Heavy rains force festival scramble – but tourists still flock as desert disappears
A rare outback deluge has left organisers of the “world’s most remote” music festival scrambling to find a new venue – but there’s a silver lining.
Birdsville’s Big Red Bash music festival is scrambling to find a new venue, after a rare deluge hit outback Queensland and flooded its performance site.
This month, Birdsville was pummelled with more than 140mm of rain in two days – close to the town’s annual average of 162mm.
Stations north saw four times their annual rainfall dumped, leaving many locals comparing the scale of this event to the record floods of 1974.
The town is currently only accessible by air, Birdsville Hotel general manager Ben Fullagar told InDaily.
“It’s the biggest rain event I’ve seen,” Fullagar, 44, said.
“It’s going to be a few weeks before we have road access.”
The Diamantina River is currently experiencing moderate to major flooding, which is anticipated to subside and restore road access to Birdsville.
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But, it is not expected the area will be dry enough to host the the three-day music festival – which self-promotes as the most remote in the world.
Playing each year at the Big Red sand dune on Adria Downs, a privately organic cattle farm in July, headline acts for this year include, Missy Higgins, Hoodoo Gurus and The Teskey Brothers.
However in a statement posted on their website, organisers announced they would be forced to relocate.
“Based on current conditions and local advice, the site will not dry sufficiently by July to allow the event to be held safely in this location,” the statement said.
“As a result, we are now actively working through the operational and logistical requirements with key stakeholders and local authorities to assess options for relocating the festival to an alternative site within the Birdsville region.”
Ticket holders were encouraged to “continue planning their trip to Birdsville as normal while we assess relocation options” but ticket sales had been paused.
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Fullagar, who has been working at the iconic Birdsville Hotel since 2016, agreed – and encouraged tourists to make the trip to see the “spectacular” natural event.
“All of the Birdsville community and businesses have confidence they’ll put on a great show, regardless of location,” he said.
“And we’re all super excited. The rain has brought the entire area to life. Our phones are running off the hook.”
He said flooding in Channel Country transformed the ancient landscape, with flora and fauna springing up across thousands of kilometres of inland waterways.
“There’s pelicans, there’s even been seagulls sighted. The whole area just looks amazing.”
He did not expect the festival’s relocation to impact tourism.
“The Big Red Bash is just part of what brings people to Birdsville, and we’re busy for eight months of the year.
“The whole region sees this as a massive opportunity.”
The Big Red Bash originally began in 2013 as a performance to celebrate completion of the Big Red Run; a gruelling 250km, six-day ultra marathon.
Over its 13-year run, it has hosted the likes of John Farnham, Midnight Oil, Jimmy Barnes, Icehouse and Tina Arena.
Last year the event “took a breather”, organisers said, and two smaller John Williamson concerts were staged on consecutive nights, with numbers limited to 1000 per night.
In 2023, closed roads due heavy rain around Birdsville left about 100 festival goers stranded at the Mungerannie Hotel in SA’s Far North.
The travellers were stranded just 315 kilometres from their destination for nearly a week.
The event was previously shifted in 2016 due to local rain “preventing safe access to the site”.
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