Preview: Panama Festival in Tasmania

Grab your sticks and puncture your marshmallows, folks – then rally ’round the campfire, because I’ve been excited to tell this story for a long time now.

Please listen carefully, and follow my instructions [clears throat]. First, imagine a forest – a forest of cool, unadulterated beauty that you can only find in a middle-of-nowhere nook like this one. This forest is on an island, which is itself in the middle of nowhere. In the heart of the forest, up a long and slightly stomach-bumping dirt road, is a clearing with soft grass, a small lake, and a wooden house. Add a cider mill. Everybody keeping up? Right, onwards.

Turn a gentle stretch of hill into a natural ampitheatre by nestling a stage into its roots. Then, insert some of the most talented musical magicians going around, including legendary soul-brother Charles Bradley and sweet handpicked pop-fruits like The Frowning Clouds, Super Wild Horses and The Babe Rainbow. Finally, fill your forest bucket partially, but not overly, with an intimate, tightly-knitted crowd of one thousand people taking up residence in a temporary village of swags, tents and colourfully decorated campervans.

I don’t know how well your imagination-goggles are working today; but if they’re switched on anything half-decent, I think you’ve just painted a fair portrait of the inaugural Panama Festival, to be held in the Lone Star Valley in Golconda, Tasmania this weekend (March 8-9). It’s an exotically-studded headdress of a festival showcasing twenty-or-so bands, pop-up cabaret performances, craft beverages and soul vinyl spinning ’til the sunrise.

The last handful of tickets to this foundation event are yours for the plucking. You can get them here www.panamafestival.com.au. See you in the forest, my friends!