Singing Woodford festival's praises ... and that's not all, folks

FOR SOMEONE who takes to camping like a pelican takes to the desert, five nights at the Woodford Folk Festival loomed as a daunting post-Christmas event.

Amid various early disasters, I thought about heading home after an hour. I’m glad I didn’t.

If you’ve never been to Woodford, it’s hard to envisage. Some 30 venues, hundreds of retail stalls and eateries, a kids festival, something like 100,000 people turning up over six days between December 27 and January 1 each year, wall-to-wall entertainment from morning to well into the night. And the cantankerous Queensland summer weather.

All crunched together on a plot of land called Woodfordia, about a one-hour drive north of Brisbane.

The most difficult-to-imagine aspect is that it works. 

Sure, we can overstate this. It’s only a few days etc. But all of us have seen how massed humanity can go ugly. Woodford, at least from what I could see this year, never did. Rules were sensible and common sense was in abundance. It’s a credit to all.

OPEN AIR OF ENTERTAINMENT

But, yes, it is a cultural festival, not an experiment in political philosophy. So