history :: Free Festival (southern Tasmanian bush)

There is no transport for which you can buy tickets, to the end of this road I’m going to. My journey starts with sticking out a thumb on the open highway heading out of Hobart. My grubby backpack that has waited at many train stations of Europe – and shared the rooves of collapsing buses with animals in Indonesia and Central America – is loaded with a couple of dozen records and a few hundred CDs. This precious cargo is padded with a sleeping bag. I carry no shelter, although the skies loomed grey yesterday. But I’m heading to The End Of The Road where only the sun shines, and no one needs to sleep.

“Where are you headed?” asks an elderly gent whose white van has coughed to a halt to offer me a lift. He reverses along the gravel on the side of the highway, as I shoulder my pack and jog towards him. I jump in and say “To The End Of The Road!” with a big smile. “Eh?!” shouts the man, leaning towards me to hear, his prominent hearing aids not having done their job. Instead of repeating myself, I ask him where he’s going. “I’m about to move out of here,” he responds, equally esoteric. Maybe he had heard me. “I’m about to sell up everything I own, and buy a boat.” From the seat between us on the bench, I pick up a page ripped out of a boat buyer’s magazine. A fifity-something foot sailing boat is circled. “Now that I’m alone, the house is too big,” continues the Old Man.

We sit there in silence. I felt satisfied to be on the road again, rolling towards The End Of The Road. The Old Man seemed happy to have a stranger for company, someone to proclaim a dream to, without being laughed at. “So this has been a dream for a long time?” I shouted, repeating my question several times until he had leaned over close enough and registered. I didn’t have the heart to ask him how he would face stormy seas in his physical condition; how someone would communicate with him as wave upon wave crashes down on the deck. “Yes, it’s been a dream for a long time,” the Old Man mumbled, bent back over his steering wheel. Several cars overtook us on the highway, as we struggled over a pass. Our conversation halted, and I pondered whether I would still have the energy to face The End Of The Road in a few decades. The Old Man drove several kilometres past his Home For Sale, and dropped me off past the bridge on my turn-off. I thanked the man, wished him good luck in selling his house, and felt relieved to be standing in fresh air again.

It’s frustrating not to have a car. I don’t own a home. I earn enough to barely survive, although I’m constantly knocking back work and forced to reshuffle priorities. Is it work I’m headed to there - at The End Of The Road - as the Free Festival organisers asked me if I could bring a bag of party tunes to play? That’s what I decide to tell the lady who stops for me here, with her “No Greens” sticker on the car. I’m on my way to work, not a hippie festival. We talk about the beauty of the scenery in this remote-feeling, sparsely-populated corner of Tasmania. She complains about the noise made by drag racing taking place on an almost nightly basis past her front door. I don’t own a car, I tell her proudly. She’s cool with that, and drives me quite a few extra kilometres past her house to the next turn-off.

Now I’m stuck. It’s a narrow dirt road, a pot-holed track. I walk. I hear a car approach and turn around. The letters B-I-T-C-H cover half the windscreen of a 4WD ute in bright pink. It speeds past me kicking up dust and rocks. I walk some more. I can’t curse my job, of having to carry these tunes to play music for free to an audience that is paying nothing to hear my selections. All that makes me satisfied, happy. Eventually I can hear another car, it’s carrying Northern Territory number plates stops for me. At The End Of The Road, I’m greeted by a collection of tents; tee-pees; tarpaulin kitchens; a gambler’s den inside a labyrinth built of a cardboard; a beer-filled bath-tub bar; and the main stage.

Popular Irish tunes are being played by a group that have renamed themselves the Van Diemens Band and whose supporters are wearing T-shirts saying “Convict Country”. Members of a punk outfit currently touring Tasmania - Sydney City Trash – jump on stage to spit the lyrics to a ditty that everyone knows but can only remember the chorus to. I blend into the scene. I think about the Old Man and his boat. I have no house to sell - but am on my boat here, at the end of this road; carrying it inside my backpack, to share with all these people.

Thanks to the Terraphonic Sound System for hosting Free Festival.