FRL To cover losses and legal expenses

Its been pretty rough over the last few weeks around Bilyana. We've had 27 years of gigs giving alot of people life long memories. Covid was tough, sure, but tough for everyone. In 2022 we were set for our comeback festival but we cancelled it in October when it was clear that the massive rains for months rendered the site unusable as well as the creek into un precedented raging torrent.

We were able to cover the losses of '22 and carry them forward into this year.

Everything was looking rosy for the festival due to be held over the first weekend of December. At the extreme last minute we had the rug pulled from us by the local council.

We need to clear about this. We are in the middle of a ten year permit from the local council. We were assured everything was fine as we followed the requirement of the permit exactly, as we had always done. Part of the permit requires us to submit documentation and has got clear set dates this needs to be done by. We did everything asked of us.

A series of revolving chairs in leadership positions meant that a junior staff member of the council met with new members of both the CFA and VIcPOL. These two new members decided to ignore the permit process, ignore the conditions of when, to whom and what is said to agencies. Essentially the festival was stopped by police who wanted us to have 12 cops on rotation, have a forward command centre, have 35 security rather than the 4 we have had in the past. The CFA made blatant mistakes in their own process and none of these guys agreed to come to site to see what they were talking about.

End result being they refused to even read our Emergency management plans and council refused to let us do the gig. The crazy thing is it has rained a tonne since they said there was too much fire risk - we have the lowest chance of fire in 20 years.

Some of the ticket holders wanted to offer some help back to us as we work to pay all the debts this years late and last years necessary cancellations incurred.

We would be stoked if you can help us at this point and we wont forget your help.

thanks for thinking of us