“The way that it’s programmed is that whatever time of the day you come down, there is guaranteed to be someone fantastic on one of the stages,” Abercrombie states. “There is definitely something for everyone, especially musically. The way the stages are set up, you’re bound to catch someone fantastic like Tex [Perkins] or Josh [Pyke] or maybe one of the other exciting bands, there are so many of them. You might also be surprised to hear something that you’ve never heard before as well, so you can’t lose, really. We’re expecting about a million people, so you’ve got your families and people rocking up with friends, so it’s a very different crowd. There are even activities for kids to do, and we’ve got the Cultural Quarter where it’s more interactive and you can meet some fantastic artists. We’ve also got the big stage which is set up to be like triple j Unearthed, it’ll be all emerging artists from Melbourne who people should be looking out for.”
And if you’re keen to run into Abercrombie herself, it’s the Silent Disco area where you’re most likely to find her, as she confesses.
“I think that part is going to be really popular!” she laughs. “We’ve got four DJs playing off against each other every night, so it changes up quite often and you get to dance to all different styles of music. So you’ll have R&B playing then it changes up to Latin or hip hop or whatever. People are given headsets so they can tune into whatever kind of music they want. This year we’ve made the location to be in the skate park area which is actually right in the middle of the festival, so it’s definitely going to draw some large crowds! As far as the music goes, I’m can’t wait to see Josh Pyke and The Bamboos, they’ll be great. The only thing that’s going to be a problem for me is that I’ll be running around the whole time making sure everything is going smoothly, so that means I’ll probably miss out on some things unfortunately!”
The biggest pay-off for Abercrombie, however, is seeing the crowd arrived by the truckload. A million punters showing up for the event is no overstatement, she assures, and large numbers are expected once again as the festival continues to reinvent itself five decades since its beginnings.
“Moomba has been going for 56 years now so there is lots of tradition there,” Abercrombie says. “We aim to keep that tradition because it’s obviously very important, but at the same time we’ve constantly created new niches to keep things interesting. For example, The Parade and The Birdman Rally on the Sunday morning are traditional but they’re still favourites. The Birdman Rally is all for charity so it’s very significant. A lot of people actually take it quite seriously and spend the better part of the year building crafts for it to fly off the platform, while other people may dress in full character and just drop off the end, so it’s definitely got a comical element to it too. The Parade is on the Monday morning and it involves several floats which are beautifully-designed by hundreds of artists and community groups.”
For Abercrombie, 2012’s event will mark her second year as programming director for the Moomba Festival, with hopefully many more to come in the future, she says.
“My background is very much in arts and music and festivals. Previously I used to head a festival in Tasmania called The Taste Festival, which is quite popular. It’s was a seven-day event of food, wine buskers and things like that, so I’m very much coming from that community background. It’s been such a pleasure to be a part of Moomba, though, and I know that it sounds really tacky but there really is nothing quite as fantastic as opening a site and just seeing it come alive with people really participating in everything on offer. Just seeing it all working is a massive achievement, then to see people really having fun is just amazing. It’s a real honour to continue that rich history and tradition of the festival, but it’s also really exciting to continue to add new aspects to it to give people the real festival atmosphere.”
