Billed as one of the world’s most remote annual music festivals, Australia’s Mundi Mundi Bash takes place every August on the Mundi Mundi Plains near Broken Hill in outback New South Wales. Days are warm and sunny, reaching the mid-20°Cs, but nights are cold, dropping to near freezing.
Visiting from Sydney requires a 12-hour drive with an overnight stop (and a chance for a final shower). Ticket-holders must be fully self-sufficient because the outback ‘Mundiville’ site has no running water, electricity or blackwater disposal. With the nearest town 35km away, attendees are encouraged to bring everything they need to survive.
Mundiville is on private land at Belmont Station, a working sheep station north of the Barrier Ranges. Camping isn’t usually permitted here; the organisers needed the landowner’s permission to hold the Bash on these red-dirt plains. Tickets include camping for up to seven nights, Monday to Monday, depending on the vehicle pass chosen. The main concerts run from Thursday to Saturday, with extra entertainment on Wednesday night and a movie on Tuesday, which helps stagger arrivals and departures.
For many Australian music fans, Mundi Mundi is the ultimate adventure – a road trip to a remote outback venue for live music and fun.
MUNDI SPIRIT
Greg Donovan founded the Mundi Mundi Bash in 2022, having already launched the Birdsville Big Red Bash, staged at the Big Red sand dune in Queensland’s Simpson Desert since 2014.
“I am grateful that I’ve been able to turn what started as something of a side hustle into a full-time gig,” says Donovan, a former corporate insurance professional. “I’m not saying it’s all been smooth sailing – during COVID cancellations and beyond there have been many a sleepless night as the family home was on the line – but from crunching numbers in insurance to staging music events in spectacular outback locations, my world has been turned on its head for the better.”
In March, unprecedented rainfall and regional flooding left the Big Red site too wet to recover in time for July’s Birdsville Big Red Bash. Organisers considered alternative locations around Birdsville, but none was feasible, and the event was cancelled on 27 March. Ticket holders could take a refund or transfer to another event, including the Mundi Mundi Bash.
Organisers then focused on making the Mundi Mundi Bash a major success. It soon sold out, and as its opening approached, campervans began their pilgrimage to Broken Hill.
However, during festival setup, Broken Hill had one of its wettest Augusts on record, with rainfall equal to about one-third of the city’s annual total. Up to 30% of the site became unsuitable for camping and more rain was forecast, so on Wednesday 19 August organisers closed the gates to One Day Early Entry and Standard Vehicle Entry pass holders and offered refunds. Entry for two- and three-day campers continued, but was slow. Allowing more people on site would have put patrons, crew, volunteers and others at risk.
Ultimately, the Bash itself went ahead almost as planned on the Mundi Mundi Plains, with around 10,000 of the roughly 15,000 ticket-holders making it on site.
“Closing the gates on Wednesday was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make,” says Donovan. “Thousands had driven days to get to Broken Hill, and we felt every bit of that disappointment with them.”
In true Aussie spirit, organisers put on free pop-up gigs in Broken Hill and Silverton for the disappointed punters who had been turned away. Artists put their hands up, all for free, and played venues including the Palace Hotel and the Silverton Hotel while the main concerts carried on at Mundiville.
“Emergency services stakeholders, volunteers, event crew, production team, food and market stall vendors, artists and contractors all went above and beyond to make it a great festival,” Donovan adds.
THE ROAD TO MUNDIVILLE
Melbourne-based Powa Productions has provided a turnkey solution for every Big Red Bash since 2021, and for the Mundi Mundi Bash, so the team understands the demands of hauling tonnes of equipment across the outback. This year, it transported six B-doubles of production gear and tour buses for crew accommodation on a 24-hour journey, with recent rainfall causing road closures and detours.
The road to Mundiville is sealed (tarmacked) all the way, with the final 2.5km surfaced in 2025, which may have saved this year’s festival. However, after all the rainfall, the dirt tracks on site proved too difficult for many attendees as opening day approached.
“Most crew arrive a week before the festival, although some begin dropping off trailers 10 days out,” says Geoff Knight, Powa’s managing director. “The screens must be installed and production completed by Tuesday night.” That leaves just two days to build the structures and a day and a half to complete production.
Fortunately, the process is well rehearsed, with a 28-person crew, including truck drivers who join the setup on arrival. Knight shares that the biggest challenge is marking out the site. Some infrastructure remains from the previous year, but growing attendance has pushed the layout further back.
“The challenge of actually building isn’t that hard, other than environmental issues like wind and rain,” he says. “Power isn’t a problem; Aggreko provide the generators for the festival. We normally get a trailer set of dual 500 kVA gensets that are synced, and we run all our production off that. It can run off one generator, but ideally, we run both generators in sync so that if one stops, we still have continuous power.
“Every now and again, someone will forget to fill one up with diesel or something like that, and it gets resolved very quickly. But yeah, we monitor that closely as well because that’s the heart of the event really. If I don’t have power, I don’t have anything.”
He continues: “Despite the weather, we still get gear out, and we’re building eight delay towers, two delay screens, so there’s an awful lot of building in the arena area. We had to deal with forklifts being bogged down, trying not to chew up the site, and getting trucks in and then towing them in and out just so you can get gear into the location. It’s flat ground, and when it’s waterlogged before we get there, any 2mm of rain adds like 20mm on top.”
The stage sits on firmer ground, created for a village set during the filming of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which proved fortunate amid the mud and puddles. Elsewhere, the site was boggy, but as they say, the show must go on!
The 14m ground-support stage has no back wall in order to help manage wind, because 80km/h winds across the plain are not unusual. No surprise considering the site is adjacent to a wind farm. A heavily trussed rear screen prevents movement, while a sufficient gap relieves wind pressure on the back of the LED screen.
“There’s quite a bit of work we do about weighting and bracing which we normally wouldn’t do for our events because they’re in and out the next day, whereas the stage here is up for six or seven days,” adds Knight. “This year we had rolling blocks on the delay towers so we could hang lights off it and then send it up to trim.”
Three years ago, crews stopped trenching cables with diggers after accidentally damaging cables during pack-down. They installed conduits instead, but rodents often damage the PVC, dislodge the end caps and chew through the pull ropes, so one of the crew’s first tasks is clearing several conduits before running cables through them.
At night, while everyone else is snoozing in their tents or caravans, the crew keeps working, using Bobcats to drag and remove the water off the ground. Thankfully, the weather improved for the main festival days.
“After overcoming very challenging conditions, we had fine weather for the three main days, and it turned out to be an incredible festival,” says a relieved Knight.
LIGHTING
Lighting technician Jason Henderson has worked on all Mundi Mundi Bashes and has seen everything the outback can throw at the event. He says dust, wind and rain are all “just part of the fun”.
Despite the inclement weather, Henderson reports that this year’s event ran smoothly for the lighting department. Speaking post-event, he says: “The team we had was really good. The dust and mud mean we have a lot of gear to clean afterwards, but our two system techs – Dante and Jason – are doing a great job getting everything back, cleaned and blown out.”
With such an open stage, IP-rated fixtures were the only option for the exposed light towers out front. These featured Chauvet Professional Color Strike M units as blinders, ShowPRO Neptune BX lasersource moving head beams, and a Robe iForte LTX FS as a followspot.
“The Robe iForte LTX worked well, as mounting it on the delay screen meant we didn’t require a physical followspot tower. We also didn’t need any machinery, like a scissor lift or a boom,” says Henderson.
More Color Strike Ms were situated around the stage, adding colour and movement, with Henderson describing them as “very punchy with great colours”.
Overhead were 24 Ayrton Eurus S and 24 Martin MAC Viper XIP fixtures. “I reckon the Eurus and MAC Viper XIPs are pretty bulletproof,” says Henderson. “With the gobos on both fixtures, I could create any look I wanted. The colour range out of the MAC Viper XIPs is incredible, particularly the pastel hues.”
The team also chose to deploy 34 Claypaky X Frames for their robustness and hybrid nature as a beam, spot or wash. “We can zoom them right in and get a real tight beam for that Sharpy look,” adds Henderson. “Then you can zoom right out, and that can be a big gobo look. Having them on the ladders gave us pretty much two fixtures in one.”
Henderson also describes the 52 ShowPRO Nitec Blinders that added punch to the stage rig as bulletproof. At FOH, most acts used grandMA3 consoles, except one LD who brought a ChamSys desk and another who ran an ETC Hog console.
Show photos: Matt Williams
This article first appeared in the November issue of Lighting & Sound International
Part II: Vision, FOH Audio and Monitors next week
