Thousands of Splendour Festivalgoers Stranded by Lack of Transport

Overview

Thousands of punters attending Splendour in the Grass were left stranded for hours at the North Byron Parklands site on Friday evening, with bus and traffic wait times reaching into the early hours of Saturday morning. After The Strokes wrapped up on the main Amphitheatre stage, the masses flocked to the festival's shuttle buses — only to find almost empty bus bays and unbelievable queues.

In a pretty chaotic scene that resembled The Walking Dead, punters were jumping ditches, ducking under fences, pissing in fields and flocking to any maxi-cab (or moving vehicle, for that matter) that passed by. Concrete Playground even saw a woman with a walking frame having to walk the 1.25km from the festival entrance to the festival gate and duck under a fence, waved to do so by a NSW Roads and Maritime traffic controller. 

By 1-2am, many punters even waved $50 notes at passing cars in the hopes of catching a ride back to town. Traffic was no better, with early leavers waiting up to two hours just to leave the festival site, many returning to Byron Bay by 2-3am.

NSW Roads and Maritime officers corralled punters down into darker, less busy parts of the pre-highway road — with little time for compassion for the stranded punters. NSW Police rolled out the riot squad, patrolling with formidable casualness.

This is not Splendour's first time at the closing time rodeo — so what the heck went wrong? Using data for non-camping ticketholders versus camping ticketholders should have offered a clue into Friday night's logistical nightmare — there were simply not enough buses for the number of non-staying punters. Here's hoping Saturday's three-hour set from The Cure staggers the leaving times.