24 Hours at Pitch Festival as an Artist's Manager

Felix, 29, Collingwood

If my recent move to Melbourne has meant one thing, it’s that my apartment has become a hotel for my Sydney friends who regularly visit for parties.

This weekend I have one friend staying with me, perhaps the most regular of my guests, largely due to the fact that she’s an “up-and-coming DJ” (yes I do say that seriously) and this weekend she’s due to play at Pitch Music & Arts Festival. I’m accompanying her as a member of her touring party (her ride).

2pm: We leave my apartment with grand plans to pick up some road trip snacks, more drinks and a few items to help us forget we’ll be in a dustbowl. At this point, we plan to spend two nights at Pitch, driving back to Naarm on Sunday for another gig.

The salt-of-the-Earth deli/national franchise we visit delivers the biscuits, overly expensive chocolate and always-necessary fruit that’ll no doubt perish at the bottom of our esky. $43.

I pay, making that regularly scripted comment of “working it out later” that oozes calmness in the face of every incredibly stressful long weekend commute out of a city. My friend buys us each a falafel wrap which also comes to $43. We’re $86 in the hole already. I don’t finish my wrap; it’ll soak into itself in my cupholder the remainder of the weekend.

2:30pm: We stop at a friend’s house to pick up some jewellery and no, that is not some kind of strange euphemism for gear. We tell him we’ve got a spare +1 to the festival that hasn’t been claimed and that he should stop what he’s doing immediately and come with us. I’m very aware that in this moment, we’re not leaving him with much of a choice, though he seems very intrigued. He crumbles (easily) and we’ve effectively taken a hostage for the weekend.

8pm: Having foolishly forgotten that it’s a long weekend our trip out of the city takes a century. We pick up petrol on the way for $50. This would, without me knowing, be the last money I spend all evening.

We arrive at Pitch just as it’s getting dark.

8:30pm: On the way in, lost, I accidentally misgender a person with their back to us, in head-to-toe workwear, initially calling them “fellas”. I double down and accidentally then call them “guys” once she turns around. I feel I’ve paid a lot for this though not monetarily. My friends don’t let me live it down for the remainder of the weekend. I could absolutely ruin a beer.

9pm: After a decent bit of fucking around we find the artist check-in and figure out where we need to go. We park our car on the outskirts of the staff campground and, before unpacking, decide to meander over to the glowing red artist area to touch base with the people running the show. 

9:10pm: We’re immediately told, as we arrive, that our friend’s set has been cancelled, as all music will be turned off from midnight tonight til 6pm tomorrow (Saturday) by orders of the CFA and Victoria Police. Pitch is under threat of bushfires due to the extreme heatwaves and high winds.

The shock of this situation takes a while to wear off but we resolve to just get horribly wasted with the time we’ve got and leave tomorrow.

24 hours at Pitch, as it were.

9:25pm: The incredibly understanding and apologetic artist liaisons tell us they’ll get my friend’s rider of drinks and we can start tucking into it. Each of us eats a dexie, provided for free by my prescribed friend. A bottle of tequila, limes, tonic and soda arrives at our feet. We share a round of vodka shots poured from another friend’s rider and exchange devastated conversations with other members of staff and artists.

9:45pm: It’s time to enter the festival and, as we walk in, we’re greeted by a giant LED billboard advising people to leave the festival the following day if they’re able to do so – messaging we’d later realise was made compulsory by the local emergency services.

As we pass we see someone who looks about 20 being dragged along by their friends, vomiting profusely in the middle of a path.

We wander past each stage and the crowds are surprisingly stationary. People are leaning on doof sticks, seemingly confused by edits of old soul and RnB songs turned donk. 

“Is this a clean up song?” one person asks, obviously completely thrown off-guard by the idea that any DJ might intentionally play Dido at a dance music festival.

10:30pm: I’ve never felt older.

Having visited each of the three main stages and with only 90 minutes until the music gets turned off, no doubt to the huge shock of many unwary punters, we decide to go and find the “secret stage”. A cute idea if you’re got time to kill, but with ours running out, we were stressed.

10:50pm: After quizzing many confused volunteers, we finally find it. A dancehall remix of Trippie Redd’s “Miss The Rage” is playing ear-bleedingly loud as we step in. Funktion One stacks right next to a campsite, who would’ve thought?

11pm: We get comfortable in the culturally ambiguously designed tent, tucking deeper into the sling bag of spirits and seltzers that I’d haphazardly packed an hour earlier. We spot a series of lads hanging around a desk with an old typewriter. My friend offers them a seltzer in exchange for a bump of ketamine. After she tells them her sob story about her set cancellation, they give her two. My neurodivergent friend suggests we trade some dexies for more ketamine so he and I can get involved. What’s the deal with everyone having ADHD but nobody having dexies???

12am: Every “back in my day” thought I’ve ever had about gear goes out the window and I realise that these kids are really on some other shit. My friend’s fake boyfriend +1 and I have a huge conversation about school, our upbringings, all that good stuff, before saying we love each other and we’re glad to be bonding. Wow, maybe I am doing Pitch right.

12:30am: That conversation is immediately countered with one focused on the inherent racism found within Australia’s party scene. This K has definitely worn off.

1am: We find an unmanned kettle and popcorn machine that quickly make our one meal token redundant. Have you ever seen the goo that goes into a popcorn machine? That shit is near nuclear, but damn does it taste good. 

A guy responsible for the tent we’re in says he really appreciates volunteers who go the extra mile. He doesn’t seem to understand when we tell him our story.

3am: We wake up from a popcorn giggle fever to realise we’re almost all alone and exhausted. 

We still haven’t unpacked our car and have nowhere to sleep.

3:30am: Due to the CFA situation, though, we predict there could be a fair few empty glamping tents usually reserved for bigger artists or paying punters.

We decide to have a poke around and search for telltale signs of tents being occupied: mud, shoes, haphazardly zipped up doors. I find an entirely empty tent, two double beds, linen, towels, mattresses, the whole shebang. We sneak inside and giggle til we fall asleep.

“Good morning Mr. (Daniel) Avery,” we say, to a night at Pitch actually really well spent.

9:30am: We wake and b-line for the food trucks. I pay $32 for a room-temperature “loaded” bacon and egg roll and a can of Coke.

The vat of “cold brew” being loaded into a slushy machine nearby gives me popcorn flashbacks in a bad way.

10am: We gobble them down while hypothesising the potential full cancellation of the festival. Two people overhear us and seem really surprised and confused.

We realise that many punters likely have no idea of what is actually happening.

12pm: We’re outta here. Didn’t even have to unpack the car. 

Sure enough, the whole festival is cancelled the following day.

Total: $158. See you next year? Maybe.

See more Night Out Receipts here.