Five Splendour Activities Worth The Ticket Price

25 April 2014 | 3:25 pm | Mitch Knox

If you haven't walked the Tipi Forest after dark, you haven't lived

More Splendour In The Grass More Splendour In The Grass

Aside from precipitating an inevitable spike in OutKast album sales, the announcement of this year's Splendour in the Grass line-up on Wednesday was met with a wildly disparate range of emotions from potential festival-goers. The bitter and jaded out there immediately wrote off the festival's offerings as little more than the world's most expensive Andre 3000 show, while others were generally placated (hey, it's really not that bad), and a special few just went unabashedly full Hey Ya at the news:


Never go full Hey Ya.

Still, even if you weren't totally floored by the line-up – which alongside OutKast boasts Lily Allen, Two Door Cinema Club, Foster The People and Interpol among its pool of high-profile international acts – you don't have to be a totally joyless freak about the whole deal. After all, Splendour isn't only about the music. There are three whole days to kill, and plenty of other reasons to get through those gates…

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PROCURING A BYRON BAY ORGANIC DOUGHNUT

If other people were the size of little frisbees, dusted with cinnamon, and only ever had sex inside your mouth, you'd be pretty close to synthesising what it's like to eat one of these heart-stoppingly good, independently produced snacks, presumably stolen from God's own treat basket.

Pic: Facebook

Nobody's getting paid anything for this, so you know - this is genuinely just a public service announcement because those things are absolutely suitable for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if you do not care about your health but do care about delicious flavour. The same goes for the Hungarian lángos, to be honest.

OK, it's probably not wise to have your meals for an entire day consist of nothing but various types of fried breadstuffs, but it's also not wise to pound four Jagerbombs in fifteen minutes and rave the mid-morning away in the Smirnoff tent, and you don't see that stopping anyone from following their hearts on that.

WALKING THE TIPI FOREST

Every year, there's an overwhelming urge to make fun of the Tipi Forest as a concept, but goddamn, it is always a blast in there. If this is going to be your first year at Splendour, it is recommended you traverse the area - basically a specific zone with actual tipis and cool community "art" spaces/thought boards and strange, wonderful sculptures and installations and a stage with a BIG OL' MIRROR BALL - at least twice:

The first time, during the day, when it is a rare oasis of quietude; when it is serene and birds are chirping and hippies meditating and people giggling as they scrawl "NO COPPA DAWGS" on the "What would you change?" placard.

Top right. Wasn't kidding.

And, the second time, at night, because sweet Jesus it is a freakshow once the sun goes down, in the absolute best way possible. Neon colours. Glow sticks. Ceaseless pulsing movement. Pounding bass and/or bass drums. Like, a tonne of sweat. An air of tribalism. The pull of recklessness. It's an experience, at any rate, and a pretty astonishing metamorphosis, because both vibes - the bestial and the botanical - feel at home in the Tipi Forest.

Although - this is terrifying to navigate when drunk.

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOURS

Pic: John Stubbs

One of Splendour's inherent advantages as a festival is its length and nature; because the grand majority of attendees are all stuck in tents next to each other for three days, there generally seems like there's a greater effort put in to getting along with your fellow man than at one-dayers, when there's little chance of you having multiple significant run-ins with anyone.

But, at Splendour, there's always a chance you'll see someone again, either inside the festival or back at the camping grounds or at your most vulnerable - in the toilet - and it's just so much easier for everyone if people maintain a degree of civility with each other.

And, for the most part, they do. Anecdotes abound of helpful strangers freeing trapped vehicles, erecting tents in downpours, helping injured partyers to the first aid tent, and all manner of other heartwarming displays that can only do good things for our collective faith in each other. You might even actually make a friend.

EXERCISING YOUR BRAIN

Look, we know it's really tempting and easy to develop a Splendour schedule that looks a little bit like, "Day 1: Start drinking --> Day 3: Stop drinking", but if you're not feeling inclined to spend almost half a week solidly off-chops (because you are an adult), then perhaps you'll be interested in some of the more intellectually stimulating content on offer at the festival - namely the Splendour Forum.

A daily slice of debate, discussion, Q&As, interviews, philosophy and jokes on a wealth of topics, the Splendour Forum plays host to a range of very smart people with insightful and interesting things to say, so if you can pry yourself away from your midstrength tinnies and your "rock'n'roll" music long enough to hear them, it would be advisable to do so.

EXPLORING THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

Perhaps "exploring" is too strong a word to use here, because the Global Village is really just a circular space surrounded by stalls and a stage, but it also looks fabulous at night, so it's hard to begrudge its unofficial, three-second-old status as Splendour's very own back yard.

"Welcome, friends. We have slacklining and singing monks. Mind the jugglers."

Yes, there is no more random a collection of goings-on than within the confines of the Global Village, where people hula-hoop in groups, and perform acrobatics, and sell massages and Comfy PantsTM and Peruvian coffee, and hold belly-dancing tutorials, all at the same time, because screw you, it's Splendour in the Grass.

Oh, plus, it's really close to the can, so... y'know. Bonus.

So, no, it doesn't always have to be about spending three days with a buzz on, fighting off dehydration and squinting desperately over a thousand other heads at bands you only have a mild interest in while you quietly hope that a lighting rig falls and crushes you, if only to give you a swift out from the heaving mass of sweaty bodies that surround you - it can be better for you than that, so do yourself a favour and take in as much of the rest of the festival as you can while you're there.