Mundi Mundi Bash Trip - Part 4

The whole purpose of this trip was to attend the Mundi Mundi Bash.  So, what is the Mundi Mundi Bash?

There has been an event, the “Big Red Bash” for a few years now.  It is a three day long music festival held at the Big Red sand dune near the outback town of Birdsville.  The ultimate remote music festival.  The organisers for that festival decided to create a sister event that is still remote, but accessible by two wheel drive vehicles.  

Why “Mundi Mundi”?  The Mundi Mundi Plains are an area to the west of Broken Hill.  When we heard about it we decided that we definitely had to go along.  The inaugural event was supposed to take place last August, but due to COVID restrictions, was rescheduled for November, and again rescheduled for April, when it finally took place.

It was a rather large event, with about 10,000 in attendance, consisting of about 400 volunteers, 200 cast and crew and the rest as visitors.  There were about 4,000 caravans camped on site.  It was very back to basic camping.  There were composting toilets provided, and nothing else.  We had to provide all our own water, there was no power, nowhere to empty toilet cassettes and no phone or internet service.  We were allowed to release a limited amount of grey water from our vans onto our sites. If you were camping with a group, you all had to arrive on site together or you wouldn’t get to set up together. There was a food alley near the stage area.  We are fortunate that we are fairly self sufficient in our van, complete with ensuite, water tanks and solar panels. The event ran like clockwork, with the volunteer brigade having everything so well managed. 

We headed out on Wednesday morning, a day ahead of the start of the main events.  The sunrise looked like it would be a nice fine day.

We drove west of Broken Hill, through the village of Silverton, the home of several artists and the location used for many movies, the most famous being the Mad Max series.

This is the creek that caused so much grief for early campers the previous day.  Apparently, the queue was seven hours long, with people arriving on site into the night.

You travel a bit further west and are greeted by this view.  The Mundi Mundi Plains.  They seem to go on for ever.

We had been warned of long queues and waiting times as everyone arrived on site.  We were fairly early, so drove straight in.

The site is semi circular, with gravel roads, intersected by walkways through to the stage area. It was the size of a small town, hence being dubbed “Mundiville”.

Here is our home sweet home for the next four nights.  We had read on social media that it would be a good idea to have a shovel and rake to clear your sites of the little scrubby plants.  Advice we were glad to have followed.

This is what those little plants were like up close.  See those little thorns.  They were like needles and penetrated everything. Definitely not a place to wear your thongs.

Now we were set up it was a time to have a bit of an explore.  Firstly, we had to check out those composting toilets, as we wouldn’t be able to use the one in the van very much.

They were nice and colourful. 

They were prefabricated, being elevated so that all the waste was collected in wheelie bins for later composting.

The doors had colourful panels with words of famous Australian songs.

They even had sessions for kids to create art to be displayed on some of the toilet doors.

We were so impressed with how well they worked.  To get down to the nitty gritty, the principle was that for a wee, men used the urinal around the back, which I cannot comment on, not being a man, and the ladies just did a wee and used the loo paper.  When you were going to do a poo, you took a cup full of sawdust in with you and once you had done your business and wiped, sprinkled the sawdust into the loo.  There was nothing other than natural waste, loo paper and sawdust used. There were sanitiser stations outside.  Volunteers kept the toilet blocks spotless.  Even after five days of constant use there was no smell. Even those who were initially reluctant to use the toilets, following previous bad experiences with composting toilets, were impressed.

There were even signs with quirky facts on the backs of the doors.

Enough of toilets, what else was on offer?

There was an FM radio station, but we didn’t get around to listening to it.

Photos under the Mundi Mundi sign were pretty much mandatory.

There were lots of market stalls and a merchandise tent.

Plenty of food vans, offering a wide variety of cuisine, and reasonably priced.  We had quite a few meals from them.  There were only two coffee vans, which I thought was a bit light on.

It was a pet friendly event, with a separate camping area for those with pets, as well as a separate seating area in the stage area.  Due to all the prickles, most dogs were wearing little boots.  They were funny to watch as they got used to wearing them, but made life much more bearable for them.

There was a volleyball court in a dry creek bed, although I don’t know how many used it.

Oh, and a cute little flower was down there too.

The concert area was huge, with an impressive stage setup.  We would be spending quite a bit of time here over the next few days.

As you can see, we did indeed have a lovely fine warm day.  Just what was wanted.

Anyway, that is enough for today.  More soon.