Daniel Pockett/Getty ImagesFresh from her performance at the Women’s World Cup cricket match in Melbourne, Australia over the weekend, Katy Perry made another splash onstage Down Under on Wednesday, performing at a concert for relief workers who’ve been battling the country’s deadly bushfires.
Katy performed in Bright, a tourist town of 3,000 in the Australian state of Victoria, where the local economy has been devastated due to the fires, which have been ravaging the country since September. According to local reports, the tourism industry is estimated to lose some $208 million across the country’s entire Northeast region in March.
The singer, wearing a neon-yellow Valentino dress that covered her baby bump, told reporters, “The point of coming out is just a message of gratitude and unity. No matter where you are suffering in the world, we are all one. We can support each other in our own way.”
Katy’s own hometown of Santa Barbara, California was hit hard by wildfires in the last few years. During her performance, she noted, “Hearing stories of [people] evacuating over Christmas and New Years and all the people who volunteered and their families, it really hit close to home.”
“Music is about the community, it’s about people, it’s about touching people’s hearts…I’m from a local little town … so I felt really close to it,” she added.
The concert was essentially a thank-you for the emergency services personnel in the area, and during the show, Katy called Dara and Steph — a volunteer firefighter and a forest fire management worker — onstage and sang “Happy Birthday” to them.
Then, according to the Daily Mail, she welcomed a whole group of emergency workers to get onstage and join her to sing “Roar.”
“Congratulations for coming out on the other side,” she told fans.