This year’s annual ChillOut Festival, the largest rural GLBTI event in rural Victoria, is once again offering up good old queer country hospitality from March 7-10.
Daylesford, and its sister town of Hepburn Springs, is famous as the ‘spa capital’ of Australia. It supplies 80 per cent of the country’s natural mineral springs and is Melburnians’ destination du jour for romantic weekends, pampering and, appropriately, chilling out.
It’s also a queer tree-changers’ haven, and is home to the state’s largest population of GLBTI people outside of Melbourne.
After a hiatus in 2007, ChillOut made a successful return last year with a new organising committee, fresh ideas and huge community support. This year the event is on the same weekend as Mardi Gras, but a drop in numbers is the least of the organisers’ worries.
The ongoing bushfire disaster has left its mark on Daylesford in the lead-up to the event, with several blazes in the area affected members of the community: the farm of festival director Jim Culbertson was severely damaged. But with cooler weather on the horizon, he’s confident the event will remain unaffected.
‘It’s more important than ever to support rural communities. The festival will go on,’ he said.
ChillOut president Doug Pollard has called for the community to remain behind the festival, as many businesses involved are gay and lesbian-owned.
‘If the fires cause people to stay away from the area then the gay community will be hit hard,’ he said.
‘It’s crucial after a devastating blow like this that we city folk continue to visit the country and support rural businesses. Otherwise businesses will fold and people will lose their jobs at the very time they are trying to pick themselves up and recover from a disaster.’
This year the theme is Disco Stampede, and in this vein the key entertainment attraction is the irrepressible Leo Sayer, who will grace the stage on Carnival Day, March 8 alongside ABBA tribute group, BABBA.
The weekend kicks off with a long lunch at Sault, with a charity auction hosted by Dolly Diamond raising money for Buddies for Wildlife. Then New Zealand’s Topp Twins will help kick off the opening night party.
This year will see the return of the enormously successful bush dance, the traditional street parade, Sunday night dance party and Cream, a veritable fest of lesbian musicians.
In the vein of chilling out, there are plenty of daytime activities visitors can sign up for. These include a bushwalk tour, mountain biking, horse riding, a golf tournament, boules at the old macaroni factory and an open-air lunch on the manicured grounds of Peppers Springs Retreat and Spa.
There’s a few new additions too, including the SameSame / JOY ‘Gay for a Day’ bus on Carnival Day, bringing day trip revellers to Daylesford, a free shuttle bus running all weekend and for the first time radio station, JOY 94.9 will broadcast live from Carnival Day.
Pollard says the committee is focussed on preserving the financial viability of the festival in the face of job losses across the state and general economic downturn through sponsorship from local businesses and, importantly, funding from the local council.
‘Given that ChillOut pumps $6-8m into the local economy each year, it ought not to be too much of a challenge is to persuade them that it’s in their interest to fund us more generously,’ he said.
Cathy Anderson
www.chilloutfestival.com.au
