Debut Broken Hill Mundi Mundi Bash to rock outback NSW in 2021
Around 10,000 people to descend on Broken Hill for camping event featuring Paul Kelly, Kate Ceberano, Tim Finn and Ian Moss.
Most Australian music festival organisers have spent the past year processing refunds and juggling revised schedules while licking their wounds and counting their losses. Greg Donovan isn’t one of them.
The man whose family business established the annual Big Red Bash in Queensland eight years ago has been using his time wisely to plot and launch another outback event, which will soon pop up on the far western edge of NSW.
“When COVID hit, I said, ‘Oh well, what are we going to do for the next year? May as well crack on and get this Broken Hill thing up and going’,” Donovan told The Australian. “We’ve been pretty much working on it constantly for the last 12 months.”
Announced on Thursday, the inaugural Broken Hill Mundi Mundi Bash will debut on August 19 as a three-day camping event for about 10,000 people.
Its artistic line-up will be largely the same as the Big Red Bash to be held from July 6 near the Queensland desert outpost of Birdsville, a sold-out event featuring the likes of Paul Kelly, Kate Ceberano, Tim Finn, John Williamson, Vika & Linda and Ian Moss.
For Ceberano, who performed at the Big Red Bash in 2017 and 2018, the remote location for these outback events is part of the attraction.
“There’s something very off-world colony about it; it’s like occupying an entirely alien planet,” she said of her previous trips toward the country’s centre.
“And because of that, I think everyone shucks off the conditions that apply for an inner urban lifestyle: they become a lot more friendly and a lot more communal,” said Ceberano. “I think there’s a certain degree of freedom that they experience, because it doesn’t feel like their joy is being contained.”
The new family-friendly event will be held at Belmont Station on the Mundi Mundi Plains, about 35km northwest of Broken Hill.
Festivalgoers can camp on site or tow a caravan; dogs are welcome, and children aged 11 and under can attend for free.
Inner-city festival organisers might tremble at the notion of building a “Bashville” outback town from scratch on an eight square kilometre red dirt plain, but Donovan isn’t worried, having done it seven times before in even harsher terrain.
“If we can deliver an event in Birdsville, we should able to do it in Broken Hill with our eyes closed,” he said with a laugh. “There’s a lot more stuff there, in terms of machinery and supplies, and everything’s accessible on tar roads.”
“In Birdsville, if we forget anything, we’re buggered,” said Donovan. “In Broken Hill, if we forget anything, we’ll go to the local hardware store or supermarket and get what we need.”
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