Sydney - Kylie Minogue, Coldplay, Kings of Leon and Olivia Newton-John are performing in simultaneous charity concerts in Sydney and Melbourne for those who five weeks ago lost loved ones and homes in forest fires.

Saturday's Sound Relief concerts were expected to draw a combined crowd of 150,000 and raise millions of dollars for those whose lives were wrecked in the February 7 fires.

Thunderstorms in both cities didn't dampen spirits at Australia's biggest ever musical event. The charity event prompted the reformation of three of the country's most successful bands of the 1970s.

Midnight Oil, Split Enz, and Hunters and Collectors will be on stage raising funds for those caught up in a natural disaster that cost at least 210 lives and left 10,000 people homeless.

International band-of-the-moment Kings of Leon opened the Melbourne proceedings but opted not to have their smash hit Sex on Fire on the playlist.

Peter Garrett, the singer-songwriter with Midnight Oil who is now Australia's environment minister, promised that his cabinet responsibilities wouldn't deter him from belting out Beds are Burning and the band's other protest songs.

"I think that you can look at lyrics out of any songs, and clearly there are going to be lines there that pertain to any human situation," Garrett said before going onstage before a big audience for the first time since becoming a minister. "But the songs stand in their own right and in their own time." (dpa)