Meredith Music Festival have confirmed this year’s event will not be going ahead, setting their sets on 2021 instead. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to make large-scale gatherings infeasible for the time being, the Victorian festival, which typically takes place in December each year, joins a slew of similar Australian festivals which have had to call it quits for 2020.
It’s the second time the festival has had to postpone their plans – the very first Meredith, which was scheduled to take place in 1990, had to be pushed back to 1991 due to “preparations being heavy on enthusiasm but light on finance, know-how, bands and a few other odds and ends.”
Organisers say that an update regarding Meredith’s sister festival – Golden Plains, which typically takes place in March – will be coming shortly.
You can read the full statement from Aunty Meredith below, with some sage perspective on the whole situation.
I’m writing to let you know that the Meredith Music Festival will not take place this year. Like much of the planet, life in Postcode 3333 must contend with a pandemic and adjust to a different beat, for the time being. Which brings us to a break in regular programming. A rest. Something which, in itself, is not such an unusual part of the Supernatural trip.
It’s a not so well-known fact that the very first Meredith Music Festival, planned for 1990, had to be postponed until ‘91. Something to do with preparations being heavy on enthusiasm but light on finance, know-how, bands and a few other odds and ends. Mary and Jack politely suggested that kicking off with a fallow year might be the sensible thing to do. Maybe it’s fitting that the 30th Meredith will have to cool its heels for a year as well.
One thing this year has offered in spades is a sense of perspective. Looking back, looking ahead, looking all around, Meredith is, we think, in a really good place. The eternals – a single stage, the evolving atmospherics of a natural amphitheatre, ample time and space, free-range living in the greatest of outdoors, where almost anything goes – still hold. Thank you for being part of it.
We will continue to listen, to fix things if they don’t work, and not fix them if they do. To define and refine the purpose-built wonderland for when we can practise close contact, in grand union, again.
Of course, there is that other light on the horizon, called Golden Plains, and we’ll update you on that as soon as we can.
It would be remiss of me not to ask, how are you doing? In good spirits, I hope, all things considered. Thanks to everyone who’s written to check in over recent months. Any queries, at any time, about anything – my door is always open. I can’t wait to see you again, on the slight incline of The Sup’.
Zoop doop,
Aunty
