Secret Garden Festival 2016

Overview

Brush up on your heaps sick macaroni necklace skills, coordinate your crew's dress-ups and dig out your ol' faithful tent. One of Australia's best and most beloved festivals, Secret Garden Festival, is back for another year. Returning to the festival's hallowed and not-so-secret-anymore location outside of Sydney, Secret Garden is celebrating its eighth year over February 26 and 27.

Hold up, you haven't heard of Secret Garden? Grab a beer, line up for the egg and spoon race and we'll fill you in. Forget everything you know about big, personality-less, bro-zone festivals. If that's your thing, you enjoy that, but this little homegrown gem ain't for you. Secret Garden is Australia's most genuine, perpetually surprising, made-for-mates-by-mates festival, with a bigger heart than most festivals could hope to have. Directed by the inimitable, larger-than-life, outrageously hard-working Clare Downes, held annually on the idyllic Downes family farm outside of Sydney and brought to life by the ever-loyal Secret Garden family, this NSW festival reminds punters to ditch the attitude and remember what bloody good fun looks like.

Secret Garden's more than a lineup (although said lineup is inevitably kickass each year, with Parquet Courts, Sharon Van Etten, Remi, Gang Of Youths, Client Liaison, The Griswolds, Japanese Wallpaper, UV Boi, Willow Beats, Milwaukee Banks, Total Giovanni, Peter Combe (PETER COMBE) and more playing last year). But with hidden handcrafted areas, drag queens, lawn games, facepainting, ballpits, pillow forts, craft tents, forest pop-up bars, huge art installations, local food, tiny rave caves, photobooths, birds nest-shaped DJ booths, kissing booths, ticket booths and a hell of lot more to be found at the festival, you'll be pressed for time.

Importantly, you should start planning your costume, because if any festival goes above and beyond on the dress-ups, it's Secret Garden. Think big — this year's dress-up theme is 'Space Cowboy'.

Donning a bigger sunhat than ever for 2016, Secret Garden will be taking place over two full days and nights on Friday and Saturday, giving 'Gardeners' more live music, love and glitter than ever. But as usual, in true SG tradition, the festivals always sells out before the lineup's announced. As always, proceeds from ticket and bar sales will go toward charity — and these guys have donated more than $200,000 to Oxfam, The Boys and Girls Brigade and the Sarah Hilt Foundation. Noice.

Capacity hasn't changed even though the festival program has, so tickets are going to evaporate. There's a couple of options for tickets: the 'Two-Day Celebration' ($209.65), 'One Hot Night' ($144.35) and the 'Office Worker Package' ($575.80). Head to Secret Garden's fancy new website for more details and to book tickets. And you'll want to — last year Client Liaison brought confetti cannons.

In a highly ineloquent statement, Secret Garden rules. We should know, we put on a humdinger of an event with the SG crew last year, Cubby House, so ner.

Secret Garden Festival returns to its (sort of) secret location on February 26 and 27, 2016. General tickets are on sale now from Secret Garden's website.

Images: Anna Warr, Jack Toohey.