Celebrating 33 years of mindful magic and international standing, Woodford Folk Festival 2018/19 saw 130,000 punters descend upon the leafy Woodfordian foothills (Sunshine Coast) for six days of song, dance and gypsy romance.
Eighteen stages, eight bars, countless food vendors and enough street-based madness to form a festival in itself. Kicking up dust at the entry gates, it was immediately clear that these guys are unabashedly catering to a crowd far removed from their many new year’s counterparts.
If the Stop Adani stickers plastering the bathroom walls didn’t make that clear enough, a quick scan of the schedule would – boasting workshops from pollen to percussion, permaculture to period-ing like a unicorn. It’s clear these guys know how to party with a purpose. It certainly helps to have 33 years of practice.
Day 0 – 26 December
Not included on the official schedule, day 0 was a full-force dress rehearsal for the 3,000-odd vollies and performers. The festival site endeared itself quickly as we wove throughout its many WhyDon’tWeDoItInThe Road’s, ErnestHemming Way’s, and Penny Lane’s.Giant eyeballs in military apparel and reimagined Cousin It’s danced before the pond at the Village Green. Vollies who had already been onsite for almost a month mingled with excitable newcomers at the Pineapple Lounge, where an all-in jam session saw them use their practice to demolish the latter in an impromptu dance battle of mythical talent and toe-stepping.
The pathways crunched and the patrons buzzed, all community sans cattle drive.
Day 1 – 27 December
Totally voiceless and already besotted by the first official day, I took a stroll. Kombucha was flowing freely through antique pianos and laughably grim-faced men in black were assassinating punters with pink water pistols.The boys of Black Rock Band were charging through one of their many sets at the bedazzled Luna stage with songs about making a change and living together as one – a common theme here at WFF. The Kakadu-based family band close with ‘Struggle’, a track smacking of solid rock in both English and Kunwinjku.
At the Lettering House, one of the most inspired festival initiatives since pedal-flush portapotties, punters are satiating their creative itches.
Some send letters to loved ones, some repent in confessions to be burned at the Fire Ceremony, and some sign and seal words unspoken for missed connections to be (ideally) delivered by Woodfordia’s pinstriped posties, who make their way across the festival with purpose.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
At the widely agreed upon meeting place, the Village Green, The Game has just begun – another Woodfordian Eureka moment fuelled by mysticism of unimaginable magnitude.
Elizabogans, Glampires, and other such factions bestow upon punters cards and quests, daring them to immerse themselves in fantasy across the full seven days of the festival. The Pilates faction, a band of flexible pirates, drag a tentacled mountain across the sloping lawn, yarring as they go.
A yoga workshop commences as The Game’s players disperse, guttural chants engulfing the space. Some of the movers-and-stretchers are solo, some with children on shoulders, some with lovers on lips. All is well and as it should be at WFF.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
The sun starts its drowsy descent as I sit beer-in-hand at Coopers Bar, dipping below the endless forest created by Woodfordians at Planting’s past – WFF’s sister festival that sees thousands of diehards plant 10,001 trees across the site every May.
Comfortable as a country pub, Coopers Bar features a shady patio from which to enjoy a brew as punters 15 to 95 play their instruments at 1 of the many jams - violins, guitars, accordions, and, in one instance, a keytar. Meanwhile, in the makeshift town square, one-man-band Uptown Brown has turned up with bells (and strings and snares) on to compete for decibels to a ring of hollering fans.
At the Amphitheatre’s annual Welcoming Ceremony, founder, local legend, and ideas man Bill Hauritz kicks off the season with an expression of genuine gratitude. He proudly cites two consecutive years without a spot of rubbish left onsite.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
Ex-PM Bob Hawke, now on his tenth-consecutive Woodford, serenades the audience with a wildly patriotic rendition of Waltzing Matilda and a request for a bloody cigar. Fireworks set off a flow of paper lanterns – suns, moons, starfish, shells, and a 20-foot serpent.
Original Jinibara custodians dance fireside, flanked by Woodfordia’s 12 gargantuan regulars, The Elders. The surrounding tall trees show punters solid proof of their collective vision of paradise.
Back between the checkered couches of Pineapple Lounge, Newtown’s Apache were ruining my chances at a night of rested voicebox.
Packing out the venue off the back of their first EP, released only a week earlier, the Lounge was deliciously dank with bassline conversations and a variety of dancers ranging from primary school to care home, throwing kicks and swinging themselves around each other’s heads in time with the saxaphone’s pound.
Day 2 – 28 December
Warming up the season campers with a daily slot at Cirque, WFF’s debatably dangerous haven for all things acrobatic, the Flipside Circus kids cartwheeled in, out, and off of skipping ropes and unicycles.Acquiring a mandatory (and questionable) recuperation brew from the onsite homeopath, I made for Chill Hill – Woodfordia’s insurance-defying, behemoth bamboo hut standing two stories tall with the sole goal of providing Woodfordians with a space to bliss out.
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Doing exactly that under dappled sunlight from one of the hut’s many hammocks, I was able to catch Perth asskicker Stella Donnelly’s set word perfectly from the adjacent Grande, one of WFF’s two headline stages.
Hundreds of hardcore chillers took in the sounds of Stella and her band as they feened through fan favourites ‘Mechanical Bull’ and ‘Boys Will be Boys’ with heavy backing beats and the delicacy of a duo of dreamy electric guitars.
The set closed with a touchingly nostalgic cover of Paul Kelly’s ‘Careless’ to woozy 1pm uproar, enjoyed while deliciously horizontal and flipping through a compendium of curious information borrowed from the Library of Leaves.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
Another ingenious WFF original, the corrugated iron library offered punters a range of pre-loved paperbacks across the festival’s seven days, run on the trust system as opposed to the Dewey Decimal.
The day's next detour was Small Hall, the stationary homecoming of Woodfordia’s other sister project and roving celebration of small towns and accessible live music, the Festival of Small Halls.
Quaintly modelled after the many weatherboarded Halls-For-Hire, the movement visits during its tour of offmap and offhand Australian towns, Small Hall was today hosting the Auslan Australia tribe. Still voiceless but newly equipped with the ability to say ‘tomato’, ‘thunder’, ‘octopus’, and ‘I love you’ with my hands, I ventured to Blue Lotus.
Hosting all things which may align a chakra or two, the workshop space had been commandeered by chef, naturopath and nutritionist Tamara Skok. Juggling three recipes at once for a live cooking demonstration, Tamara shared with her crowd valuable industry secrets on how to get the best out of garlic and the liquid gold that is chickpea juice.
At Greenhouse, WFF’s politically-inclined hub of informed and soon-to-be-informed conversation, Brisbane startup NewVote were elucidating punters on the hopeful capacity technology has to redesign a failing system.
When it comes to good ideas, WFF seems to be full of ‘em – providing a platform for the lightbulb moments which not only interest us but directly affect us.
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Dusk kicked in at Bill’s Bar during a session of Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids, an internationally acclaimed podcast having made the long journey from Canada to host a nightly slot at WFF.
The Canuck’s dragged brave punters onstage to share with the crowd rare insights into the tender moments of total strangers lives – diary entries, angsty teenage poetry, and even an unreleased hip hop single (big kudos to DoDo P for having “the juice”, whatever that may be).
At Grande, The Northern Folk were managing to incorporate influences of roots, folk, pop, and even their own brand of what could be described as either hip hop or spoken word accurately between the ten of them with minimum fuss and maximum heart.
Painting a picture of Mumford and Sons before they lost their spark to Nova repeat plays, the Melburnians worked through ‘Cold’, ‘Stumble On Home’, and ‘Whiskey Jesus’ with all the benefits of best friendship and a funky sax.
Headlining the night and arguably the festival, The Cat Empire took to an overflowing Amphitheatre to indulge in a catalogue of classics. WFF poster-children, the grinning six-piece belted out ‘Two Shoes’, ‘Bulls’, and a brand new song by a name I’ve forgotten (guess you’ll just have to wait) to frenzied dancefloor devotion.
The Cat Empire - image © Pixels and Spice Photography
Their high-energy live set, having seen global fame and multiple multi-platinums, fit seamlessly within the ethos of the festival – the audience striking up their own rendition of ‘Bulls’ in hopes of coaxing the band back for an encore.
Their closing return for ‘Chariot’ was met with a static wave of hands across the Amphi’s natural incline, gratitude, and animalistic cheer.
Taking a break from plastering mysterious and often outrageous news headlines around the festival site were the Spooky Men’s Chorale at Luna.
Watching the 15-man strong comedy show cum choir straight-faced serenade a crowd with songs of tools and impressions of dachshunds licking their genitals, questions arose. Who are these guys? Where did they come from? How did they get their hands on such a dazzling selection of hats? Why? There are no answers and that is exactly the way these masters of incomprehension intend to keep it.
Wrapping up what had been a long and inspired night, Burger Joint were bringing the cheese at Pineapple Lounge. If the programme photo of frontmen G and T-Bone fist-bumping while riding motorbikes down a freeway wasn’t enough indication that these guys were here to have fun, their dangerously loose fan base was.
The self-described ‘legends of funk’ funnelled a delicate mix of rock riffs, sequinned jackets, unapologetic funk, and just plain screaming into the microphone into dance tracks about women on motorcycles and wanting a parmigiana.
A full-volume cover of Swingers’ classic ‘Counting The Beat’ didn’t go astray, either – eaten up by the ever-present and never-tiring Pineapple punters.
Day 3 – 29 December
Officially at the halfway mark, a tour of the expansive campsites unearthed a world of its own.The Prairies, Sleepy Hollow, Cloudland, The Grand Canyon, all brimming with impromptu jams and native butterflies easily identifiable by the signs left across the site by the Butterfly Gang, a pack of winged volunteers with a mission.
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At the other end of the site, Chill Hill was hosting a scattering of lazy life. One of the week’s many storytelling circles was in full swing at the Library of Leaves, while a cluster of hula-hooping friends held a wedding ceremony at the hill’s crest. The world was as it could and should be.
Sitting under the shadows of Cirque was Rumpel the Worldy Wildcard, the man living in the 25th hour with a show that’s all middle – it has no start and it never ends. Performing multiple 24+ hour shows across the week from his oddity-infested caravan, this performer’s entire premise was to question not how far he could take entertainment but how far could entertainment take him.
The modern-day jester shared with his small but ever-present crowds a verbalised internal monologue; vacation slides beside Paul McCartney or Buzz Aldrin; stories of visiting the munchkins of Oz in nursing homes; and a painfully long pack up process which saw the entire tight-knit audience lend a helping hand. He would be a festival favourite for many and a touchstone for those with roughly the same number of hours horizontal as himself.
At Luna, Australia’s compost darling Costa Georgiadis and Daddy Doctor Karl Kruszelnicki were delighting a hundreds-strong crowd with soil-related information and useful historical tidbits.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
Back at Pineapple, the Montgomery Brothers were exercising their right to fast-paced funk, with tambourine-driven rock reminiscent of a time-warp garage session back when synth organs were the standard. At Folklorica, five Serbian women in regalia incompatible with the summer heat sang traditional folk songs while men in outrageously tall hats exerted impressive balance.
Melburnian jazz-hop faves with a strong undercurrent of Bronx Beat attitude, Remi and musical collaborate Sensible J were taking to the Grande stage with the full force of 2x emcees and a bongo handler.
One of Australia’s fastest rising hip hop acts since taking out Triple J’s Unearthed Artist of the Year gong in 2013, the pair climbed sound-systems and rose even the back-row hillsitters with the persuasive powers of television evangelists.
Punching out radio favourites ‘Sangria’ and ‘My People’ with infinitely likeable lyricism and authenticity, the standout set nuked the teeming crowd into a spicy crockpot of sweaty funk – taking to my voicebox with the sharp talons of a catchy hook in the process.
“Are you guys ready for some politically charged hip hop that makes you reflect on the current social climate and have fun?!” Rivermouth frontman Jonno Sri shouted from the packed Pineapple, proceeding to deliver.
I knew Jonno’s lyrical style vaguely from a chunk of poetry he had slammed at a recent community meeting back in Brisbane, and my high expectations were met by a mad musical professor on keys (and drums, and bass, and mic).
The fourtet found beauty in musical symbiosis, letting loose with music that demanded attention while rhyming sternly to the crowd that they would all be making the most of burnt toast and going home at 3pm.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
Space-age synth notes resounded from the burlesque-inspired Parlour, where a scattered crowd were making up for what they lacked in numbers with sheer adrenaline to the trash pop sounds of Feels Club.
The fresh Brisbane five-piece were putting the New in New Wave with their Triple J unearthed setlist looking, sounding, and smelling like brand new Bowie – highly energetic, somewhat erotic. Their livewire frontman held no bars and the audience responded in spades, swinging arms like they were Courtney Cox dancing in the dark.
PM ticked into AM as I detoured back to camp through the bamboo spire situated across from the Village Green. I found myself in the middle of a circle of friends clutching a pineapple decorated with a single candle.
The group had formed a surprise birthday party for a friend who, not knowing of the gathering (as per the definition of surprise), had gone to see a set. A birthday party with no birthday person, they were preparing to disband when a mother led her daughter, who had turned 11 moments ago, into the hut to share her good news.
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The following rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ was to be the most heartfelt set of the whole festival, the flaming pineapple passed hand to hand until it reached the bewildered girl.
Thanks to the fateful forces of WFF, there is now a child out there that will live the rest of their life believing that somewhere, hiding in tall bamboo spires with pineapples waiting to be set alight, magic really does exist.
Day 4 – 30 December Day 4
Has been lost to the void.Day 5 and 6 – 31 December and 1 January
With the final countdown beginning its ticking and/ or tocking, WFF’s ground were teeming with high-energy activities and useful information: Charleston workshops, wombat appreciation panels, and a How-To on saving the earth with seaweed.Tullara was captivating Bluestown with her alluring roots and Fitzroy’s soul darling Dan Sultan was mesmerising punters at Grande. Meanwhile, at Parlour, percussion performers Junkyard Beats were going just as hard with a couple of pots and pans.
Building anticipation for the coming countdown were farmers market favourites Formidable Vegetable, who were dropping the beet (sorry) at Grande. The world’s most successful permaculture-based-swing-band, the Veggies were playing to a crowd of green thumbs and movers/ shakers like puppets with a banjo, a ukulele, and an above average knowledge of seed banks.
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Entering stage left and straight outta compost was special guest Costa Geogiadis, touting a bejewelled pair of doof goggles and a sax of his own for a euphoric and somewhat surreal close to what would be their last set of 2018.
At 11.30pm, the great bell tolled to the annual miracle of quiet – hundreds of thousands falling completely silent for three still minutes, an incredible feat to pull off and even more so to behold.
Faces were flooded in the glow of candlesticks, the small fires working their way across the Village Green and beyond as every Woodfordian reflected on the past, present, and future, their loved ones elsewhere and those absent. The silence grows deeper as the minutes and years tick on, forming a moment of mutual understanding with no precedent or prescription.
Seven minutes to midnight. With a shameful abundance of cream-of-the-crop live music and to the chagrin of editors everywhere, I paid Rumpel a visit. The crowd were mostly elderly couples, a few children clearly ecstatic to be up past their bedtimes, and three Estonian travellers.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
Nobody knew what time it was exactly due to minute differences in mobile service providers, but the festival’s rising chorus of cheers were all the signal Rumpel needed to lift his pre-prepared sign in the air: “The Party is Right Here!”.
And as the 12-strong crowd each brushed off their pants to give the sleep-deprived showman a hug, it certainly was. We spent the remainder of the morning feeling the earth move under our feet at Chai’N Vibes.
Run by the Island Vibe crew, the pillowy tent was home to hot chai, warm vegan brownies, and a constantly evolving jam session which spanned the entirety of the six-day festival. Mass evacuation ensued as hundreds of punters made the yearly hike to the hilltop, crossing the threshold between 2018 and 2019 with the first sunrise of the new year.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
Tibetan monks chanted at punters as they spread out on their sleeping bags – some freshfaced and practicing yoga, others slightly more dishevelled and defaced with bioglitter.
Larger than life and brighter than orange, the sun shone for the first time in the new year through a thick blanket of witchy fog and the Glasshouse Mountains’ stoic peaks. Cheers sailed across the farmlands as it reached its full glory.
Too hot to sleep and too chuffed to care, we piled into the car of the nearest sober punter and headed 20 minutes down the road to Scotts Creek – one of the many natural beauties the Sunshine Coast hinterland has to offer.
Waving politely at the creek’s curious neighbours, my long-haired associates and I yahoo’d down rock faces, butt naked and with wildflowers in our hair. The water was brisk and seemed to (almost) replace a night of good sleep and sobriety.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
We re-entered the gates of Woodfordia and 2019 smiling dopily, accepting gratefully whatever the final day would send our ways. At the annual closing Fire Ceremony, the entire festival whirred in anticipation from the Amphitheatre’s grassy slope.
The stage sat in darkness as a Jinibara custodian lit the first flame to the sound of a lonely didgeridoo. Giant planets turned in the wings. The rising flames illuminated the hundreds of punters in the fire choir and orchestra, who had attended daily rehearsals to form an unbelievably pitch perfect one-of-a-kind performance.
The lantern parade began, carried by all attendees able to wake up in time for the morning lantern-making workshops. Woodfordians watched on cross-legged, grappling with the mind-boggling amount of event management that would have gone into this hour alone, let alone seven consecutive days of this calibre.
We waited with bated breath to throw our fists in the air at the protagonist couples triumphant reunion, for the fireworks to crack across the sky, and for the intricate wooden structures to fall to the flames. They, along with the musicians, chorus, artists, and lantern folk, represented a poignant wrap-up of the community that built this year’s WFF.
Image © Pixels and Spice Photography
With one failed goal, an irreparably damaged voice box, and a swag of fresh resolutions born from the festival’s many inspirations, I returned to the Great Armpit of reality.
More than a music festival, WFF is the only way to celebrate the previous year and welcome those to come if you believed in magic as a child and still do now. You will have fun. You will be yourself. You will probably not talk about fight club.
