usic fan Simon Goss fondly recalled his Sunbury 1972 experience on ABC Radio 20 years later: “I went with a friend,” he said. “We were utterly gormless! We burnt the tent down, got margarine through the tobacco, I couldn’t see the guy on the surfboard or the weird guy doing WKH ˋUH EUHDWKLQJ EXW LW ZDV DPD]LQJ MXVW WR EH ZDQGHULQJ DURXQG ZLWK DOO WKH \RXQJ SHRSOH ȥ Technically, the festival site was on George Duncan’s farm at Diggers Rest, Victoria, 5km from Sunbury, but near enough to adopt the name. George famously said he was happy to welcome the hippies and music fans because he “believed in young people”. Which was lucky because 35,000 of them teemed through the farm gates, paying $6 for three days of rock‘n’roll and cheap watermelon (sold by then baby entrepreneur, later Mushroom Group ERVV 0LFKDHO *XGLQVNL 7KH ˋOP RI WKH :RRGVWRFN )HVWLYDO (released 18 months earlier) provided a blueprint for this Aussie gathering: baking in the sweltering summer sun, skinny-dipping in Jackson’s Creek, slip-sliding on muddy riverbanks and soaking up the vibes. YeW WKLV ˋUVW RI IRXU 6XQEXU\ IHVWLYDOV ZDV DOVR WKH ELUWKSODFH RI $XVWUDOLDQ rock‘n’roll as we know it. Yes, local stars had emerged in the 1950s and ’ V EXW 6XQEXU\ KDG D KXJH UDQJH RI RYHU WZR GR]HQ KLJKO\original artists with an unmistakable Aussie sound. There was the quirky Glenn Cardier (who is still going strong), the spacy Tamam Shud, the powerful voice of Wendy Saddington (the only woman with KHU QDPH RQ WKH ELOO DQG %LOO\ 7KRUSH DQG WKH $]WHFV ZKRVH Most People I Know (Think That I’m Crazy) hit the top of the charts on the back of their Sunbury performance. Ian “Molly” Meldrum was there as a reporter for Go-Set PDJD]LQH IDPRXVO\ LQWHUYLHZLQJ VNLQQ\-dippers.“We’d had other festivals,” he told The Age back in 2012, “but nothing like this at all.” And in an era of rock festivals, Sunbury is still our most legendary, half a century on. AWW
M 194
The Australian Women’s Weekly
WORDS BY TOBY CRESWELL. NEWSPIX. GETTY IMAGES. FAIRFAX PHOTOS. NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF AUSTRALIA.
Memory lane
