Early 1970s music festivals

In January 1970, 5 months after Woodstock, the small NSW town of Ourimbah hosted Australia’s first major music festival.

The festival kicked off a series of pop, rock and countercultural festivals which took place in Australia in the early 1970s, marking the end of the hippy era and rise of pub rock.

While these festivals proved to be financially fickle, and many folded after their first year, they set new precedents in the music industry and became part of the wider cultural imagination, as Australians bore witness to the power of pop music to bring people together.

The audiovisual legacy of these early Australian music festivals is an eclectic collection of documentaries, television specials, experimental films, home movies and sound recordings, as showcased in the collection below.

WARNING: this collection may contain names, images or voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.