been calling each other ‘wombats’ in a slightly derogatory way. Like, ‘Shut up, you wombat.’ And suddenly, we were called The Wombats. I thought it was horrendous. We were definitely going to change it… but never did.”

Despite their initial hesitation, the name stuck, and Australians embraced it. It somehow felt right, even if it was random.

Haggis shared a theory in that same 2018 interview about why their music began to work so well in Australia. “People just find it easier to let loose here. They dance, they sing, they lose themselves in the music,” he explained. “It’s a place where people come to escape, to forget about everything for an hour and a half.”

There’s a freedom in the air, and it seems that The Wombats get it, and Australians get them. It’s a mutual understanding that runs deep.

It has since become a running joke in the Aussie music industry that The Wombats are on at least one major festival line-up a year. Some fans have even wondered how the Liverpudlian trio manage to tour Down Under more frequently than some local acts.

But Haggis has a different take on this. “We do European tours, and we do UK tours and American tours way more often than we do Australian tours,” he says. “I think it's just that, in Australia, people aren’t used to bands touring this much. They think, ‘What’s going on with these guys?’”

The Wombats’ loyalty to Australia remains unwavering. They recently returned to the country to headline Rolling Sets, a fairly new music festival. Murph has since developed quiet hopes that the festival will blossom into something greater.

But really, Australians will always turn out for The Wombats.

“Ever since that first Melbourne show, it hasn’t really changed” Haggis noted. “Every album that comes out, the fans are so supportive. They’ve got our backs, and it’s awesome.”

The band is gearing up for an extensive tour across Australia in 2025, which will include stops in more remote areas than before. Murph is particularly excited about this.

“We’ve always liked playing in smaller towns. We did Newcastle on the last tour, and it’s amazing to see how people react in these places,” he tells The Music. “There’s something about getting out of the big cities. There’s a mix of freaky people and bogans, and that makes it all the more exciting!”

It’s one of those things you can’t fully explain. It’s like love, really. You don’t always know the exact reasons, but you know. The Wombats get us, and we get them. Long may this love affair continue.

The Wombats’ new album, Oh! The Ocean, is due out on February 14 – pre-order it here. The Wombats will tour Australia this September and October. You can find tickets via the Secret Sounds website.