Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Soaring fuel prices can’t stop the music as a sold-out crowd of 15,000 prepares to get motoring for Australia’s biggest outback concert event, the Mundi Mundi Bash.
The remote three-day music and camping escape at Belmont Station, 9km north of Silverton and 35km from Broken Hill, has officially sold out before gates open.
The August 20-22 event will feature acts including The Teskey Brothers, Jon Stevens, John Butler, Boy & Bear, Baby Animals, Jessica Mauboy, Leo Sayer, Tim Finn, Troy Cassar-Daley, Chocolate Starfish and Wendy Matthews.
“It’s exciting to announce that we’re at capacity – with nearly 15,000 people set to rock the outback,” festival founder Greg Donovan said.
Festivalgoers are being encouraged to arrive early this year with a new Lightfest on the streets of Broken Hill in the week leading up to the bash.
“Thousands of these travellers are already hitting the road,” Donovan said.
A drawcard for grey nomads and camping-loving families from throughout Australia, the bash has become a welcome lifeline for the region, generating an estimated $20 million in economic activity.
“We launched the Mundi Mundi Bash during very tough times for events,” Donovan said.
“We survived the COVID years, consistently selling out the event, and this year it’s been the fuel crisis and tough economic times that have impacted consumer spending.
“And yet here we are – announcing a sellout.”
However, despite its popularity, Donovan has ruled out increasing Mundi Mundi’s capacity.
“If you go too big and get too greedy, that might work for a year or two, but then you’re on a slippery slope and you get people going ‘I don’t want to go to that, it’s too crowded’, ‘you can’t do this, you have to wait in line for this and that’, ‘we’re camped too far away’ – you know, all that,” he told AAP at the 2025 event.
The sell-out comes after Donovan and his team were forced to cancel the July 2026 staging of Mundi Mundi’s sister event, The Birdsville Big Red Bash, following extreme rainfall in Queensland earlier this year.
Held on the edge of the Simpson Desert, the Big Red Bash usually attracts some 10,000 people and was 90 per cent sold out when organisers made the difficult decision to pull the pin in March.
The Big Red Bash is set to go ahead in 2027 with most of the musicians on the 2026 line-up.
