Strawberry Fields 2011 -

This is definatley a bit naughty. Besides the fact I arrived late to this festival (Saturday morning 3am) it was so raw and crazy I really can't think back to the chaos that was Strawberry Fields. First things first, me and my housemate decieded a week before hand that we were going to go through with this festival. And managed to scrap together enough funds, to have a comfortable weekend out in the bush. Boy did we get a surprise. Our plan months prior to the event (as crude as it sounds) was to experiance the ol' fashion sneak in. Plenty of doofers alike make the choice, usually due to lack of funds and nothing better to do. Whilst driving up to Shepperton, the blackend clouds swirled as night fell and we knew that sneaking all our precious cargo in (chairs, mini marquee, tables, lots of water!, swags and tents etc) would be disasterous. To further enhance the situation the festival was in a new location this year and our original 3hr trip turned into a 5hr one, we both knew that the drive tested our friendship enough, and the journey through the mud, river and bush at 3am just wasn't going to end well, so we decided to buy a ticket. Right? Wrong. We arrive at the gate, our sparkling Volvo XC90 packed to the rafters with surplus, faces eager and feet tapping to the earthy beat buzzing through the ground to notice no one there checking for tickets. We wait.. 5...10mins.. nothing. We drive slowly untill we see a person with a folder and headtorch pointing cars and people in various directions. After a quick re-assesment, the ticket collecter had seemed to already been partying and asked us to drive through to the campsite. No ticket required. ZOINK!


 With this we entered the camping area estatic but the feeling was quickly sapped from us as it took us 45 mins to find a spot. The camping facilities were fairly mediocre, too many dipping areas, trees, uncleared areas from rocks/fallen trees, the roads were in horrible conditions (espcially by the end) and they were too close to the campsites. All in all Strawberry fields was a swamp, I will say with confidance that the mosquito problem was solved this year, in a very unenvironmental way (Zey gassed zem!) but fuck it I didnt care one bit.

So this being the case we unpacked and hurried to the dancefloor. The range of music of this year was huge. But I dont say this as a good thing. Some other people might think this is good thing. But it isn't. If I wanted a range of music I would of gone to JB-HiFi and walked up and down the aisles for a weekend. I come to the bush to enjoy good four to the floor beats. Yes my friends, the dubstep/psystep/glitchop (whatever you wanna call it) wave as really turned into a tsunami and it flooded the australian rave scene. So the first 135+ BPM Artist to arrive on the stage came VERY late at around 5-6am. By this time, I was tired, peeved at the music and getting a little cold. Lucky I saved my mana potions for this and had a great time watching the sunrise and seeing some familar faces I couldn't see before. However come 8am I really had to get some shut eye and I decided to do this as Skrillex and The Presets were being mashed together into an awful amalgamation of sound and popularity. The next day I awoke and was mezmorized and catapulted into the fun side of things by 1200mics, Max Cooper, SQL and more. I spent all day on the main stage and retired late that evening with a little sun stroke.

The next day I converged with friends about the festival so far. The overall opinion was the the organisers of the festival had been severly overwhelmed by the popularity this year. The set times were 3 hours behind scedule, The toilets (the few they had) were absolutley filthy and the vending shops were a bit lack lustre. Also the populus of the festival was in excess of 5,000, which I doubt they would of expected. So hopefully now, that SBF has had a bit of a kick up the bum they can afford to pull out all the stops for this year!!

In the end I had a ballistic time, but then.. I always have a good time.