‘Utterly devastated’: Popular regional festival cancelled at eleventh hour

Thousands of festival-goers have had their hopes of a long-weekend party dashed, restored, then dashed again, with a regional Victorian music festival cancelled at the eleventh hour.

The five-day Esoteric Psychedelic Circus Festival was due to begin on Friday in Donald, four hours north-west of Melbourne.

Esoteric Festival is a large Australian bush doof – a regional rave gathering featuring psychedelic music and art.

On Monday, Buloke Shire Council voted for the festival to go ahead, voting against their staff’s recommendations that the permit be refused on health and safety grounds.

But on Thursday, it emerged that the shire’s municipal building surveyor refused the festival’s application for a Place of Public Entertainment Occupancy Permit (PoPE-OP).

“The POPE-OP is a requirement under the Building Act 1993 and is not a decision that can be overturned by councillors,” a council spokesperson said.

“The decision to refuse the POPE-OP aligns with the concerns raised by council officers in their recommendation to refuse the planning permit application. These include ongoing safety and compliance concerns as well as the lack of adherence to last year’s POPE-OP.”

The spokesperson said the event organisers made an appeal to the State Building Surveyor, Steven Baxas, to intervene, but Baxas sided with the council’s surveyor.

Last year’s Esoteric festival also made the headlines after 250 festival goers reported gastroenteritis symptoms.

The Victorian Department of Health later confirmed an outbreak of Shigella, a highly contagious infection spread through contaminated food and the faecal-oral route, with symptoms including diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps and fever.

‘Gutted’ festival owners promise compensation

In a statement, organiser Sam Goldsmith confirmed Esoteric 2025’s cancellation: “To say we are disappointed is an understatement – we are gutted.

“This is a devastating blow for all involved – from our patrons to the local businesses that have been planning for this all year. It is bureaucracy and politics gone mad.

“Despite overwhelming evidence that the Esoteric Music Festival is safe and compliant to run, we have been left stunned by the decision of the municipal building surveyor not to grant a POPE permit and will now have to postpone the festival until 2026.

“Since 2017 this event has been a lifeline for Victoria’s regional tourism and live music scene, injecting more than $15 million into the local economy and supporting thousands of jobs in the Wimmera Mallee region.”

As of Thursday evening, the festival website did not have a notice and tickets were still available for purchase.

Goldsmith advised people to hold on to their tickets for use next year “so that we can continue running this event and supporting Victoria’s north-west region as we have for the past eight years”.

News still sinking in for town

Andrew, the general manager of the Donald Riverside Motel, said he received the news about 8pm, and that he and many others in town were frustrated by the last-minute cancellation.

He’s now hoping that his guests, many of whom booked for the festival, choose to stay on.

“I’m going to lose a lot of money … I’m still in shock,” Andrew said.

Festival volunteer John McConville said thousands of people had suddenly become stranded in Donald.

He said that the town’s school buses had been engaged to ferry people to town, the local football club had opened its showers and toilets to festival-goers and barbecues and pallets of drinking water had been offered to feed and water people at the festival site.

“The negative is that the people making the decisions couldn’t see the way to go,” he said.

“The crowd was magnificent – there was a little anger but mostly they felt for the town.”

McConville said that earlier on Thursday, people had been lining up in vehicles for several kilometres at the festival entry, until it became clear the event would not be going ahead.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.