Organisers of the Pitch Music Festival have confirmed to Ararat Rural City Council that the March 9-12 electronic dance music event has been a sellout and will be expecting 10,000 people to attend.
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Last year’s event near Moyston had approximately 7000 people attending, and many businesses were caught short with staff, stock and opening hours.
Ararat Rural City has sent a heads up for businesses to take best advantage of all those people coming and going, plus all those that come back into town over the weekend for extra supplies.
“Let’s not forget the hundreds of event staff and set-up crews who will be coming and going before and after the weekend as well,” a council email to businesses stated.
“This is a great opportunity to generate extra income and promote our area over a short period of time.”
The Pitch Music Festival promised its 2018 patrons “four mercurial days of contemporary electronic music steeped in visual arts and landscape. A yearling community assembled in Victoria’s wide and promising plains; featuring oracular artists in the effervescence of plein-air”.
Ticket holders have paid between $195 and $400 for “a freshened stable of international and local performing artists leading the praxis of electronic music”.
On-site accommodation included ‘glamping’ or glamour camping in low and high-pitched tents and tipis.
The festival will run shuttle buses to and from Ararat Railway Station in conjunction with the train timetable from Melbourne
In November, Ararat Rural City Council granted a five-year planning permit to the Pitch Music Festival near Moyston.
Only one councillor voting against the proposal over bushfire concerns.
The application was for the use of land for a “Place of Assembly” and associated temporary building and works for a music festival for a period of five years with the first festival to take place on Labour Day Weekend in March 2018.
It was proposed that a maximum of 10,000 tickets will be sold in the second year, up from the 7000 limit at the event in 2017.
Participant numbers were proposed to rise to 11,000 in 2019 and 12,500 in the years 2020-2022.
Ararat Rural City requested 56 additional conditions relation to road dust, food safety, mobile communications and fire risks.
A representative from Pitch Music Festival near Moyston told councillors that the event would be much more prepared and this year's event will have fewer issues.
The representative said the festival had spent $350,000 on the Grampians community and suppliers.
