Meredith makes music... and moola

THIS morning (Friday 5 December) will be a big one for many eager Meredith Music Festival fans who start to queue to secure their favourite camping spot by the Supernatural Amphitheatre.

The weekend-long festival, that annually transforms a chunk of the Nolan Family Farm property, had booked out by August with 13,000 people snapping up tickets to catch acts like TV On The Radio, ATARASHII GAKKO!, Chet Faker, Oddisee & Good Compny and Ninajirachi to name just a small sample.

While thousands of festival-goers have travelled from afar, for some local community groups the event offers a prime fundraising opportunity with many serving a stint in The Tucker Tent, including the barbecue.

Among them is the Meredith Cricket Club which has been part of the festival from its 1991 inception.

Club president Terry Hart, a long-time mate of festival founder Chris Nolan, said helping ensure festival-goers get fed represents the local cricket club’s major annual means of fundraising.

“From a fundraising perspective it’s basically the lifeblood of the club,” Mr Hart said.

With capacity ticket sales of 13,000, this weekend’s Meredith Music Festival also represents a prime fundraising opportunity for local community groups many of whom help ensure festival-goers get fed.

“We have about 35 to 40 who work on our shift on Friday night from 7pm to 1am.”

A spokesperson for the festival said preparing ahead of this weekend is a year-round activity.

“It’s definitely a year-round project working on the site. Bringing in more plumbing is a big undertaking, adding more toilets including Portaloos and more composting loos.

“We do give money to a lot of local organisations and the scout group has been doing tree planting for us.

“Different groups take turns running the big barbecue over the weekend and keep the money raised from that. They also include the Meredith Memorial Hall, the golf club, the kinder.

“We are really grateful to all the locals in the area who help put the weekend on. We couldn’t do it without the local community.

“We sold out in late August and we are at capacity.

“Almost everybody camps on site. Usually gates open 8am on Friday morning but people start lining up from 4am to 6am while others will trickle in through the day.”