Gippsland Country Music Festival is the McLaren brothers’ latest project
Famous for their on-farm music festivals, Gippsland’s McLaren brothers are planning their most ambitious project yet.
THERE’S an old dairy shed on the McLarens’ 280ha South Gippsland cattle farm that surely has a little magic in it.
Dad Peter originally converted the shed, on the sixth-generation Krowera farm, into a rehearsal room for band practice around 1980, opening it to bands from the region. It was in the shed that youngest son Angus played instruments and started singing, going on to have what is now a highly successful acting career with Packed to the Rafters, Home And Away and in the movie Hotel Mumbai.
And it was in the shed that his older brothers Aidan and Rhett learnt to play drums and bass guitar, playing in their own bands before the duo launched a career running some of Victoria’s best and biggest music festivals.
Aidan says the rehearsal room is probably most renowned for being at the centre of their first festival, The Hills Are Alive, which started on the farm in 2009 and concluded in 2019, showcasing some of Australia’s biggest names from Vance Joy to Courtney Barnett.
“The shed is concrete, pre-herringbone, with the old cow stalls in it, right on top of a hill that overlooks Phillip Island, with the most beautiful sunsets,” says Aidan, who continues to work a day on the farm each week and — with Rhett — plans to take over farm management.
“The shed was always in the middle of The Hills Are Alive, with 3000 people camped around it.”
From that initial on-farm festival, Aidan, 39, and Rhett, 37, are now running seven festivals, including NYE on the Hill, also on the Krowera farm (postponed in January this year due to COVID).
Their newest — and possibly most audacious — event is the inaugural Gippsland Country Music Festival, planned for April 24 at Mossvale Park, Berrys Creek, headlined by Lee Kernaghan. It will also feature Gippsland’s homegrown talent in The Davidson Brothers and The Strzelecki Stringbusters, as well as whipcracking demonstrations and line dancing classes.
Aidan, a father of two who lives in Inverloch, says because there hasn’t been a dedicated country music festival event in the region, the aim is to make it an annual pilgrimage for the “next 10 or 20 years”.
So why start it now, in the middle of a pandemic?
“Great question. Rhett and I have wanted to create a country music festival for years but because we’ve been so busy we haven’t had time. COVID actually gave us the time,” he says, adding that between JobKeeper and consulting work they’ve managed to pay the rent.
“The pandemic has been incredibly devastating to the events industry. But it’s also given a lot of people a moment to reflect on what they really want to do, and for us we realised we just love running events, the joy it brings to people and
the opportunities for musicians.”
Aidan is confident the event
will go ahead, with a rigorous COVID-safe plan, such as an on-site officer, contact tracing and hand-sanitiser stations, but if it’s unable to proceed, it will be rescheduled for later in the year with all tickets remaining valid or refunds given.
“If we’re facing the worst time in the industry for a century and we still want to do it, it’s a good sign we’re in the right career.”
While the McLaren brothers grew up working on what was then a dairy outside school hours — “paid $1 to round up the cows at 4.30am” — they were also surrounded by music.
Peter still performs on weekends with his bands Fossil Fuel and Press Play around South Gippsland.
Mum Kerena used to manage the bands and remains an amateur performer in local theatre groups.
“Being kids growing up isolated on a farm we’d spend our spare time playing instruments in the shed,” says Aidan, adding that during COVID Angus returned to the farm, lured by performance time in the shed.
He says it was in high school in Leongatha, with no outlet for his band to perform, that he and Rhett decided to hire the local football club grandstand and hold a music festival.
“Rather than feel frustrated that we had nowhere to perform in the area, we thought we’d do it ourselves.
“I remember walking around the classrooms shaking a tin, promoting the gig and selling tickets.
“We ended up with four bands from other high schools in South Gippsland and 300 people came.”
Aidan went on to study teaching and Rhett became a mechanical engineer, continuing to perform in bands — including three years in Germany — before taking that same can-do attitude to start the Hills Are Alive in 2009.
“We had friends in the music scene who couldn’t get gigs at festivals or airplay on radio so we thought let’s start our own festival. In the first year we had 11 bands and 334 people.
“It was a natural fit to work with Rhett. We’re best friends as well as brothers.”
Aidan packed up his instruments around 2013 to focus on full-time event management, also managing artists, with other events including UNIFY Gathering in Tarwin Lower and Land of Plenty in Shepparton.
“Right now no insurance company will touch a music festival, so we are literally putting everything on the line. It’s challenging. But humans love to gather and celebrate music.”
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