The first Splendour in the Grass festival in three years has been derailed by wet and muddy conditions, with punters calling for the event to be cancelled and campers evacuated.
On Friday morning festival organisers announced they were no longer accepting any campers or vehicles at North Byron Parklands due to the ongoing weather situation.
People arriving for the four-day festival yesterday were faced with 12 hour queues just to get into the camping grounds, with organisers forced to extend the entry hours to try and get people into the festival.
Attendees are now being redirected to Byron Events Farm in Tyagara with free bus shuttles between the sites available.
Patrons with exclusive tickets to luxury Flashcamp and Tent City accommodation and disabled festivalgoers are still being accepted at North Byron Parklands.
“We thank you for your patience here and big shout out to our staff who are working around Mother Nature to get you in here safely,” a message from organisers read.
“Please be kind and patient.”
While the event is normally blessed with sunshine and clear skies, the current bout of inclement weather has created chaos for people at the festival.
Some have even termed the three-day festival event ‘Splendour in the Lake’ and the ‘Survival of the Fittest’.
The conditions at the festival at deteriorating rapidly, with people now calling for the event to be cancelled.
One Twitter user, Steve Strickland described the situation as “potentially life threatening due to the horrific weather conditions and traffic jams.
“People are going to get pneumonia and exposure. The festival should be cancelled and everyone evacuated,” he said.
One festival-goer, Kate O’Hagan, said she was hoping event organisers would cancel the festival so she could go home.
“We are parked in by thousands of cars and tents we can literally not leave,” she said.
Another attendee took to Twitter last night after waiting in line to enter the festival for 11 hours, blasting the organisers for the “inhumane” situation.
“We have been this queue for HOURS – since 4pm. We’ve been driving since 6am. Cars running out of petrol. Cars bogged. This is unsafe, and inhumane,” she wrote.
“Update: 2:30am we have decided to give up and sleep in the back of the car while still in our queue position that hasn’t moved in the last 2-3 hours. There’s nothing we can do. No way in, no way out.”
The SES have been called in to assess the situation, with a spokesperson telling The Daily Telegraph they would support a decision to evacuate the festival if it comes to that.
“There’s heaps of rain in the campgrounds, but it’s not flooded. It’s just still water and heavy mud,” the spokesperson said.
“If (the festival) makes a decision to evacuate, we’ll support that. We’ve got a crew of about five or six members in the festival grounds and 30 to 40 altogether.”
Shocking footage shared on TikTok shows the site absolutely saturated with large pools of muddy water as rain pelts down, with desperate attendees in plastic ponchos forced to huddle together by undercover benches in a desperate bid to stay warm.
In one clip shared by TikTok user @montanakennedy, she captioned the grim scenes: “We have progressed to splendour in the lake”.
In the comments people shared their horror.
“Total Fyre Festival vibes,” wrote on user.
“I’ll rock up in a canoe if I have too I will be there,” shared another.
“I’m honestly surprised it wasn’t cancelled at this point.”
The campsites weren’t much better. In another video, tents were pelted with rain, while the grounds were sodden with mud.
And there’s more bad weather on the way, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting a 100 per cent chance of rain on Friday and a high chance of showers on Saturday in the Byron Bay region.
Running from Friday to Sunday – with additional events slated for Thursday – the Gorillaz, The Strokes and Tyler, the Creator are set to headline the event.
2022 is also the first year Splendour in the Grass has returned to being an in-person event at the Byron Bay parklands, after the pandemic restricted high capacity in-person events.
The 2020 festival was initially postponed until October before being cancelled. The 2021 event followed a similar trajectory, however, music organisers shifted to an online Splendour XR format, which was done in collaboration with virtual live events platform Sansar.
Weather to get worse before it gets better
Unfortunately for festivalgoers, they are set to endure another day of wet weather on Friday, which will undoubtedly add to the already boggy conditions.
A Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson told news.com.au that Friday is set to be the “wettest day” of the forecast for the area, though the situation will start to ease heading into the weekend.
“We could see up to 30mm of rain across Byron by the end of today,” he said.
“There will still be a few showers around tomorrow but not a huge amount of rain is expected to fall.”
Going into Sunday conditions are expected to be mostly dry, with about 1mm of rain forecast.
A maximum temperature of 17 degrees is forecast for Friday with a near 100 per cent chance of rain.
The temperature is set to range from 14C to 18C on Saturday before the rains will hopefully clear on Sunday, with BOM forecasting mostly sunny conditions and a temperature range of 13C to 19C.
As it stands, sunny conditions are predicted for Monday, with a maximum of 19C and minimum of 13C.
There is currently also a severe weather warning for the Northern Rivers areas of NSW, which encompasses Byron Bay. The Bureau of Meteorology issued the alert for damaging surf on Friday morning.
An offshore east coast low near southern Queensland is expected to produce “significant waves” of up to 5 metres, with the Bureau warning people to stay away from the beaches, surf and surf exposed areas.
Originally published as Calls for Splendour in the Grass to be cancelled as it’s derailed by mud, rain
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