North Byron Parklands Festival Ground

Background

The North Byron Parklands Festival Ground is a picturesque 660-acre cultural arts and music events venue, located at Yelgun in the north of Byron Shire. This venue is surrounded by lush green pastures and forests as well as featuring an open-spaced natural amphitheatre. It is also home to many community festivals and smaller events throughout the year as well as hosting two of Australia’s most beloved and respected music events – Splendour in the Grass and the Falls Music and Arts Festival.

With the festival ground considered as one of the most accessible destinations on the east coast (15 mins from the Pacific Motorway and 30 minutes average from nearby airports), there are many economic and tourism benefits that may be dispersed from festivals and events held at the festival ground. Recently, the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) approved the increase of maximum daily patron numbers of North Byron Parkland’s two main annual music events to 50,000 (Splendour in the Grass) and 35,000 (Falls Music and Arts Festival). This increase hopes to support the increased demand of patrons at these two specific music festivals. 

With the festival ground growing larger each year, it is important for the North Byron Parkland organisation to reduce the potential issues that may occur during the festivals. As the two music festivals often occur for more than three days, festival patrons commonly set up camp at the event venue. With the festival location susceptible to dust problems due to constant vehicle and equipment movement alongside changing the weather, it is imperative that the dust is suppressed and controlled. This dust suppression and control would prevent potential human and environmental safety hazards whilst providing a functional and natural-looking music venue that blended with the surrounding natural environment. As it is vital that this project is completed environmentally and economically low-cost, GRT is the perfect company to undertake this task.  

While this project is located domestically in Australia, several assessments of the site are still completed by GRT engineers’ weeks before the two main music events each year to ensure the correct product and amount of application are utilised. These assessments help mitigate the risk of potential issues that may occur between the time the two music events take place (Splendour in the Grass – July and Falls Music and Arts Festival – December). In addition, these assessments would assist in the meticulous planning that would ensure regulations and standards of the North Byron Parklands are met whilst ensuring potential health, safety, and environmental risks were realized, managed, and mitigated.

Challenges

North Byron Parklands not only believes that cultural arts and music events play an important role in society, but they also have strong environmental underpinnings as shown from their various ongoing environmental initiatives and programs. These strong environmental values present the first challenge to this project and that is to have a product that is environmentally safe and sustainable. In addition, due to the high numbers of festival patrons that camp overnight and attend the festival, the human health safety of the product is critical. This is due to the fact that festival-goers may be exposed to the product for long timeframes. 

Moreover, due to the severe dust problems that could be created from construction and event set-up as well as constant weather changes, it was important for the GRT team to reduce the total amount of dust generated during these situations. This was because of the numerous human health issues that can result from inhaling large amounts of dust. Furthermore, the North Byron Parklands desired a product that was not only effective in suppressing dust, but they also desired a product that could still maintain the natural aesthetics of the festival ground as well as the surrounding environment.

Solutions

GRT: Wet-Loc long term Dust Suppression 

Through the completion of several ground assessments of the North Byron Parklands festival ground and its surrounding areas, along with the various environmental, human, and economic impact, the GRT team determined the product that was most suitable for this project. While there were many effective GRT products that could have been utilised, the GRT Wet-Loc rose above all and was determined as the most suitable product. Furthermore, due to the scale of the project, both the supply and application of the product was completed by GRT.

GRT Wet-Loc, one of GRT’s newest and most advanced dust control product, was the recommended product for this festival ground as it:

• Fit in the project budget
• Met the strict environmental criteria imposed by the North Byron Parklands
• Was the most advanced and safe dust product for humans as verified by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) – product is safe around food
• A non-toxic, non-flammable and non-volatile product
• High-performance capabilities
• Was designed to specifically to create an area where there is zero harmful airborne dust

Benefits

The GRT Wet-Loc treated festival ground delivered high performing results that were expected from the product. Due to the impressive results from the GRT Wet-Loc, a long-lasting relationship have been created between the North Byron Parklands and GRT. Some of the major GRT Wet-Loc benefits are:

• Long-term performance with UV Ray resistance
• Product is resistance against rain and other weather challenges
• Safe for humans, animals, and the natural environment
• Crystal clear, odourless fluid that blends into the natural aesthetics of the location and surrounding areas.
• No cure time required, effective once applied.