Kuranda Amphitheatre fights back for international and domestic artists
A much-loved Far North venue that barely made it through the pandemic is battling to get international artists to return. How you can help.
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AN iconic Far North venue that barely made it through the past year is fighting back in an effort to get international artists back on its stage.
John Butler Trio, Midnight Oil and INXS are among the names who have performed at the Kuranda Amphitheatre, creating some of the Far North’s most memorable nights of music.
Kuranda Amphitheatre Society treasurer Liza Dewey initially thought the venue wouldn’t make it through to 2022 but now says she is hopeful.
“We are in survival mode, the 2022 management committee, we all I guessed keep plugging, we haven’t given up and we won’t give up,” she said.
“We have very little money in the bank. We are managing to pay the bills, but have done without a lot of things until we are back on top.”
“We need a lot of help with our building facilities, grounds maintenance, upgrades.
“There’s a lot of dead trees outside our fence line – they destroyed our fence, which we have to fix.
But Ms Dewey said this isn’t going to stop them from pushing on.
“We are so open to getting those big artist. We are using this downtime as we normally do to upgrade our website and our media platforms,” she said.
“We are also getting our media kit together to send out to promoters.
“We need people to recognise, this is an iconic venue. The best place to come and do a concert.”
Ms Dewey said the only way they have survived over the past year was with community support.
“We’ve put up a GoFundMe page, a lot of the community has donated, we have had some funds come through with that,” she said.
“We are also trying to put on small fundraisers when we can.”
The GoFundMe page has already reached over $6000.
Ms Dewey said there had also been a large number of community hires.
“We will be putting on the spring festival again this year on October 8,” he said.
“We are getting assistance there from the Kuranda trader association, that will be a lot of voluntary support.”
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Originally published as Kuranda Amphitheatre fights back for international and domestic artists
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