Big Red Bash

The Big Red Bash bills itself as the world's most remote music festival, and it has a case: a July event staged at the foot of the Big Red sand dune on the edge of the Simpson Desert outside Birdsville, in far south-west Queensland. Founded by Greg Donovan and first held in 2013, it draws grey nomads and road-trippers across serious distances for mainstream Australian rock and country bills. The event took a planned breather in 2025, then lost its 2026 edition to flooding; organisers have rolled tickets forward to 2027.

The first Big Red Bash ran in 2013 and the festival was staged annually from there, missing only 2020 to COVID. Donovan later added a sister event, the Mundi Mundi Bash outside Broken Hill.

In September 2024 organisers announced 2025 would be a rest year, saying they were overdue a break to reset and recharge, with the intention of returning in 2026.

That return was washed out: unprecedented rain across the Birdsville region in late February and early March 2026 inundated the site, and in late March the 2026 event was cancelled, with ticket holders offered refunds, transfers to the Mundi Mundi Bash, or automatic rollover to the 2027 Big Red Bash.

The Bash is also home of the mass Nutbush world-record attempts — first claimed in 2018 — with participants paying $15 a head to dance, raising over $500,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The record has since been taken by its own sister event, with 6,594 dancers at Mundi Mundi.