2018 Earth Frequency Festival Review @ Ivory's Rock

From what I felt and witnessed, the core intention of those behind Earth Frequency Festival was to create an immersive experience that was at once insanely fun and liberating while also bringing its guests into a genuine connection with Earth and each other. And they did a smashing job at it.

Armed with a battalion of beautiful hearts and minds, workshops of every kind, stalls to tickle every nerve and sleepless stages that shot out lasers and musical verve as throngs of people danced well into the dead of the night.

It was tangible that a lot of energy was invested into making something special out of Earth Frequency. Not just by its creators, but by all the attendees too.

Click here for Day 1 photos.

It is an annual event that is about having an incredible and wild time, but I sense that for many it is also about something more, that it really means and represents something significant for them. I believe this is due to the fact that Earth Frequency strives to open a window and offer a glimpse into what our culture can be when we come together and move as a collective inspired by love.

It makes sense then that for many who are disheartened by the state of the world at present this festival represents actual hope of change.


It offers the sense of being an active participant in a cultural movement that has been on the rise for a very long time, and far from being flailing and desperate, is in fact striding strongly in confidence and health.


The Welcoming Ceremony is a crucial and pivotal ritual for the Earth Frequency community. It is not just the start of festival, but a time for everybody to come together and acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which they will be dancing.

Thousands of butts sat happily on the dirt floor of the main stage and watched attentively as members of the Yuggera Nation welcomed and walked us through a series of their traditional songs and dances, allowing those in attendance the chance to connect respectfully to the culture that was here first.

The Yuggera handed over to some of the kids from the Family Realm (the kids area of the festival) who added to the ceremony weaving in a performance of poetry and dance that carried the motif of connecting to each other and the Earth as well as encouraging us all to awaken into our role of being the ones who must create a new future.


A perfect act to follow the Welcoming Ceremony, Oka are a three-piece band with indigenous roots who swill together a tasty blend of reggae, dub and didgeridoo. As well-known festival favourites they were greeted by readiness and excitement by the eager crowd who were keen to set the starting tone for the weekend ahead.

We bopped and bounced away to Oka’s sunny songs and good vibes. Their set swung from deep and blissed-out slow grooves to high-energy fun that was led by some insane didge work that set the blood on fire and had us all yelping and stomping like mad as we tried to keep up.

Click here for Day 2 photos.

Next were the incredibly talented Tijuana Cartel. Sultans of a kind of mystic, Mexican desert vibe. With singing only present in a few songs it seemed Tijuana were more set on speaking through their music. Something they did with mindblowing skill and fluidity.

Absolutely sweet and shredding nylon guitar racing and trickling over the top of waves and waves of Latin drumming that was infused with an element of dub too. It is the kind of music I appreciate most. The kind that finds a synthesis between the power of electronic music and the power of live and actual instrumentation.

Their set was unique and enlivening and hit a spot in the soul while also putting the blood on the boil.


Another example of an act who found that balance between the electronic and live element was Beats Antique. I had never even heard of these guys before and was absolutely blown away when I stumbled upon them.

A two-piece act with one on drums and the other alternating through stringed instruments. They somehow managed between the two of them to create some bad-ass musical carnage that was just as full of pulse and pace as any of the electronic acts could claim.

The drummer thumped away as if he was a beat machine while the man on strings squeezed out eastern themes through electric violin or layed down bone-tearing riffs on his super-driven banjo. It was infectious, a sound that snuck under our skin and got us all dancing and howling like animals. 


The Crash Cats were one of the few live acts I saw who were centred in just pure, live music. Led by the dark haired and geometrically tattooed Amy Jane Tanner, who hit us all with a punch and pulse of pure soul and lyrical witchery while the band carried the crowd with a tight and tender force of rock and funk.

They were a breath of fresh air. The Crash Cats brought an element of humanness that I believe was an essential addition to the line-up. And may I say that guitarist Harry Edwards (also the mind behind Brisbane act Elder Children) was one of the most amazing shredders I have ever seen.

Now that I had had my humanness and soul, it was time for a dose of electronic music again! Opiuo was one of the most anticipated acts of the festival and he really did bring the goods. His is the kind of music that doesn't quite have the English vocabulary to follow it yet.

Thick with a whole ecosystem of deep, burrowing basslines and a high-flying matrix of neon notes that tickle the very neurons in your brain as they dart around like mad trying to keep up. What can be said however is this: It digs deep into your very being and ignites a bonfire of what really is visceral dancing.


Yes I had grooved a lot up until this point, but it was Opiuo who had my spirit flaming like mad and trying to pop out of its own skin; that had me chase myself down to the cliff edge and limits of my energy then over the edge into a pool of sweat and revelry.

For me it was like the prize fight of the whole festival. Safe to say that after that I was spent. There were other DJs playing on into the wee hours but I was happy with my efforts and didn't feel the need to chase the golden snitch on till dawn. I felt that bliss of knowing you gave your all.

The crew from the The Crash Cats were having a jam over at the chai tent and I spent the rest of the night there digging the playful grooves and philosophical yabberings with new friends.

I stayed there till the embers of energy burned into a beautiful lull and there were only a handful of us left with the pleasure of watching a small circle of young women singing in sweet and soulful improvised harmonies, while we rested on hay bales and sipped that spicy, warm chai. It was a sacred little moment.

Click here for Day 3 photos.

While the music is undeniably the heartbeat of Earth Frequency, there are so many other beautiful things that make up the rest of its body. I spent a lot of my time wandering through the village, eating tasty treats and tasting strange herbal elixirs.

As a synchronistic vortex of kindred souls and like minds it's impossible not to run into someone you know (or ought to know) every few hundred metres. This richness of personalities and characters is one of the most magical parts of the festival and one of its key aims.

To create a space where people who are bound to inspire one another can collide, gather and potentially even go on to create ripples in the world together.


There is also an art gallery dome dripping with jaw dropping, mind-bending art and two main workshop spaces that alternate hourly through workshops that touch on just about everything. Workshops for yoga, meditation, permaculture, dance, living sustainably, art, poetry, shamanism, the list just goes on and on.

While I got involved in many it was the open-mic poetry jam held by Fleassy Malay (which I even got up and read at!) and a shamanic ‘journey’ held by Peter Bowden that I dug the most.

Lulling us with loud, thumping medicine drum, didgeridoo and flutes he and his team stepped between our lying bodies and carried us through a spoken-word journey through the mind and soul.


This kind of thing is actually the oldest form of accessing altered states of consciousness. And I really did find myself slipping in and out of that trippy zone between being awake and asleep.

Speaking of altered states of consciousness, there was one other thing that impressed me about Earth Frequency. The way it was able to harmonise and balance by being a place that was safe to bring the family and children. While at the same time being a place that was made safe for one to go seeking like a psychonaut through the mystery of their own soul.

It’s like there was an unspoken mindfulness in the air saying: “Yes, shed your inhibitions! Burst into your full expression and wilderness! But don't get sloppy. Don’t jeopardise anyone else's good time. Crack the code, but don’t break the vase.”

With the help of this grounding, it is this above all that Earth Frequency serves to do. It creates a safe platform where one can leap out and potentially come into contact with the kind of experience that can change a life.


This is the something I was speaking about earlier. The reason the festival bears such a meaning for many people.

There is an unspoken yet collectively sensed feeling at the festival that some subtle and spiritual force just beneath the surface of the event, and as we live in a time of aimless apathy there is a real feeling of a fleeting chance to connect to something real, liberating and undefined. To maybe, just maybe, have an authentic, spiritual experience.

It is by creating this insanely fun kind of immersion that Earth Frequency fulfils its intention of planting in us a seed of love for each other and the Earth.

Not by instilling in us the feeling that we ought to. But by creating the space where we can experience the beauty and value in each other and this world we live in first hand.

So that rather than being left with the way we live having been changed, we leave with the power to choose and change the way we want to live.

And so another soul rubs its waking eyes, another light flickers on and another drop joins that mounting and moving wave. Thank you Earth Frequency.

Click here for Day 4 photos.