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Published: January 4th 2009
Peats Ridge Festival
A butterfly strides head and shoulders above the crowd.Imagine an evening when a whole town is alive with fun. Coloured lights shine out of the darkness. Pedestrians walk everywhere because there are no vehicles. Many of them wear extravagant costumes and carry masks. There's no apparent drunkeness or rowdiness, yet revellers are free to consume as much as they want because they can walk home to their tents. Different venues offer drinks, dinners, music, dance. People wander freely from one venue to the next. Lights sparkle in the night.
That was
Peats Ridge Festival on New Year's Eve, 2008. At the stroke of midnight I was lying in a string hammock, suspended between causurina trees on the edge of a salt water creek.
Chris Gudu was playing on the main stage. A cheer went up from the audience and a single burst of fireworks illuminated the sky. Then the musicians went on playing and the audience went on listening. I went back to my tent and listened to music through until dawn.
It was a three-day event which touted itself as a leading "Sustainable Arts and Music Festival." It was heaviest on the music, different genres: mixes of folk, rock, indigenous, country, reggae, electronic. The performance I enjoyed most was
Peats Ridge Festival
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu sits singing and unseeing on the main stage. from
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (of
Yothu Yindi and the
Saltwater Band). He didn't need to work the crowd, he just projected a voice of very unusual sweetness.
The art was most apparent in various installations along the creek bank. Sustainability was most evident in the use of solar panels, composting toilets and the Ecoliving Enquiry Centre tent, where I attended a workshop on making compost.
It was three days of hot weather, cheek-by-jowl camping, river swimming, New Age merchandise, back-to-the-soil, let's-find-our-spiritual-path, respect-the-traditional-owners-of-this-place, listening to music. I would go again another year.
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Lady
non-member comment
Wow! I didn't know you were on the road again. What a lovely place to be. Sounds like you had tons of fun here. Thanks for sharing!