Whole lotta Jungle Love experiences

Huge line-up and activities add to excitement of festival’s secret location

THE Jungle Love Music and Arts Festival is back and better than ever this year, featuring a stacked line-up – and a new secret location.

This month’s festival is hidden away in the Sunshine Coast’s beautiful Mary Valley, although that doesn’t stop it attracting international attention.

Musicians from New Zealand, Japan and the United Kingdom are touching down on our shores to perform in the bush – along with a plethora of Queensland acts making the trek.

Festival co-director Raymond Williams said he wanted to bring many new and different ideas to the mix this year.

“The idea for starting the festival was to promote emerging local artists who we think could probably go on to the big stage but aren’t quite there yet or haven’t received the opportunity. “We have a line-up that’s a mix of genres and styles and different people from different parts of the world who are bringing different things to the table.”

The festival is renowned for its approach to sustainability and the steps taken to reduce its carbon footprint.

Jungle Love’s art director Lincoln Savage said that was an ongoing learning process.

“We do absolutely everything we can to reduce our footprint. The biggest thing is vehicles, so reducing the amount of people that take a car to the site is a big focus.

“On site, we make sure everything is recyclable and we are trying to work towards revegetating the waterways there with natural plants and things.”

Jungle Love prides itself on its non-existent incident rate due to the extremely inclusive nature of the festival.

This year’s festival will see exclusively Indigenous programming run by Digi Youth Arts artistic director Alethea Beetson.

“For one hour during the festival, there’s going to be nothing but First Nations programming across all of the stages and all of the sites,” she said. “So that’s really exciting.

“It’s a major showcase of Indigenous programming, and Jungle Love is a place for experimentation.

“BlakOut programming has existed in my community for a very long time, and I guess it was a way to experiment with how Indigenous programming can work at contemporary music festivals.”

The festival is BYO and boasts an extremely wide variety of activities and workshops.

● The Jungle Love Music and Arts Festival runs from November 29-December 1. Go to junglelovefestival.com.au/music. The exact location is a secret and will be revealed by email to ticketholders.