As we sat in the media marquee at the Mundi Mundi Bash on pre-festival day, we reflected back on our journey from Perth the previous day – early morning flights, issues with the hire car, the impending dusk rolling into night on a roo (and goat) infested highway… welcome to outback Australia, filled with romance and road kills. With over 3,200kms covered, we rolled into Broken Hill around 9.30pm, dropping our luggage off at our accommodation, the aptly named ‘House with The Purple Gate’ before the mad dash to Coles (“we need to hurry, it shuts at 10pm”).
We settled in with some quick email catch-ups, a microwave burger and a couple of coldies before hitting the pit in preparation for the following day – pre-festival day. After grabbing our media passes at Broken Hill Race Course we headed out on to the road to Silverton, following the convoy of excited patrons down the winding road. With many fans arriving on the Monday, you get a real sense of the size of the place as you approach the festival site – Mundiville, as it’s affectionately known, is simply huge. Concentric semi-circles of caravans, camper trailers and tents fan out from the stage. Luckily, we were waved into a crew lane, bypassing the long line of travellers still yet to enter the site.
We headed to the media marquee, grabbed a trestle table, logged into the wi-fi and planned our attack. Finding food seemed a priority and then realised the sheer scale of the site – just walking around the outside edge of the concert area brings drips of sweat to your back and it’s only 23 degrees centigrade today. There literally is something for everyone; kebabs, curries, BBQ, seafood, burgers, pizzas, vegetarian options – I settled on the slow cooked BBQ Pork Belly Roll from a huge 1.8 tonne smoker and it hit the spot.
There are real connections with the area here too; a Mad Max replica V8 (Mad Max 2 and Furiosa were filmed in vicinity) and a giant Haulpak grace the rear entrance to the concert arena. Mundi’s Got Talent was underway and the sea of eager music lovers encircled the stage at the rear of the arena to cheer and support the hopeful winner. After watching a couple of the acts we decided to check out the merchandise tent. This is run to military precision; Area 1 – touch, see and try on what you want to buy. Area 2 – take your order form and buy your merch. Area 3 – grab your bits. It smoothly run and efficient.
Finally, the arena gates opened at 2.45pm and music lovers from across the country began to flood onto the red dirt as fans clamoured for a prime spot for the first official act of the festival, the excellent Leroy Johnson and The Waterbag Band, playing a 40-minute set of easy listening tunes entwined with digeridoos and folky vibes before local band Tha Boiz took things up a notch with a more up tempo set that get more people heading to the front. In between the bands DJ Master Bates played the dance hits the crowd just want to hear – the “hands in the air like we just don’t care” stuff of yesteryear. The atmosphere was building.
There was a special line-up of artists involved in the next segment that we can’t yet mention too much about but all we can say is keep an eye out on the ABC for a 5-part special scheduled soon. The project these three have worked on was incredible and something well worth keeping an eye out for in the coming months. They even gave us a wonderful rendition of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ to rapturous applause. Closing the pre-event was festival favourites Furnace and The Fundamentals, delivering a medley of countless hits to keep the hungry crowd pumped and baying for more.
As we packed up and loaded the car for the 30-minute trip back to Broken Hill, we reflected on the day, wondering what tomorrow will bring if this is only the pre-event!! Fabulous stuff.
