The Mount Isa Mines Rodeo is where the romance of the Australian Outback meets the grit of a mining town, east meets west and man meets beast.
This is the Southern Hemisphere’s largest rodeo and Australia’s richest prize pool, attracting some 750 competitors from across Australia.
Competitors compete in the famous open-air, red dirt arena over four days of non-stop rodeo action, including live entertainment, outback market traders and food stalls and live Rodeo Rock Concerts.
IJS Productions provided audio, lighting, LED screens and backline for the Rodeo Ball and the Rodeo Concerts plus cameras and vision switching. IJS also provided audio and lighting for the Main Rodeo Arena
Due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, there was a delay in the IJS crew leaving meaning they had to complete three days of work in one day including travelling to Mt Isa for the first event, the Rodeo Ball. Also due to COVID-19, the actual bands playing at the concert were only confirmed after our trucks had left meaning they had to take few options of consoles and backline to suit the various possibilities.
Bear Staging from Brisbane supplied the Eurotruss 10m x 8m SD20 stage roof with staging from Global Performer decks.
The PA was a d&b audiotechnik J Series consisting of 12 x J8 and 4 x J12 whilst out front Brendan Keane was in charge with consoles from Avid, Yamaha and DiGiCo at his disposal.
Microphones consisted of Shure Axient Digital radio mics plus the usual suspects from Shure and Sennheiser. Callum Pugh mixed monitors on an Avid SC48 and a DiGiCo SD8 with Sennheiser 2000 IEMs provided as well.
The lighting for the stage needed to provide good front lighting and a versatile LED-based rig that could handle Country, Pop and Rock acts.
“We had eight ACME CM700 front wash, 16 ACME CM300 for rear wash, 12 ACME XA400 spots for gobos and effects, eight ACME 280 Hybrids for beam effects and four ShowPRO Collider LED Strobes for daytime eye candy and strobes,” revealed Stephen Grimes, General Manager at IJS. “For vision, we had a Vuepix ER4.6 onstage screen doing both backdrop and IMAG duties plus Panasonic cameras with Roland Switching.”
Control was an MA Lighting grandMA3 Compact XT.
The Main Rodeo Arena was covered with d&b audiotechnik Q series speakers comprising of 21 x Q1, six Q7, two Q10 and four QSub. Control was a Midas console.
Lighting the arena were 16 x ACME 5R beam lights, 16 x CM700 wash lights and a couple of XA1000 spots for gobo projection. The arena lighting was used for the Ball to do the audience wash and effects plus corporate gobo projection. During the rodeo, it was used for audience wash and effects as well as specific spotlighting for key moments during the schedule.
And yes the gear was absolutely filthy by the time the rodeo finished!
Stephen comments that there are some definite highlights ahead when it comes to future gigs for IJS – touch wood.
“Whilst we have some festivals still proceeding, they are very affected by border restrictions especially for getting southern talent into the State,” he added. “COVID-19 has seen much of our major festival work either cancel or postpone and the Rodeo was a definite ray of sunshine in a fairly bleak schedule of cancellation and postponement. We are one cough from disaster across the State, but very thankful that we aren’t locked down at this stage. We know things are far tougher in the Southern States. We look forward to the whole country being open and trading at capacity again sometime in the future.”
Crew:
Aidan Esmond – Production Manager and Arena Audio
Joshua Saliba – Arena Lighting
Brendan Keane – Concert FOH Audio
Callum Pugh – Concert Monitors
Caleb Donovan – Concert Lighting
James Enchelmaier- Concert Vision
Lachlan Kempster – Concert Audio
Simon Nelson – Concert Backline
Manny Economidis – Rigger
Scott Dimmick – Rigger
