Our Latest Travels - Broken Hill to Mundiville

I’m finally back with our travelling.  Firstly, thanks for the kind thoughts for Mick and his bad back.  He made the decision to continue to the Mundi Mundi Bash, as it would not be easy to drive home in the state he was in.  Thankfully, after several days it did start to ease and he is currently pretty good.

The Mundi Mundi Bash is a three day music festival held on the Mundi Mundi Plains 36 kms west of Broken Hill.  This year the event was sold out with 12,000 tickets.  Most of those attending would be camping on site, so about 5000 caravans, motor homes, camper trailers and tents. Pretty much the size of a small town.  Hence, the site is known as “Mundiville”.

There is an option to have two day early entry, which we took up this year, on the Tuesday.  As it was really just a day of setting up camp and getting our bearings, we didn’t rush out.  However, it turns out that most of the other approximately 2,000 vehicles had the same idea.  

The traffic flowed nicely until we were 4 kms short of the site, when we came to a stand still.  

It was stop start to the site entry.  At this point we were directed up a side road that had been built for the purpose of getting the queue off the road.  

From here we timed ourselves and measured the distance.  It was a further three kms before we then doubled back to the entrance.  Phew! Hopefully, we would reach our camp site shortly.  Nope!  After that we zig zagged back along the rows for another three kms.  

It took us three and a half hours from when we first saw the site entrance to reach our site.  We had left Broken Hill at about 10am and finally were allocated our camp site at 3pm, some five hours later.  What a marathon effort. Some campers were still arriving after dark.  There were about the same number of campers arriving the following day, so they experienced the same thing.  Some friends of ours had left Broken Hill half an hour after us and had reached their camp site at about 12.30pm, so they did well.

Anyway, it is all part of the experience and what an incredible logistical exercise to get so many in within such a short timeframe. 

After we had set up we made the most of the beautiful sunset, going over the the sign set up to the west of the site.

We had a lovely evening view that night, but the next day there were another three rows of campers behind us.

You can see on this map approximately where we were camped.  The site had been enlarged by two extra outer roads since the last bash we attended.

So, what facilities are provided for the campers?  Not many.  There is no power, water, phone or wifi reception. No garbage bins other than at the actual concert site and nowhere to empty camping toilet cassettes.  No glass is allowed on site except at your actual campsite and you must take it with you when you leave.  What you do have is composting toilets.  You are allowed to leave one garbage bag of rubbish at a designated spot when you leave and at each toilet block you can leave recyclable aluminium cans and PET bottles and there is a tub for food scraps.

The toilets are the best!  Until now they have been flat pack and set up each year, but this year permanent ones were built, as there is now an ongoing commitment to the event for the next five years.  There are nearly 300 loos around the site.

They are kept spotlessly clean by a team of “Dunny Angels” throughout the event and even after five days there is now odour.  How they work is that under each seat there is a wheely bin with a perforated base.  You do a wee like normal and it drains through.  When you do a poop, you tip a cup of sawdust down the loo.  The only things that go in the loos are human waste, loo paper and sawdust.  As the bins fill, the lids are fastened down and the bins are stored on site like that for the next twelve months, after which the composting process has completed and the compost is used on the property and the process starts again.

The inaugural bash that we attended was in autumn and the site was covered in nasty spiky plants. This time being spring, and now being the third event on the site, there were nowhere near as many burrs and quite a few wildflowers.  Sadly, they mainly got squashed over the five days.

The lineup for this event included many Australian favourites.  Quite a few had performed at the previous bash but quite a few were newcomers.

Wednesday was a day for wandering around, checking out what food stalls were there, looking at the other vendors and members of the West Darling Arts community stalls and generally people watching.  In the evening there was a movie and then a couple of the bands gave small concerts.

The evening was rounded off by a screening of the Matildas playing in the semi finals of the soccer World Cup, which they sadly lost.

That’s enough for now.  I’ll show more soon.