Simon Daly's Vision For The Lost Lands Includes Kids As Volunteers

"I'm just on the way to the magnificent, stately, old world Werribee Mansion," Simon Daly says, en route to The Lost Lands festival site. If you've attended a festival at Werribee Park before, you'll be familiar with this "really beautiful" set-up. "Having camping so close to the city, I s'pose, probably hasn't happened since Sunbury," Daly chuckles. Given that Werribee Open Range Zoo is practically on Werribee Mansions' doorstep, Daly confirms that arrangements have been made so that kids with The Lost Lands wristbands score free entry into the zoo across the festival weekend. "Kids will still get up at seven in the morning, hate to say it," Daly warns. "So a morning at the zoo followed by the festival's a no-brainer."   

Daly founded Falls Festival, which was designed "for a set demographic", back in 1993. "We were able to kind of go from running an event that was pretty basic to… making lots of mistakes along the way to then fine-tuning events to being run really well," he observes. But The Lost Lands caters for a completely different age range ("from two-year-olds to 62-year-olds"). "After doing [Falls] for 20 years… it's just really exciting to be able to start something from the beginning," Daly enthuses.

"Kids will still get up at seven in the morning, hate to say it. So a morning at the zoo followed by the festival's a no-brainer."   

After departing Falls to concentrate on bringing up his young family, a family trip to Camp Bestival — which Daly describes as "a really, really uplifting, positive festival experience" - inspired him to create something similar on home turf. "It's really pedestrian, it's really calm," he shares. "The kids are so engaged, the parents are really stoked for everything that they're getting out of the festival rather than, 'Oh, I must take the kids here and give them an experience'; the parents are getting a great experience too."

The Lost Lands boasts a lively arts program and Daly admits, "One thing that I really learnt through the '90s into the 2000s, is that, whatever you're putting together, you're definitely better off to bring in really great people who do things much better than you and recognise that." As such, he's left the "theatre/arts" component to Ian Pidd. "Whatever's he's keen on doing, we're doing," Daly adds.

At the time of our chat, Daly estimates, "The ticket sales so far are right on 50/50, for every ticket [sold] there's a child coming. And the programming is about three fifths programmed for children and two fifths for parents."

In the coming years, Daly says he's super-keen to involve children as volunteers. "I'd hope by next year that really good parts of the festival are actually run by kids." Empowering our youth is something that's being explored as part of this year's Melbourne Festival program (Haircuts By Children, anyone?) and Daly is a firm believer that "they can cope with so much more than we give them credit for". "It's just a matter of getting them away from their screens," he stresses. 

Excited "to be introducing kids to a festival at a young age", Daly concludes, "That concept of a music festival, a zoo, camping at night and hearing a lion roar in the distance - it's really unique".