Greg Donovan on the business of music festivals, his favourite bands and taking risks

He used his redundancy cheque to found the Big Red Bash music festival - and later the Mundi Mundi Bash. But for all the risks involved it’s been a hell of a ride, says Greg Donovan.

Greg Donovan

In 2014, you used a $300,000 redundancy cheque to hold the first Big Red Bash music festival near Birdsville. Many thought you were mad. Why did you think it could work? The year before, we had John Williamson come and play up on the Big Red sand dune as part of a marathon running event I’d organised. We put that show on as a bit of entertainment for the runners and the volunteers, but word got out through the old bush telegraph. We had people contact us from all over the place, asking, “Can we come? What’s the go?” I thought, well, if people really want to come we should let them – and we can charge them money to help cover some of the costs, and raise some more money for charity.

No doubt it was a huge financial risk. Would you describe yourself as a risk-taker? I’ve always had a bit of risk-taking in my nature, but I wouldn’t call myself reckless. Putting on a festival is a little like farming – you have good years and bad years. You’ve just got to be able to manage through the tough times, and then the sun shines in the good times.

At the Mundi Mundi Bash in 2023

You previously worked in insurance for 30 years. Are there transferable skills between that career and music promotion? Music promotion is a business, so it’s important to have traditional business skills to manage everything from accounting and finance through to marketing, event planning, managing people, regulations, compliance and risk management – they all come into play.

I suppose it’s the less sexy side of the industry… Lots of others enter the promotion business from the music side of things, and they run into a bit of trouble. If you can apply business acumen, things aren’t too bad.

Where does your love for Aussie rock come from? I’m a [Sydney] Northern Beaches boy through and through, and I grew up in the pub rock era. I went to Davidson High, where most of the band members from INXS went. I knew Michael Hutchence pretty well. It was a time when you could try to sneak into pubs at 16 – sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t – to see everyone from Cold Chisel to Midnight Oil.

At the Mundi Mundi Bash

As well as the Big Red Bash, you run the Mundi Mundi Bash outside Broken Hill in NSW. What are some of your favourite acts over the years? John Farnham at the Big Red Bash in 2018. When he agreed to come I thought, “Yes! We’ve hit the big time here...” And the next year we had Midnight Oil, which was like a dream come true. They opened their set with The Dead Heart and I had tears streaming down my face. It was very emotional to realise we made that happen.

What makes events in the Outback so special? It’s a spectacular place because it’s a real wilderness. The red earth and the red dirt, the miles and miles between anything, the massive blue skies... For me, it’s also the little towns out there, their nature and their character. For festival-goers, part of the adventure is just planning the trip and getting out there.

Are there many artists left on your wish list? Oh, there’s definitely a few. We asked for feedback from our audience about whether they would like to see international artists –and over 90 per cent of people said, “No, keep it all Australians.” But even with that in mind, we haven’t had Crowded House yet and I suppose they pass as Australian!

As well as organising music festivals, you’ve completed 250km running events across four of the world’s deserts – the Gobi, Sahara, Atacama and Antarctic. What’s the most surprising thing you learned from these? It’s the ability of the mind and the body to be able to adapt, to focus on a challenge and work out how you’re going to do it. It demonstrates that ordinary people can do what might seem like extraordinary things. When I took on the challenge of 4 Deserts, I didn’t know whether I’d finish or not. And that was attractive to me.

Tickets for the Mundi Mundi Bash (Aug 21-23) are on sale now. The Big Red Bash returns in 2026.