2018 — Meredith History

Year of the Kookaburra. Onomatopoeic of its call.

And hooooot. Sizzling hot.

So hot that plenty of people spent much of Friday moving with the shadows thrown by the Amphitheatre trees as the mercury hit 38.

It had been one of the driest springs on record, and things began and continued with the smell of smoke in the air owing to a bushfire near Buninyong, around 25ks from The Sup’.

Which meant Aunty asked those that hadn’t yet left home on the Friday morning to delay their arrival until later in the day and parts of Bush Camp being closed to camping. Fortunately the fire was contained reasonably quickly.

It did end up raining though, right at the moment Yaeji broke into raingurl late Friday night, in some weird cosmic coupling of beats and atmospheric pressure.

Earlier in the day, The Aints! opened proceedings with a reminder, before Mambali served present notice, having travelled all the way from Nulbulwar in East Arnhem Land to be here. After soaking up the adulation on stage they then soaked it up amongst the crowd, with an extended stint in the Pink Flamingo thrown in.

After a sublime set from adopted hometown-hero Laura Jean that zeroed in on recent release Devotion, Mim Suleiman came out of left field (previous life as a metallurgical technician) to school us all on the fun side of afrobeat, disco, deep house and soul.

Friday also featured the reformed Breeders playing The Sup’ for the first time, and a little known (surely on the way) figure out of Canberra named Genesis Owusu.

Saturday was big.

The heat had eased somewhat, and the LineUp was incredibly solid.

Sui Zhen brought the weird and the wonderful, The Native Cats showed what’s been happening to our South, whilst Little Ugly Girls blew the place apart in a set that is now folklore in these parts.

Greedy Smith (RIP) and the rest of Mental As Anything played many songs that many people didn’t know they knew intimately, crushing it with a whole Sup’ sing along to Live It Up, after setting the scene by pouring a cup of tea as first order of business upon walking on stage.

Mental As Anything - live at The Meredith Music Festival 2018

Which felt like some kind of high point.

Until Nadia Rose took and shook the stage with an astounding set of hard hitting South London grime.

The Pharcyde did similar things with a different sound.

Later that night Mildlife mesmerised, Sampa the Great confirmed what everyone already suspected (star power, even bigger songs) and The Presets harnessed and expanded the collective feels – ‘this place is exactly like it was ten years ago’.

The more things change…

Things that The Presets didn’t notice had changed included the introduction of the Cooler Cloaking Service at The Pink Flamingo and Eric’s, the renaming of ‘Info’ as ‘Helper Hut Central’, the introduction of a ‘Soft Plastics’ waste stream, and the laying of endless amounts of cables that sped up the ticket scanning process at the gate, and enabled the introduction of tap n’ go payments at various locations.

Oh, and the comet Wirtanen was visible to the naked eye at stages over the weekend.

Just not during the Sky Show, when Thunderstruck.

You may also have been filmed (or fooled) by the fabulously authentic film crew who spent much of Saturday asking people for their thoughts.

Who Played?

The Breeders Billy Bragg The Presets Yaeji Sampa The Great Panda Bear The Founding Father Of House Lil Louis Laura Jean Pond DJ Jnett Mambali Montero Nadia Rose The Aints! The Pharcyde Mildlife Mental As Anything Roza Terenzi The Native Cats Mim Suleiman Tourist Kid Time For Dreams Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange DJ Lady Erica Ooga Boogas The Seven Ups Genesis Owusu Sui Zhen Little Ugly Girls Clypso Shrimpwitch Meredith Sky Show City of Ballarat Municipal Brass Band Master Song Tai Chi Gabriella Bartonova The Huxleys MC: Fee B2

Poster

Playing Times

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