Samantha Donovan: When thousands of festival goers left the Big Red Bash at Birdsville in Outback Queensland last week, they narrowly missed getting stranded by the town's heaviest July rainfall in 25 years. The Outback Festival is one of dozens of live music events that have had to deal with extreme weather in recent years. And researchers and musicians are warning the viability of the sector is being threatened by climate change. This report from Declan Gooch.
Declan Gooch: In the midst of Australia's Black Summer bushfires, musician Aimee Volkofsky was preparing to support the late Archie Roach at a festival on South Australia's Kangaroo Island.
Aimee Volkofsky: As it got closer, some fires started up on the island. Archie Roach was quite elderly at that stage and having a lot of health issues and so he had to pull from it. A few of us did end up making it over to the island.
Declan Gooch: And with the festival cancelled, Aimee Volkofsky and her fellow performers found themselves playing an impromptu bushfire recovery concert.
Aimee Volkofsky: We'd wondered about the appropriateness of playing music after the community had been so harmed. But the community really asked for it and it did really demonstrate to me the importance of music and the arts, even in the moment of those sort of tragedies and in the hardship of climate change.
Declan Gooch: In the last decade, climate extremes have forced more than 40 such music festivals to be cancelled, postponed, evacuated or moved. Researcher Ben Green from Griffith University says it's as big an existential threat to the industry as COVID.
Ben Green: The complex interdependencies, the insecure work structures, COVID exposed those things and those are the sorts of vulnerabilities that also make this sector especially exposed to the hazards of climate change.
Declan Gooch: Just last week, festival goers at the Big Red Bash in Outback Queensland took to social media sharing video of driving rain and muddy festival grounds.
Archives: It's interesting how extreme we had 32 degrees yesterday. Because this is a lake bed normally, it's just catching the water and it doesn't go anywhere.
Declan Gooch: After Trevor Ryan and others left Birdsville on Friday, the town copped its biggest July drenching in 25 years. The previous record was set last year, during 2023's Big Red Bash. Ben Green says music festivals are regularly being cancelled or postponed because of weather events once considered rare.
Ben Green: In fact, in 2022 alone, the flooding up and down the east coast of Australia caused the cancellation of more than 20 festivals.
Declan Gooch: Dr Green is one of several academics who have written to a federal government inquiry into the live music industry, urging lawmakers to work with the industry to find solutions. Another is Associate Professor Catherine Strong from RMIT.
Catherine Strong: Festivals at the moment are having to balance all of these questions around increased cost of living, people are doing things like buying tickets later than they used to, which creates more uncertainty. And then if you've got on top of that, this question about, am I going to get flooded out? Am I going to be able to get insurance to cover me in the case of bushfire? What we're hearing is that a lot of festivals now can't get that sort of insurance anymore. Just having just that extra element of vulnerability and uncertainty for some festivals can mean the difference between going ahead and not going ahead.
Declan Gooch: She says the government and the industry need to develop clearer protocols for dealing with extreme weather.
Catherine Strong: At what point do you cancel a festival? Because if a festival organiser cancels a festival and they haven't had some sort of like official word about it needing to be cancelled, that can be financially ruinous for them. They won't get any insurance sort of payoff at all. We also need to have a better understanding of where and when these events might be likely to occur. So midsummer is starting to look less and less like a good time to hold a music festival because you've got these increasing risks of things like bushfires and extreme heat.
Tim Hollo: I've come off stage some of the shows that I've played in summer with an absolute splitting headache that's verging on heat stroke and I've certainly seen people have to come off stage because they're getting heat stroke from performing in those kinds of conditions.
Declan Gooch: Tim Hollo is a member of the string quartet 4Play and the founder of Green Music Australia. He argues the failure to confront the effects of climate change puts livelihoods at risk.
Tim Hollo: People don't realise quite how economically marginal the music scene is. For venues and festivals certainly, but for musicians, most musicians are struggling and climate change is definitely one of the factors that makes it harder.
Samantha Donovan: Musician Tim Hollo. That report from Declan Gooch.