The seventh annual Maitreya Festival will be held in a new location this weekend after the Central Goldfields Shire denied them a permit, after finding that the event had been running without the sanction of local council for three years.
Held every Labour Day weekend, the four day camping festival of arts and music features DJs from all around the world, such as USA’s Chromatone and the Growling Mad Scientists from the Netherlands.
Creativity is also a major part of the festival, with their official website urging punters to “Toll in the mud, draw in the sand, hug a stranger, join a workshop and just feel your inner artist explode.” Unfortunately, they have been forced to relocate after the local council denied them access to the site this year.
After winning a case in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the shire’s chief executive, Mark Johnston, said if the organisers weren’t willing to apply for a permit then the council didn’t want the festival, as The ABC reports.
“Well it’s a loss in the sense of people being in the community and potentially spending money,” he said, adding, “It’s not a loss in the sense that it would be somebody doing an illegal activity that should be regulated.”
Interestingly, the organisers had never been granted a permit from the local council in the past, despite taking place at the Carisbrook Racecourse and Recreation Reserve since 2011.
“It’s not a loss in the sense that it would be somebody doing an illegal activity that should be regulated.” – Mark Johnston, Central Goldfields Shire council.It seems the trance festival has been somewhat nomadic since its inception in 2007, and this isn’t the first time fears of its cancellation have arisen. The 2009 event was nearly cancelled as close to one day before it was due to begin when the local council of the proposed site, Wakiti Creek, deemed it unsafe, according to a forum. Thanks to a last minute approved venue change, it went ahead anyway.
That same tactic has been used for this year’s Maitreya, with the town of Sea Lake, 300kms north-west of Melbourne, stated as the new location on their website. This late announcement has elicited a negative response on their Facebook page, some posters complaining of its distance from Melbourne. One in particular told the organisers to “kill yourselfs [sic.].”
Despite the apparent legitimacy of the venue, the Buloke Shire told the ABC yesterday that they are “yet to rule on whether to grant a permit.”
Council permits, or lack thereof, have posed a threat to festivals in the past, most notably Rainbow Serpent in January this year. After 16 years at the same site, the Pyrenees Shire Council hadn’t granted them a Places Of Public Entertainment (POPE) permit less than a week before its scheduled opening because of a change in the festival’s safety service providers.
After a roundtable conference between organisers Green Ant Productions and the local council, all the necessary permits were granted at the eleventh hour. In the end, despite a lower attendance rate than usual, Pyrenees Shire Mayor Michael O’Connor said the festival attendees were “well behaved” and expects it to return next year.
With less than three days til its proposed kick-off, Maitreya’s fate still hangs in the balance.
