After two years of delays due to Covid, the first day of the Splendour in the Grass festival has been called off due to wild weather, amid chaos with ticket holders reporting 15-hour queues and flooded campsites.
In a statement, festival organisers said they had “decided to err on the side of caution and cancel performances on the main stages” – Amphitheatre, Mix Up, GW McLennan and Park(lands) Stages – on Friday only.
They said that programming on Saturday and Sunday would move ahead as planned.
Major acts including Gorillaz, DMAs, Kacey Musgraves and the Avalanches were due to take to the stage on Friday. Ticket holders who were on site reported that Korean-Australia rap crew 1300, who were set to perform on the Mix Up stage at 12.10pm, came on stage half an hour late before their performance was formally called off.
Statement from Splendour in the Grass organisers pic.twitter.com/zcROtIEKex
— SplendourintheGrass (@SITG) July 22, 2022
The Byron Bay grounds of Australia’s biggest music festival have been hit by torrential rain, with thousands of attendees arriving on Thursday to find their campsites inundated with water. Many festivalgoers – most of whom have paid more than $500 each for a three-day ticket and a camping pass – took to social media to complain about long queues to enter as vehicles got bogged or ran out of fuel, and a lack of communication from staff on site.
The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for the New South Wales northern rivers district, predicting another 30mm of rain would fall in Byron on Friday – but conditions could begin to ease on Saturday afternoon.
On Friday morning, Splendour organisers announced on social media that the festival’s main campsite at North Byron Parklands was closing to new arrivals “due to ongoing weather conditions” and directed all incoming travellers to head to the Byron Events Farm 13km away. Free bus shuttles were being provided to help people get around the sites.
Some scenes from the Splendour in the Ground campground this morning. @abcnews pic.twitter.com/SRH4oMuhQY
— Tobi Loftus (@tobiloftus) July 21, 2022
At that point, organisers said that “the show will go on rain, hail or shine” – but festival-goers reported “total chaos” on site amid confusion among Splendour staff, security and shuttle bus drivers about the state of affairs.
Hilary Randall, who joined the queue of cars at 3pm on Thursday and finally arrived at her campsite at 9.30am on Friday, said she had only learned the first day was cancelled through the media.
“We haven’t heard anything official. There are still buses running from our campgrounds,” she said. “We’re hearing news from people not even at the festival – we’re about to line up for a bus so we’ll see what happens.”
Earlier, Randall described the chaos of the arrival queue. “At about 2am we got confirmation to turn our engines off and sleep in the car,” she said.
“It was about 9am when they told us to go to the new campsite. We’ve heard nothing at all from Splendour except on social media. Anything we’ve heard has been from other people inside or people further up the queue, or people who are walking up and down the queue trying to find out what is going on.”
No food or drink was provided to those waiting hours in their cars overnight, she said.
“We walked up this morning to see if we could just get our wristbands, so we could go in and get food and they told us we couldn’t do that. We didn’t bring food, so we had nothing since 2pm yesterday.”
Guardian Australia audio producer Miles Herbert arrived at North Byron Parklands at 9.30pm on Thursday and said it took two hours to move 20 metres in the queue.
Splendour in the grass 2022, really hoping for a cancel-refund tickets- let me go home announcement asap xxx @SITG pic.twitter.com/xioLqzFRUp
— Kate (@kate_ohagan3) July 21, 2022
“There were literally cars breaking down, running out of fuel, people pulling over on the side of the road because their car’s battery has died,” he said. “Tow trucks were coming in and pulling cars out of the queue, and people were peeing on the side of the road. Truly horrible, literally the whole night.
“As we were driving into the venue, to our left and right there were people who had just been like, ‘Fuck this, I can’t wait any longer’ and had pulled off to sleep in their cars.”
He arrived at his campsite at North Byron Parklands at 4.30am, but it was completely flooded.
“They told us we could risk it if you want … It was just such an absurd situation – truly laughable,” Herbert said. “I think we all thought we were gonna get in, we were gonna get to our tents, everything was gonna be fine. And once we entered the parklands we were immediately confronted with like, that wasn’t going to happen.”
He left the grounds and managed to get a hotel room at 5.30am.
On social media, some have redubbed the festival “Splendour in the Lake” while others called for it to be cancelled entirely and some kind-hearted locals offered to help tow vehicles out of the mud.
All of the festival’s “destination spaces”, including Global Village, Tipi Forest, Forum, Comedy and Science tents, would remain open on Friday to patrons who were already on site or at the Byron Events Farm, organisers said.
Moshtix will contact all ticket holders affected by the cancellation with more information about refunds, they added.
“Please be assured that our event team is working very hard to provide the best experience possible under the current circumstances,” they said.
Splendour in the Grass has been beset by problems in recent weeks. Little over a week before the festival, organisers claimed they had only just been informed that a “new” change in legislation meant that all ticket holders under 18 would need to be accompanied by an adult, forcing parents to fork out hundreds to act as chaperones. However, NSW officials rejected this claim, telling Guardian Australia that the organisers had been directly reminded one month before that the 2019 legislation change would impact them.
Several acts have also pulled out of performing, with US rock headliners Yeah Yeah Yeahs announcing last week that they would no longer be playing due to health issues.
Wild weather continued to lash the east coast on Friday, with people being warned to stay out of the ocean as an offshore weather system moved from south-east Queensland to northern NSW.
The low-pressure weather system was expected to move south later on Friday and Saturday.
