Travel review: Airlie Beach Festival of Music gets in the groove in 2021
After Queensland’s virus success, the Airlie Beach Festival of Music delivered the life-affirming highs the best live music can engender.
Music festivals have been few and far between in Australia this year and Queenslanders are the chief beneficiaries. The Birdsville Big Red Bash in July and Mareeba’s Savannah in the Round in October each attracted more than 10,000 people to their multi-day camping events and, like them, the Airlie Beach Festival of Music delivers the life-affirming highs that the best live music can engender.
Call it a paradox of the Sunshine State’s success at containing the virus: here, crowds have been able to safely gather for much of the past two years with only a few short interruptions, but the musical talent pool has been largely limited to those who reside in postcodes beginning with the numeral four. This can result in programs containing a weird mix of jarring styles, but quality abounds.
At Airlie Beach, which I visited earlier this month with my wife and son, the live music action takes place while the two-year-old is soundly asleep at our accommodation, a well-equipped two-bedroom apartment at the Mantra Boathouse that’s a five-minute walk from the festival entrance by the Whitsunday Sailing Club. It’s also a short walk to the Port of Airlie marina, where we arrive early on Friday morning for a half-day boat trip to Whitehaven Beach with Cruise Whitsundays.
The beach’s famous white silica sand is stunning, while Whitsunday Island – undeveloped but for a small shelter shed and toilet block – is easily the most gorgeous place my boy has ever enjoyed with his shovel and toy excavator. Before we climb back on board there’s the thrill of the midday fish feeding session, scores of creatures swimming between our legs as we stand in hip-high water.
After a couple of hours in paradise, the festival’s first night is a winner, the sunny acoustic pop of charming duo Busby Marou an ideal entree as the sun sets. Then Sarah McLeod, frontwoman of Adelaide band The Superjesus, is accompanied by a hard-hitting drummer, and her combination of winning charisma and undeniable guitar heroics quickly wins over the crowd. McLeod throws in a couple of well-chosen covers by The Animals and Creedence Clearwater Revival, which resonate strongly with the Boomer-skewing audience. Her rock star bravado results in one of the weekend’s few truly goosebump-inducing musical moments and she’s an ideal scene-setter for the accomplished blues-rock of Russell Morris.
Out on the main strip, I detour past the busy Magnums Hotel beer garden and into its nightclub where, in a separate ticketed event unrelated to the festival, one of Australia’s greatest emerging bands is booked to play. King Stingray, a Yolngu surf-rock quintet from northeast Arnhem Land, delivers a high-energy performance that blends lyrics sung in English and their home tongue of Yolngu Matha. About 80 young fans bounce along to the distinctive sound, and you know it won’t be long before the group is playing bigger stages in prime-time slots.
Back at the festival, the mishmash of musical styles is even starker on Saturday night: the soft rock of 1980s singer-songwriter Toni Childs; Gold Coast funk-influenced hip-hop act Wayward Suns; and headliners The Angels, whose classic rock’n’roll rhythm, drawing a peak crowd of about 1500, is as dependable as the tide that laps the sea wall beyond the tent.
Armed with a stroller supplied by the hotel, we go exploring on Saturday and discover one of the coastal town’s truly great assets: the Airlie Beach Lagoon, a sprawling and well-designed public pool watched by lifesavers that’s a clear hit with swimmers of all ages from sun-up to sundown.
It’s here that one of the trip’s best moments occurs. As the three of us float and play in the shallows in the late afternoon, a shit-hot cover band takes the stage at the Airlie Beach Hotel. Led by a superb female vocalist, the tight group runs through guaranteed party-starters by the likes of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Earth, Wind & Fire. We’re a couple of hundred metres away, but the breeze carries these timeless melodies loud and clear across the lagoon, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
This northern jaunt is a welcome breather for us and a taster of summer holidays to come. For our boy, the highlights include eye-opening rides on three forms of transport – plane, bus and boat – that will form the basis of our bedtime stories for the foreseeable future. And when he falls asleep now, it’s with a cuddly totem: a plush green turtle toy from our cruise. We named him Airlie.
• Perfect for: adventurous families; music fans.
• Must do: take a day-trip to Whitehaven Beach; hire a jet-ski; dive the reef or swim at Airlie Beach Lagoon. Beyond the music festival tent, check out gigs at venues throughout Airlie Beach.
• Dining: Airlie Beach Treehouse for burgers and pizza; the pick of the seafood restaurants is Fish D’Vine, and the Rum Bar claims to serve some of the world’s best mojitos.
• Getting there: Major airlines operate flights between Brisbane and Proserpine Airport; bus trip to Airlie Beach (about 40 minutes) via Whitsunday Transit.
• Bottom line: Mantra Boathouse has two- and three-bedroom apartments from $400 per night; mantra.com.au/boathouse. Half-day trips to Whitehaven Beach via Cruise Whitsundays $120 (children $47). The 2022 Airlie Beach Festival of Music is on Nov 4-7; three-day passes from $275 (early bird).
airliebeachfestivalofmusic.com.au; tourismwhitsundays.com.au
The writer travelled to Airlie Beach as a guest of Tourism Whitsundays.