Start as you mean to continue
After an extremely sober start to the year, we resolved to have a few bevvies at the New Year’s Day music festival – Field Day. Dressed in our best festival attire, we strolled down to the Botanical Gardens caked in sun cream ready for the gates to open at midday. Naturally we were pretty early so hung outside in the heat with a few people who’d clearly come straight from the previous night’s celebrations!
We decided against alcohol smuggling as we knew we could buy it inside and it was definitely a cider kind of day – bright sunshine and music! Once we’d passed security we had a quick scout around The Domain and got our bearings.
Most of the bands we wanted to see were on the two main stages and people were already dancing to Indian Summer on the huge dance floor in front of the main stage. We joined them for a quick boogie and then headed to the cider tent, which was currently deserted.
It wasn’t cheap – $9 a can – but each can you took for recycling got you $1 back. So, cider in hand we headed off to see Elizabeth Rose, a young girl in a very sparkly leotard. Her music wasn’t bad so we joined the small dancing crowd and made up some lyrics to her pretty catchy songs. We briefly chatted to some guys (who turned out to be Indian Summer) but mostly just enjoyed the set.
Cheap as chips
With a short gap until Crystal Fighters we headed to the recycling tent to return our cans. This is where we discovered that you could take back several cans at a time and still get $1 for each.
Now we’re not skanky, nor are we massive green girls, BUT this scheme equated to free/cheap cider, so each time we finished a can we’d go and recycle it, picking up any discarded cans en route. Only on the way – we weren’t fighting over them or fishing them out of bins like some people were.
Basically, each cider we bought cost us $4, which made it much more reasonable. We even splashed out on a chicken and capsicum pizza to keep us going.
Sing for absolution
Back at The Island stage, we discovered that we really liked Crystal Fighters – long-haired hippies wearing a lot of crystals – (At Home was our favourite) so stayed for their whole set (bar another quick recycling/cider run) and then watched London Grammar who were also pretty cool.
We then switched to the main stage (again via recycling/cider) to see Flux Pavilion. It was much more crowded here and us short people struggled to see. After voicing my frustration to a topless man behind me, he suddenly hoisted me onto his shoulders, giving me the perfect view. He was about 6″3 but didn’t seem to be holding me very tight so I had to grip him pretty hard to stop myself plunging head first into the crowd.
Eventually I was safely back on my own two feet, just in time for us to run back around to see The Wombats, who are extremely popular in Australia. The crowd was dense and we were quite close to the front, so we gave up on recycling and just enjoyed the band.
They were pretty awesome live and everyone was singing along. We got chatting to some English guys in the crowd, so once the festival finished about 11pm, we headed to O’Malleys with them for some more cider. New Year’s Day definitely made up for New Year’s Eve where drinking was concerned!
My Stage is the World 
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