Summary

Souvenir tank top from the 1973 Sunbury Pop Festival, held on the Australia Day Long Weekend, January 27th to 29th. The donor was given the top for her wardrobe by the sister of the original purchaser.

This festival was held on on the a farm belonging to George Duncan, which was along Jacksons Creek, on the southern outskirts of Sunbury, almost to Digger's Rest. It was promoted by a company called Odessa Promotions, which was formed by a group of television professionals from Melbourne.

Physical Description

Tank top made from printed fabric.

Significance

This tank top is significant as a tangible representation of the 1973 Sunbury Pop Festival. The Festival was the second of five annual music events held on a private farm in Sunbury over the Australia Day long weekend, and has become iconic in the history of local popular music. It is often referred to as Australia's Woodstock, and many believe it marked the moment the Hippy movement died, and the Pub Rock era emerged.

Sunbury '73 (as it was officially known) ran from Saturday January 27 to Monday January 29. The attendance was somewhere between 25,000 - 30,000 and the entry fee was $5.00 (1 day), $7.00 (2 days) or $8.00 (3 days). Performers included Max Merritt & the Meteors, Johnny O'Keefe, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Mulga Bills Bicycle Band and The 69'ers.

In 1988, blues musician Chris Wilson recalled a road trip from Sydney to attend the festival in a song entitled `Sunbury '73', while The Fauves released a song in 1998 called `Sunbury '97', with the lyrics 'There's the tree where mum and dad conceived me. Do you believe that I'm a child of Sunbury '73'?.

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