Meredith Music Festival

Meredith Music Festival is the benchmark for how an Australian festival can be run: three days each December in the Supernatural Amphitheatre, a natural bowl on the Nolan family farm outside Meredith, between Geelong and Ballarat. Running since 1991, self-funded and non-commercial, it's organised under the affectionate banner of "Aunty Meredith" and built around one stage — no clashes, everyone watching the same act. It sells out routinely through a subscriber ballot, and its culture (the Meredith Gift, the No Dickheads policy) is as famous as any lineup it has booked.

Meredith started in 1991 as an end-of-year party for around 200 friends on the Nolan farm, cheekily called a "music festival" because some bands played off the back of a truck. Farmer Jack Nolan's discovery of the natural amphitheatre on the property gave it a permanent home.

It has grown into one of the country's most distinctive events while staying deliberately capped and sponsor-free, with tickets allocated by ballot — half to subscribers — followed by sales through regional record stores and online.

The single-stage format has never changed, and after fifteen years the same organisers spun off a second festival on the same site: Golden Plains, first held in March 2007.

The Meredith Gift, run on the final day, is a nude foot race whose winner takes home the Golden Jocks trophy. The festival's No Dickheads policy — a crowd-enforced code of behaviour rather than a security regime — is widely credited as core to why the event works.