From Blinding Lights to Kite, U2 have played their first show in Australia for eight years as 50,000 fans in Brisbane got to hear tracks the band haven't played on the entire Vertigo tour.

Was it really seven months back, in Argentina, that we last heard the familiar chords of City of Blinding Lights cutting through the night air to bring on the Vertigo? The wait was finally over tonight as Bono emerged from a puff of smoke stage left, to hail this 'City of Brisbane...'

'Neon heart dayglo eyes
A city lit by fireflies
They're advertising in the skies
For people like us...'

The response to the two-hour long set from the huge stadium audience was all the more powerful given that while Europeans and American audiences in the past eighteen months have been hearing songs from 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' for the first time, here in Australia fans are also hearing live debuts of tracks from 2001's 'All That You Can't Leave Behind'.

The beginning of Sunday Bloody Sunday the band paid tribute to their longstanding relationship with Amnesty International. In support of Amnesty's campaign for David Hicks (an Adelaide-born Muslim
convert, was detained at Guantanamo Bay after being captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan five years ago), to face trial in Australia, Bono recalled , "In our twenties we used to do a lot of work for Amnesty and tonight we're still working for them... We're calling for David Hicks to be brought
back to Australia to face a fair trial here because you don't have to become a monster to defeat a monster".

U2 were awarded the Amnesty Ambassador of Conscience Award earlier this year in Chile.

More news from Vertigo 06 on the way.