MANDURAH will go ahead with plans to host an Australia Day long weekend music festival despite other such events being held across the state.
The biggest rival to Mandurah’s newly approved Australia Made music festival is Busselton’s OzRock Festival with city councillors admitting at Tuesday night’s meeting that some proposed acts were already booked to competing events.
City chief executive Mark Newman said he was recently made aware of the scheduling conflict but said such a practice was not unusual.
“The risk is in the promoter’s hands,” he said.
“We were aware this list [of possible line ups] in this business case could not be achieved.”
Under the proposal signed off by councillors on Tuesday, the City reserves the right to review the music festival’s approval should major alterations be made to factors such as the line-up.
Under the plan by Starr Special Events Australia, the team who brought Daryl Braithwaite to the 2014 Mandurah CrabFest, the City would host the Australian Made music festival on January 24 as part of the Australia Day long weekend at Rushton Park.
The event, set to be priced at $85 per ticket, is proposed to showcase up to six individual iconic Australian acts targeting those in the 25-60 age category.
According to Mr Newman, no final date has been set for the line up to be finalised but he did concede the promoter would not be able to sell tickets to the event without the line up locked in.
Under the proposal the event will kick off at 3.30pm with a cut-off time of 10pm.
Alcohol supplied at the event is to be cut-off at 9.30pm with no glass or cans at the ground outside the VIP area and no BYO.
Under the approval granted at Tuesday’s meeting, the organisers will need to meet a strict set of criteria including a $10,000 bond paid to the City, a raft of planning documents be undertaken for security, noise, waste and traffic, temporary lighting to be installed at the entry and exit of the event and on route to the Mandurah Train Station and that the festival cater to a maximum 8000 patrons.
