As Splendour In The Grass punters make their way home today, organisers are no doubt already looking towards next year’s event. But looking even further beyond that, things start to get a little blurry.
As Perth Now reports, Splendour organisers are yet to secure a venue for the annual three-day music festival beyond next year, as others voice concerns that the festival may be outgrowing its current location.
Splendour organisers are in the fourth year of a five-year trial which allows them to operate at the North Byron Parklands. However, organiser Jessica Ducrou said organisers are “still working through approval” for future venues.
“There will definitely be a Splendour 2017,” she said. “We’re happy with how the festival has been running here and at this stage we are not considering any other sites for the festival (in 2018).”
However, some say the event — which drew 32,500 people on each of its three days, an increase of 2,500 over last year — may be getting too big for the Byron Bay venue it’s called home for four years.
The rise in punters left some stranded due to the increased traffic. According to some reports, shuttle buses taking punters between the Splendour site and Byron Bay took up to three hours to arrive.
“It was ridiculous, we were only staying about 20km away and it took us a good two hours to get home,” one punter told News Corp. “We were lucky to come across someone leaving with a few empty seats.”
Ducrou said the situation was caused by an unexpected number of “pick ups and drop offs”, but organisers did not plan on incorporating transport costs into the price of the festival ticket for next year.
“People don’t always move in the way you expect and we didn’t have a mechanism in place to deal with the number of pick ups,” she said. “When you have 15,000 people arriving at different times throughout the day but all trying to leave at once there will be some congestion.”
Photo: Nik Buttigieg
