The Meadows Technicolour Fair was an Australian rock music festival and fair held on a private farm near Meadows township, 32 km (20 mi) from Adelaide, South Australia over the Australia Day long weekend in 1972.
Contents
Introduction
As well as music, the festival also featured fairground attractions, underground movies shown by the Adelaide film co-op, a performance of Freak circus by the Street Theatre Group and talks on the environment. A rock church Service was held on Sunday with music provided by Adelaide bands Buffalo Drive and Earth
Held over the same long weekend as the 1972 Sunbury Pop Festival, the event attracted almost 30,000 people and featured many of the same Australian acts, as well three imported acts (singers Mary Hopkin, Tom Paxton and pop band Edison Lighthouse). It has been noted as "remarkable" that this festival attracted almost as many people as Sunbury, despite South Australia having less than 10% of the eastern states population. Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs, The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band and English band Mungo Jerry were originally scheduled to perform but did not appear.
Although successful the festival failed to make a profit. The festival was evidently not filmed or recorded and has therefore remained virtually unknown- in fact, it is not even mentioned in any of the major print references on Australian rock music.
Band Line-up
The weekend was MCed by Jim Keays, Vince Lovegrove and Gerry Humphries (former lead singer of The Loved Ones).