The Most Remote Musical Festival on the Planet

The Big Red Bash is held 39 km west of Birdsville on private property and the stage for the artists who perform over the three days and nights has a 40-metre high sand dune as its backdrop. Big Red is the largest and first major dune to cross if you are heading west across the Simpson Desert.

Adria Downs is an organic cattle property, and one of the prerequisites for camping there is that no greywater is allowed to be dropped on the ground. There is a facility to siphon your greywater into but there is no facility for emptying your toilet cassette.

Even though the event organisers supply toilets, we still prefer to use our own. With that in mind and considering we are staying for five days, we purchased an extra toilet cassette just in case it was needed.

Our vans grey water tank holds 90 litres so showers will certainly be rationed during our stay. The purchase of several packs of extra-large wet wipes as back up was also a wise decision.

Our early entry pass had us arriving at the "Bash" site two days before the music began. Mal Leyland gave a talk on one of these days along with one of their films displayed on the large screen. After the movie, the crowd were given the chance to ask Mal questions about his life which we all found very interesting.
His fondest memory of the 1966 crossing of Australia was seeing rain cascading down Ayers Rock/Uluru.

This is our first "Bash" attendance so we are not really sure whether we will enjoy the experience or not. No doubt time will tell.
Our decision to take out insurance in case of breakdown or illness, was also a wise move considering we were handing over $1200 for the experience.

When away camping our preference is to avoid crowds whenever possible, but we thought we would give the "Bash" the benefit of the doubt, and see just what it's like to be surrounded by thousands of people. In this case, there were 10,000 who attended.

Saturday morning the 7th of July the "Bash" office opened so the mandatory car stickers and wrist bands could be organised before heading out to Big Red. We also purchased some of the merchandise on offer at the same time.

First thing on Sunday morning we were hooked up and ready to rock n roll just before 7:30 am. We joined the queue of 4WD's, caravans and camper trailers on the slow dusty trip out to Big Red. At times speeds were down below 40 km/h, at that time of the morning, there was very little wind.

While we have been out to Big Red before, we have never been in a convoy with so many other people.
Totally surprised that the trip out only took one hour and fifteen minutes.

Amazing organisation has gone into moving this many people in such an orderly fashion, but I think this is the 5th year so they have had time to perfect it.

The headline act at this years "Bash" is John Farnham who will be supported by the likes of the Hoodoo Gurus, The Angels, Daryl Braithwaite, John Stevens, Kate Ceberano, Adam Brand, Russell Morris, The Black Sorrows, The Wolfe Brothers and Amber Lawrence.

It was wonderful to meet Mal Leyland. Later during the day we wandered up and purchased a signed copy of his 2015 book "Still Travelling"

Each day we enjoyed wandering around the camping area checking out others setups. There were road vans, so-called off-road vans, real off-road vans and god knows how many different makes of camper-trailers. There were also many intents and swags as we used to camp in when we were younger. Thank god that's over with!!

Our early daily ritual was to climb Big Red to take photos and marvel at the number of campsites spread out below.

There were many food vendors selling everything from wood-fired pizzas through to Mexican, coffee vendors, seafood, hamburgers and steak sandwiches and even a Wendy's outlet.

The "drag" race is surely a sight to behold. Apart from being entertaining, more importantly, it raises money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS).
This year there were hundreds of men dressed in drag and running across and down Big Red.

A representative from the Guinness world record people was also on hand to adjudicate the world record attempt of the Tina Turner song "nut bush city limit" dance. The previous record was 522 people who must dance continually for five minutes. This attempt was smashed at the "Bash" with just over 1700 participants.

The drag race and the nut bush dance combined raised just over $50,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS)

Ros was shouted an early birthday present with a helicopter flight over Bashville and Big Red which she thoroughly enjoyed.