Australian music royalty are getting ready to rock the stage of an outback festival held on the dusty red plains of the NSW far west.
Midnight Oil is headlining the three-day Mundi Mundi Bash north of Broken Hill starting on Thursday, as the band embarks on their final tour.
Joining the iconic rock act are fellow luminaries Jimmy Barnes and Daryl Braithwaite, Missy Higgins and Kasey Chambers, the Black Sorrows and ABBA cover band Bjorn Again.
Mundi Mundi Bash owner and founder Greg Donovan told AAP he sought out the best bands and performers available to build the annual festival into a must-attend event.
“It’s not too difficult to convince (artists) to come out here,” he said.
“They know that we put on a good event and look after them.
“They actually like coming out and playing somewhere that’s really unique and beautiful and they’re here amongst a great crowd.”
This event comes four months after the inaugural Mundi Mundi Bash in April, which had been pushed back due to COVID-19.
Its second iteration will host 9000 punters and an unspecified number of dogs – the event is animal-friendly, and also allows people to camp, build campfires and bring their own booze.
The festival received a $200,000 grant from the NSW government through its Regional Events Acceleration Fund, which Mr Donovan said allowed Midnight Oil to be added to the line-up.
The bash is expected to be the biggest live concert ever held in outback NSW.
“It’s an amazing site,” Mr Donovan said of the Mundi Mundi Plains, which are also a popular filming location.
“You drive over the Barrier Ranges … and then once you get up to the top and see over the hill, you see right out on the plains and it just goes on forever.
“You can virtually see the curvature of the earth.”
The plains serve as the backdrop for films including Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the upcoming Hollywood feature Furiosa.
The Broken Hill City Council reported the April event had delivered some $3.5 million to the local economy.
The festival is on track to exceed its own target of bringing $5.4 million in visitor revenue to Broken Hill over three years.
