Playground Weekender 2009

15 February 2009 by Max Easton

When was the last time you saw people doing somersaults off a houseboat at a festival? Not in your memory banks? Well how about a broken down pool table, fifty suspended umbrellas, a swimming pool or a swingset? These and many more unusual features littered the scene of 2009’s Playground Weekender, a festival with everything you’re used to and everything you wouldn’t expect. It’s a place where a stray wallaby wakes you on Saturday morning and an open air screening of Fantasia closes the Sunday night. In fact, it’s a place where it’s very, very difficult to not have a good time.

Enter Wiseman’s Ferry; a 90 minute drive from the city centre sitting amongst picturesque cutaway forest locales on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. A place where you step off the notorious ferry, stroll across the quite literal welcome mat and step into what is a resort for 362 days of the year. For those other three, it becomes the Playground Weekender; this year playing host to The Streets, Primal Scream, Jose Gonzalez, the Cold War Kids and about seventeen fists full of obscure English DJ’s. The festival is inexplicably lived in by a 50% contingent of British backpackers, visa holders and expats. It is at one stage the hottest place on Earth (not an exaggeration,) and at another stage, sees 20 men dressed as oompa loompa’s take shade from the sun with $7 schooners of beer. But hey, lets start at the beginning.

Friday the 6th of March – it takes two hours to crawl through the North Sydney traffic, it takes a set of brake pads to navigate the Galston road razorbacks and $25 to park your car at the bowl-o for the weekend. There appears to be a congregation of people on the side of the road about 150 metres up from the ferry. It can be safely assumed that these people are just chilling out. This presumption proves wrong – it is the line for said ferry. People have been waiting for three hours; its 6pm, the music has already started and people are getting restless and thirsty. Cue the wise decision of the masses to horde cases of beer for the ferry queue. After taking advantage of several abandoned bottles of beer, the odd drunken nudie run by the members of the line and a strict search by security guards, festival attendance begins at 9:30pm. It’s hard to criticise this organisational catastrophe since it did end up being one of the festival highlights. Technically, it can’t be attributed to the festival; however, what can be is the attempts to rectify the problem by chartering extra coaches to shuttle attendees across as well as an attempt to speed up the ferries. It seems that while ticket sales have skyrocketed this time around, the infrastructure hasn’t followed suit, leaving many without sufficiently timed festival entry, with a little bit of unplanned sunburn and possibly even gravel rash. The infrastructure problem is backed up by a personnel problem which is discovered early Saturday morning when the festival’s sole volunteer is seen desperately trying to clear a few hundred thousand beer cups from the main stage before the day’s music starts. The flow on effect of this is blocked toilets, unmanned toilet paper replacements and a gradual deterioration of the waste facilities. Either the festival asked for too much from volunteers, didn’t spread the word fast enough, had too many people backing out or had too cheap a ticket price – the volunteer situation was disastrous and led to the desperate holding in of one’s bowel contents, or, as a friend put it, the boarding of a ferry for a ‘commuter crap.’

Now as long as that paragraph of penalisation was, it’s meant in the highest respect. Playground did everything they could with such unfortunate circumstance and still hosted one of Australia’s most phenomenally all-round fun music festivals. Sure, the loos were overflowing as much as the rubbish bins, but the festival made up for it three times over. The fun starts as thus: an impassioned discussion about how disgusting it is that $7 Tiger beer in a cup is the required festival drink is followed by the realisation that the extra 50mLs is worth the extra dollar and is about $7 tastier than warm Extra Dry from the can. The Saturday is moderately uneventful, the music consists of DJ’s following DJ’s and the relief of a quick swim in the festival pool is promptly followed by the stark realisation that the water has turned a very thick green-black colour, presumably 40% urine and 60% chlorine. A day of sitting in the shade drinking the essence of Tiger is followed by a night of music, the temperature now at a level that allows for movement, as well as a bump and grind. Said bump and grind is bolstered by Saturday nights fancy dress invitational, seeing all manner of attendees clothed as Darth Vader, cheerleaders, members of the opposite sex, superheroes, mormon’s, you name it, it was there. Many amusing conversations are had with all manner of colourful characters and the stage is set for the night of high class music.

The Cold War Kids play a high-powered set in front of the crux of attendees, their brand of pounding rock sitting behind the unique wails of frontman Nathan Willett. With a couple of great tracks in their catalogue going down with huge reception including ‘We Used to Vacation’ and ‘Hang Me Up to Dry,’ they seem to suffer from a large lull part-way through the set which sees a mass exodus for something else. While it was most definitely a good set by a quality band, it seems they suffer from their frontman’s unique speech patterns in that it very quickly becomes very similar. It almost feels like the one-trick pony syndrome, but there was no denying their enthusiasm and ability as musicians.

The Cold War Kids are followed by festival headliners and perennial 90’s favourites, Primal Scream. Opening with favourite ‘Country Girl’ and scrolling through a set full of new and old, they seem to go over particularly well for what is a relatively half-arsed, semi-enthused performance. Highlighted by a spectacular set of lights including a lime green laser show ripped straight from an era past, they entertain and provide some pretty alright tunes to finish the Saturday night. With (you guessed it) more DJ’s finishing off the festival til the early hours, the punters retreat to camp where they either get a good night’s sleep on nicely fashioned air mattresses, a terrible night’s sleep on hard ground outside someone’s obnoxiously loud stereo or a short one due to a hard night’s work of social interaction.

By 7am everyone’s tent is at such an inhospitable state as to force a spontaneous pilgrimage towards the bacon and eggs cue. Sunday has potential to be devastating; with temperature forecasted at 48 degrees, west Sydney will be the hottest place on Earth. This statistic succeeds and people are absolutely roasted. Of course, the only two cures to this are to walk far enough down the river to where the ‘Caution Dangerous Currents’ signs are no longer prevalent for a dip in the river and consuming copious amounts of liver soothing hair-of-the-dog (which very quickly advances from a hair to the entire coat.) With swimmer’s boarding houseboats and using them as diving boards, sacks of goon being passed around the shoulder wrestling partners via flotation and music playing distantly in the background, the day seems to revolve around managing the heat rather than managing the timetable. The main stage sees the abundant shade provided by nearby trees filled with people sleeping, chatting or venturing into the sun for a rapidly expanding game of cricket. With TZU providing some high energy beats and Blue King Brown creating a clearing with their obnoxious brand of over-the-top political preaching, the masses shift between the chai tent, the pub and odd spots of shade and breeze.

Unfortunately, due to a combination of the heat and nearby bushfires closing down the freeway (thus slowing the arrival of artists,) the main stage runs late all day. This leads to a very souring experience, where the late-to-arrive Jose Gonzalez plays only a 30 minute set. However, he does more than could be expected, pulling out a setlist full of some of his finest work from debut album, Veneer, sitting in front of the gorgeous backdrop of a Wisemans Ferry sunset and creating absolutely stunning sounds along with his three-piece. For the first time of the weekend, the audience is treated to a highly professional, aurally pleasing set of music. The vibe takes about thirty steps up the positivity ladder and sees smiles spread across the Playground Weekender as the tunes mingle with the comforting cooling that accompanies sunset as Wisemans Ferry gradually loses its status as the warmest location on the planet. Perhaps next year, the congested line-up of DJ’s could be slimmed down in place of a bolstered line-up of high quality music. It could be argued that five full sets of pleased music goers is a whole lot more positive than 30 DJ’s watched by a handful of their friends.

This point aside, night falls, the beer line generates force and the Streets step on stage. Fronted by Englishman Mike Skinner, an audience member flying an English flag and a chorus of cheers to Skinner’s questioning of the motherland’s ethnic heritage, it’s hard to tell exactly what happened to all the locals. The Streets play a fantastic set full of old favourites and new tracks. There’s no denying the charisma that Skinner carries to the band, the rest of the five-piece playing some very fine backing to his antics. The Street backing vocalist Leo the Lion could quite easily be removed for the sake of getting rid of the sickly RnB wavering croons, but for the most, they’re on track and are actually a highlight to the festival.

Following the Streets at Cargo stage just over the hill, apparently well-known DJ Nic Fancuialli plays in front of a quickly disinterested crowd who get arrested by a massive game of limbo, followed by invisible tennis tournaments, dance-offs and conga lines. It becomes, conveniently, a Playground. Following this highlight, the open air cinema attracts a crowd of tripped out, drunken or sleepy individuals for a showing of Fantasia at midnight. With a guest appearance by a curious wallaby and shouts at the screen of “run c*nt!” during the apprentice scene, it proves a night of giggles - a superb way to end the festival. Sunday ends up being of the most enjoyable festival days I’ve ever had, full of great attitudes, laughter and a prime social experience, there’s not much more that could have made it any better. Considering all this was in the face of 48 degree weather, Playground should be applauded for the fantastic selection of venue.

Every year Playground proves itself to be the host of a phenomenally enjoyable experience and yet again, it doesn’t disappoint. It lives up to its name in stunning fashion, an otherworldly cacophony of play equipment, swing-sets and good, old fashioned fun. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there are two festival experiences to be had in Australia: you can be running from stage to stage, struggling to see everything you’ve highlighted on the program OR you can go to the Playground Weekender. Forget the shitty DJ’s, forget about the struggle to catch your favourite acts and just have fun. Escape, run free, laugh, dance, swim, dive off a houseboat, whatever – Playground is the real deal; all negatives included.

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