Revelling in the Golden Plains festival

The music festival season for summer 2008 - 2009 came to an end two weekends ago with the Golden Plain Festival at Meredith.

It’s been a huge summer for music festivals; a season which started with the mudfest that was the Meredith Music Festival in December.

However Meredith’s sibling, Golden Plains, was a fitting end to summer.

It presented a diverse programme of contemporary and old school rock, roots and electronic music.

It was Labour Day long weekend and I was with my parea (crew) in the Meredith Supernatural amphitheatre; a spectacularly pristine land clinging to the edge of a farm, that looks (to me at least) like Epidavros.

In December we just managed to survive the rain and mud at Meredith Music Festival during the wettest week in Victoria for 2008.

However the weather for Golden Plains was on our side. Add a fantastic musical line up to a great weather forecast and you can understand my anticipation as we pitched tents and prepared for 38 hours of live music.

An essential skills needed when attending musical festivals is planning who you will see, when and where.

My parea negotiated the list of acts we wanted to see and from what vantage point we would see them. It paid off, whilst there was a lot of running around, we did see all of the acts we circled.

Dan Kelly and the Ukeladies (Paul Kelly’s nephew accompanied by two hilarious backup singers), the Afrobeat legend Tony Allen and his band who had the crowd swaying to his African funk for the duration of his set,  slamming Aussie rockers  You Am I, The Drones and even electropop one-hit wonder veteran Gary Numan were amongst the musical highlights of the weekend

Golden Plains is an independent music festival hosted by Melbourne’s fave radio RRR.

It is known as part two of the festival bookends held at Meredith with the Meredith Music Festival opening the summer festival season, and Golden Plains turning the lights out on outdoor summer partying.

The festival was a great opportunity for friends to gather at the campsite once more, drink lots and be merry.

It also was an opportunity to rack up another set of festival moment memories which my parea will share in years to come.

Thanks Aunty Meredith for a great time. Till the next!