Big Day Out @ Gold Coast Parklands, 22.01.2012 – Quick Round Up

Sunday was my second time at the Big Day Out with a photo pass.  My day of photographing 21 bands looked like this (it would have been 22 but thanks to Kanye West being 45 minutes late, I missed Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds).


View 1/22/12 11:06 AM in a larger map

Total distance: 14.73km
Total time: 10:30:27
Moving time: 6:40:15
Max speed: 12.07km/hr
Average speed: 1.40km/hr
Average moving speed: 2.21km/hr
Min elevation: 27m
Max elevation: 96m
Elevation gain: 312m
Min grade: -12.5%
Max grade: 13.6%

I don’t know if I quiet believe the GPS stats I collected via my Android phone.  Whilst there are a few higher parts of Parklands, somehow I managed to find a 69m difference between the highest and lowest points and some of the tracks look a little off from what I think they should be.  I forgot to start the tracker when I got off the bus and didn’t set it going until after I had picked up my photographer’s vest (the starting marker is the very left side of the main stages, the end marker is the bus stop for the trip back to Helensvale train station).  The extra metres from the bus stop to the stage at the start of the day would have put the total distance for the day over the 15km mark, which I could well believe though.

In due course I’ll probably write a post about the day (although I didn’t take any notes or tweet anything that happened and it’s already becoming a bit of a blur).  In the meantime there’s a gallery of my photos over on The Vine to go with Andrew McMillen’s review.

Highlights? Battles and the craziness of the two songs we got to photograph OFWGKTA. Cage The Elephant were fun, as were what I saw of Royksopp.

Lowlights? Kanye being 45 minutes late, all the dreary triple j Oz rock bands towards the start of the day, and the embarrassment of having some of the international acts play the tiny Hot Produce stage to tiny audiences.  The numbers were definitely down on previous years I’ve been to Big Day Out and the tent stages all looked liked they’d been downsized for the smaller crowd.  I’m not a religious man, but that the heavens decided to open within seconds of the dull Kasabian starting their main stage set was enough to think it was a sign of divine retribution.

Although there’s been the usual increasing complaints, if you can find four or five bands that you want to see, as with any other day festival, it’s worth going.  Interesting to see what the fallout is and what happens next year.

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