Jimmy Barnes reveals why outback festival Big Red Bash is a one-of-a-kind experience

Rocker Jimmy Barnes will headline the world’s most remote festival in July and shares why this outback Australian experience is about more than music.

AS Jimmy Barnes rolled into the Big Red Bash in the shadow of the leviathan red dunes of the Simpson Desert, he could feel it.

The most remote festival in the world, about 35km outside Birdsville in western Queensland, set in a Martian landscape of rolling dunes of gibber rock dust eroded by wind and rain, was unlike anything he had encountered in his 50 years on the road.

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Jimmy Barnes at the Big Red Bash.

Visit queensland.com/bigredbash for your chance to WIN a rockin’ five days with three friends at Birdsville’s Big Red Bash.

“There is something really spiritual about the whole joint,” Barnes says.

“You feel like you’re in the oldest part of the world, which you are probably are, and there’s some deep connection to the earth.

“These people who go back every year are drawn to it because it is such a very personal thing, that sense of spirituality there.”

Midnight Oil headlined the gig in the shadow of the Big Red Dune in 2019. Picture: NCA.

Barnes heads back out west in July to headline the Big Red Bash for the third time since its inception in 2013 with other seasoned musical travellers including Missy Higgins, Kasey Chambers, Jon Stevens, Kate Ceberano and Richard Clapton.

The event was the mad idea of founder Greg Donovan, whose original venture was the Big Red Run, a gruelling six-day ultra marathon to raise funds for research into juvenile diabetes.

With hundreds of runners and support crew assembling on the eastern fringe of the Simpson Desert, he thought they might like some entertainment after their exertions and booked John Williamson to play on the Big Red Dune.

Greg Donovan from The Big Red Bash. Picture: Supplied.

“He’d just released an album called Big Red so I asked if he wanted to come out and do a performance for our runners. And then the bush telegraph kicks in and everyone wants to come see him so we put tickets on sale and about 300 people turned up. In the middle of nowhere,’ he said.

For that first gig, they dragged shipping pallets up the dune to fashion a stage, stationed a portaloo “backstage” and “borrowed” a generator from the local airport.

Surfing the dunes at the Big Red Bash, Birdsville. Picture: Supplied.

With Williamson returning to headline a bigger concert the following year, followed by performances from Barnes, Paul Kelly, James Reyne and Mark Seymour, the music festival became bigger than the run and it was discontinued in 2018. Since then, John Farnham and Midnight Oil have also joined the roll of headliners.

Now the full-sized outdoor stage is planted in front of the Big Red Dune – the sand-blasting effect of the wind on top was not ideal gig conditions, let alone the backbreaking effort of getting all the equipment up that unforgiving hill.

Missy Higgins returns to the Big Red Bash this July. Picture: Supplied.

And beyond the “venue” is Bashville, a village of 10,000 campers assembled in a semi-circular pattern whose aerial view resembles an ancient geoglyph etched into the desert.

Barnes said fans flock to the Big Red Bash not only for the music but the sense of community and an unrivalled experience of the outback.

“It’s like nothing else in the world, the beauty of this different world. And this tribal community that’s something between Burning Man and Grey Nomads comes together – you see people helping each other when they get bogged, kids running around with dogs, it’s this unique village,” he said.

“They don’t walk away going ‘That was a great show.’ They walk away saying ‘That was a great experience.’”

Tourism and Events Queensland is offering News Corp readers the chance to win the ultimate Big Red Bash experience for you and three friends as part of the Great Queensland Getaway.

The prize includes return airfares, backstage passes and a scenic heli flight over Birdsville.

Visit queensland.com/bigredbash for your chance to WIN a rockin’ five days with three friends at Birdsville’s Big Red Bash.