Odyssey Pop Festival – Wallacia, Sydney (January 1971) – Nostalgia Central

The Odyssey Pop Festival was a significant three-day event held from 22 to 24 January 1971 in Wallacia, New South Wales, about 40 miles west of Sydney. It is historically notable for being an all-Australian musical showcase that preceded the more famous Sunbury Pop Festival by a year.

The festival was held on a 300-acre property owned by the Bullens Circus family – later the site of a circus-style zoo and theme park named Bullen’s Animal World.

Organisers were expecting a crowd of 40,00 but only about half that number turned up over the three days – which was probably just as well, because the toilet facilities were hopelessly inadequate.

There were further difficulties: the music did not begin until almost 12 hours after the advertised time, and the toilet facilities – housed in inflatable domes (pictured below) – were not available until almost 12 hours after that.

The domes relied on air pressure to stay upright. Whenever someone opened the entrance flap to enter or exit, the dome would lose pressure and begin to deflate on the occupants!

Many of the young music fans grew tired of waiting in queues for the few available toilets and simply wandered into the bush.

There was no fresh-water supply, and canned drinks ran out. Then, on the hot Sunday afternoon, the medical tent ran out of supplies to treat sunburn cases.

It had been announced at one stage that The Kinks would appear, but a few weeks before the event, it was announced that they would not.

In the end, the all-local artist lineup for the festival included Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs (who opened the event around midnight on Friday), Chain, Daddy Cool (performing at 2.00 am on Saturday morning in their first gig in New South Wales), Bakery, The La De Das, Levi Smiths Clefs, Climax, Battersea Heroes, Fraternity, Tamam Shud, Pirana, Kahvas Jute, Hans Poulsen, Skiffle group The 69’ers, Spectrum, Tully, Jeff St John & The Copperwine (fronted by blues singer Wendy Saddington) and The Magpies (who had an average age of just 12).

The festival was MC’d by Gerry Humphrys, the former lead singer of The Loved Ones.

The picturesque hilly countryside with clusters of tall gum trees and the Blue Mountains in the distance encouraged a great deal of nudity and semi-nudity at the festival, though before the event started, there were warnings that stripping naked would not be tolerated.

But when it (inevitably) happened, police in attendance took no action, although they made a few arrests for blatant drug use. Sydney’s Drug Referral Centre had a tent at the festival, but it wasn’t kept very busy.

The only suggestion of violence was a clash between one young man and a security guard. Overall, the organisers and the police were delighted with the crowd’s peaceful behaviour.