Welcome to my first official blog on cairns.com.au. On my recent holidays, I headed down to the massive Rainbow Serpent Festival in Victoria. Here's a full report on what, I think, is the best festival in Australia (if not the world!).

While summer festivals are quite commonplace in Australia these days, not many share such a place in the collective consciousness of an entire subculture in the way Rainbow Serpent Festival does.

For the past 12 years, thousands of doofers, freaks, hippies, groovers, ravers, punks, activists, hipsters, swingers, rastas, spiritualists and any other alternative subculture can think of, converge on the tiny town of Beaufort in country Victoria (around 2.5 hours out of Melbourne) for 4 days of fun and frivolity in the Australian bush.

What started as a predominantly psytrance-oriented event has now broadened its horizons to feature some of the best music in a varied range of styles that both Australia and the world can offer, along with workshops, lectures, ceremony, games, markets, film, food and general tomfoolery.

That’s the beauty of Rainbow Serpent – it doesn’t seek to classify itself like many other events do, instead letting the punters (the real heart of any festival) take the lead and all play their own part in the creation of the festival.

It’s crazy to watch the festival go from an empty sheep farm to a maze of tents, stages, markets and people in the space of a few days – it’s like watching a shanty town being built from scratch.

Indeed it’s the biggest day in Beaufort’s annual calendar – the town has only around 1000 residents (most of which are farmers or senior citizens) and they, over time have come to embrace the event, bringing not only well-needed financial support but also putting the small centre located between the two ‘Rats (Ballarat and Ararat) on the global music map.

The money injected from the festival basically is essential to Beaufort’s survival, with Green Ant (the organisers behind the event) donating money to buy fire trucks, infrastructure and all manner of support to the local community (the Saturday pool party for instance pays for most of running of the pool for the entire year).

This year’s event had a massive jump in attendance, bringing over 12,000 punters (up about 4000 on the previous year), proving the festival just keeps getting better with age.

This year featured 5 stages of entertainment, with some of the top electronic music talents in the world today (with some great live bands as well).

Acts included Germany’s techno giants D-Nox & Beckers (you can read my chat with him earlier in the issue), US hip-hop/dubstep sensation Bassnectar, UK Psytrance pioneers Green Nuns Of The Revolution, techno innovator Mathew Jonson and Israel’s Perfect Stranger, alongside some of Australia’s finest including OKA, SunControlSpecies, Sensient, Shadow FX vs Tetrameth, Spoonbill, Paul Abad and many more.

Cairns talents also had a great showing on the bill this year, with Tablelands psytrance hero Psymon tearing up the dancefloor on the marketstage at sunrise on Saturday morning (one of the top slots of the festival) and festival favourite Solatek delivering a great set along with Ian Woodsman and the Urban Monkeys as well.

I was lucky enough to get a go myself this year on the Sunset Stage, was a real buzz playing to such a big crowd at my favourite event in the world.

While most of my time was spent on the dancefloor, there was a multitude of other activities on offer, including cult film, healing and massage workshops, great food and markets and the hilarious Rainbow Games (which includes events like Frisbee Golf and Vegemite Jousting) – the only issue you ever have is figuring out what to do next.

I could go on and on about how good it is, but the best thing you can do is go check it out for yourself – it really is an experience unparalleled anywhere else in Australia (and indeed the world).

With the success of 2009 to go by, next year’s event will be ever bigger and better than ever before, so if anything in this article caught your eye, do yourself a favour and make the trek.

You won’t be disappointed.

>> For more information, check out www.rainbowserpent.net

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