More than three thousand revellers have kicked up their heels in a valiant effort to break the record for the most people dancing the Nutbush at one of the biggest music festivals ever held in outback NSW, falling just short of taking a title recently set in Queensland.
With the final day of the Mundi Mundi Bash in full swing on Saturday, some 3720 festivalgoers dressed danced in formation on the ochre-red Mundi Mundi Plains, half an hour west of Broken Hill, stepping to Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits.
The organisers had hoped to break the world record for the most people dancing the Nutbush.
The record was set relatively recently, in July, when more than 4000 Nutbush dancers got together at the Birdsville Big Red Bash in Queensland, owned by the group who organise the Mundi Mundi Bash.
Dancers donate $15 to take part, with the Birdsville event raising more than $60,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
On Saturday, some $55,000 was raised for the service through donations, taking the total amount raised by the festival since 2016 to $500,000.
It comes after the bash raised close to $10,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service on Friday during the Mundi Undi Fun Run, which saw more than 600 participants in elaborate costumes, including bright pink mullet wigs, and men in polyester nun outfits cradling lapdogs.
Punters also got into the apocalyptic spirit on the festival’s final day, donning hockey masks, leather jackets and biker goggles for a Mad Max themed dress-up competition, with some even dragging burned-out cars onto site to complete the look.
Saturday will also see performances from rock legends Jimmy Barnes, Daryl Braithwaite, Kasey Chambers and Russell Morris after earlier catching the pop duo Bachelor Girl.
The festival was headlined by Midnight Oil, who took to the stage on Thursday night for a powerful set, with frontman Peter Garrett wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “I stand with Ukraine”.
The band, who have been performing for 47 years, have embarked on their final ever tour, with Garrett telling AAP they wanted to call time on that part of their career before fate intervened.
“We’d be fooling ourselves if we thought that we could go on at this pace with this level of intensity, putting as much into the shows as we’re putting in now,” he said.
Friday saw noteworthy performances from Adalita, Tex Perkins and Tim Rogers, who had the crowd singing along with their Rolling Stones Revue set.
Fireworks lit up the stage as the hardened rockers turned it on for a cheeky rendition of You Can’t Always Get What You Want as the sun set over the Mundi Mundi Plains.
Country singer Melanie Dyer opened the stage on Friday, and with a few strums of her acoustic guitar, she quickly had the crowd in her pocket, with their hands in the air, bopping along to her sunny songs.
Friday night wrapped up with a belting set from singer songwriter and former Noiseworks frontman Jon Stevens, who was called back on stage for an encore following his set.
Stevens sang an impassioned version of the INXS hit Disappear, ad-libbing the final verse with some Billy Idol lyrics, chuckling to the crowd he’d forgotten the words.
He closed the night with a fitting rendition of Noiseworks’ hit Take Me Back To You.
By Phoebe Loomes in Broken Hill
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