Australians love Tina Turner. And they proved it en masse, when almost 6,000 fans showed up at an outback party to dance the “Nutbush,” setting a new record in the process.
The Big Red Bash in Birdsville, a remote Queensland town 1,000 miles west of the state capital, Brisbane, has raised the record in years past.
But on this occasion, just weeks after Turner’s death, on the 10th anniversary of the festival, and the 50th anniversary of the “Nutbush” itself, the old mark was squashed.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 5,838 dancers did their thing — many wearing colorful outfits for the occasion. That figure easily eclipses the old mark of 4,084 people, set at the same site in 2022, and the 1,719 people recorded by Guinness World Records in 2018.
“It’s a military operation trying to get them lined up in rows and dancing for five minutes,” says Greg Donovan, founder of the Big Red Bash, held July 4-6.
Helen Taylor, co-founder of the Australian Book of Records, caught all the action.
“Everyone was in the spirit of things today. It was the best I’ve ever seen,” she recounts. “We had people on crutches dancing, there was a girl dancing the Nutbush and hula hooping at the same time.”
The record-setting effort also raised more than A$100,000 for charitable causes.
Australia has a deep, lasting connection with Turner. Her extraordinary solo comeback in 1984 was engineered by Roger Davies, the great Australian artist manager who has guided the careers of Pink, Olivia Newton-John, Janet Jackson, Cher and many others.
The rock icon also starred as Auntie Entity in 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome, the third in George Miller’s Mad Max action movie franchise, and from 1989 to 1995, Turner was the face of the National Rugby League (then the New South Wales Rugby League or NSWRL). Followers of the sport remember Turner as “The Queen of Rugby League.”
Turner died May 24, at the age of 83.
