Splendour in the Grass 2022 cancels Friday gigs due to extreme weather
Everyone came prepared for torrential rain – except the organisers of Byron Bay’s Splendour in the Grass music festival.
Everyone came prepared for torrential rain – except the festival organisers.
The kids didn’t care much about the mud, but the long-awaited return of one of Australia’s major music festivals was in disarray on Friday, as officials cancelled the first day of Splendour in the Grass due to flooding.
The call was made at 1.50pm, with tens of thousands of fans already on site near Byron Bay ahead of an expected capacity of 50,000 people.
Some dismayed festival-goers were demanding refunds for the $415-a-ticket event after the abrupt cancellation.
Most had brought their wet-weather gear in anticipation of rain and would happily have stood and danced in the drizzle to the music they had come for.
But the cancellation meant that overseas headline acts including Gorillaz and Kacey Musgraves could not perform as planned on Friday, while main-stage sets from Australian artists including the Avalanches, Ruel and DMA’S were all scratched.
“A significant weather system is currently sitting off the east coast and may reach land later today bringing more rainfall,” said festival organisers in a statement released on Friday afternoon.
“In the interest of patron safety and in consultation with all relevant emergency services, we have decided to err on the side of caution and cancel performances on the main stages today only.”
Thousands of patrons had slept in their cars overnight as access to the festival’s main campground, North Byron Parklands, had been forced to close.
Marshalls at the entrance to the parklands redirected people to the Byron Events Farm, 13km south of the campground, while people at the campground were battling mud and trying to keep dry after a sleepless night.
A festival organiser leading the set-up of the parkland accommodation, who would only speak anonymously, said preparations on the site had begun almost a month ago, but little consideration had been given to the prospect of poor weather, despite the region being hit with historic floods for the past two years.
“The festival expanded its capacity by 10,000 tickets this year and there were some worries about how that would work after the campsite was already saturated during the floods,” she said.
“But the event had sold out before the flooding, and I’m not sure it would make sense to refund tickets anticipating bad weather.”
Byron local and community arts leader Tess Hall said the situation could have been “easily avoided” if organisers had decided not to expand the capacity of the camping ground more than two years ago.
“A lot of the chaos of the past day could have been avoided because the owners of the parklands got the all-clear to expand the festival’s capacity beyond what it should be,” she said.
“I think the incident raises major questions about how the owners operate the parkland, what capacity it should be set at and some other safety concerns.’’
It was a nightmare beginning to what was meant to be a dreamlike return to normality for the Splendour organisers, whose last successful event was back in 2019.
After the pandemic forced organisers to wait three years to celebrate the festival’s 20th anniversary, it was an especially sad decision to come so close to showtime before making the call to pull the plug, at least for the first day.
“Please be assured that our event team is working very hard to provide the best experience possible under the current circumstances,” organisers wrote in a statement. “We look forward to Saturday and Sunday programming moving ahead as planned.”
From its humble origins as a single-day camping event in July 2001, where Powderfinger headlined before 7500 ticketholders, through to the mammoth annual event at North Byron Parklands attended by about 50,000 music fans, Splendour has become one of the nation’s biggest festivals.
At the festival site on Friday afternoon, prior to the cancellation, the mood among music fans was one of cautious optimism despite the poor conditions.
“We’re calling it Splendour in the Mud,” said Ebony Lee-Neilsen, 27. “We arrived Wednesday and we’ve been camping,” she told The Weekend Australian. “We left (the site) yesterday and it took us seven hours to get back in, last night. Now we’re here and staying for the next three days.”
With her sisters Marlee and Miranda Chopping, aged 14 and 18, the family had trekked from the central Queensland city of Rockhampton.
The first-time festival-goers said they were looking forward to seeing acts including Wet Leg, Hooligan Hefs, ChillinIt, Ruel, and MAY-A.
Byron Shire Council, which helps organise Splendour in the Grass, said organisers would consider ways of improving the three-day event next year.
A severe weather warning for the Northern Rivers and Byron Bay remained in place, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting more rain for Saturday.
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