If the Bluesfest era has ended, I’ve lost something more precious than money

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When Byron Bay Bluesfest folded last week, just 20 days before its scheduled 2026 kick-off, I was devastated but not surprised. I don’t have the heart right now to calculate how many Bluesfests I went to over the years. This one would have been almost my 20th. I could, if I wanted to, check the drawer where I keep my old programs. But I won’t feel like doing that for a while.

I bought my ticket to this year’s Bluesfest months ago. But as a seasoned fester, I’d begun to sense in recent weeks that all wasn’t right. The usual barrage of build-up emails hadn’t been coming. Ominously, the daily playing schedule hadn’t appeared.

Then on Friday, March 13 the dreadful news broke. For the first time in my life, I got an email from a liquidator. “At this stage,” it said with a raw honesty you had to kind of admire, “it seems unlikely that you will be refunded any money.”

I should probably feel incensed right now. Throwing in the cost of my non-refundable flights, I’m more than a grand out of pocket. But if the Bluesfest era has ended, we’ve all lost something more precious than money. For those of us who treasured the yearly pilgrimage to Byron, this feels like a death in the family. If the carnival is over, I can’t let Bluesfest go without telling it how much I loved it.

The annual thrill of getting wristbanded on day one. Moving between tents in the heat of the day, and the cool of the coastal night. The organic donuts. The food tent. The half-hour waits between shows, the hardcore fans already up at the railing, watching the roadies set up.

The CD tent, back when there were still CDs. The emptied-out........

© Brisbane Times