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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-11-29 Daily Xml
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Harvest Rock

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (15:15): South Australia's festival season has kicked off with Harvest Rock. The music, food, wine and brew event hit all the right notes ahead of a huge summer of new and returning events to inject multimillions into the state's economy. Harvest Rock starts off not just the summer but the whole of our 2023 season.

At the end of this week, the streets are calling—the Adelaide 500 is back, followed by the Santos Tour Down Under back in its traditional format, international tennis, a bumper Mad March festival season and, of course, leading to those huge sporting events in April. Let's not forget Tasting Australia in May and the Australian exclusive Frida Khalo exhibition starting in June, followed by Illuminate in July, drawing visitors and boosting hotel occupancy all year round.

What a success Harvest Rock was. The new two-day live Adelaide exclusive music, food, wine and brew festival in Adelaide's Rymill and King Rodney parks was held last weekend. It was the only Australian show for Jack White of the White Stripes, headlining the festival, as well as Crowded House, the Black Crowes, Lumineers, Groove Armada and more, bringing the party to the Parklands.

The organiser, Secret Sounds, made Harvest Rock as much about the food and beverage as about the music. They partnered with one of Adelaide's best chefs, Jake Kellie of arkhé, and acclaimed Australian wine critic and South Australia's own Nick Stock. I got the chance to talk to Nick on both Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday, he told me that everything in the South Australian cellar-door tent sold out on Saturday, such was the demand for our fantastic wineries, including many of the small boutique winemakers who were celebrated there. People loved the South Australian wines; they sold out, so we had to get more.

The weather was not kind to us. It was sunny, wet, very wet and then a little humid at times, but that did not stop people enjoying themselves and getting out there and having a great time. We had feedback from Mike, who said:

15,000 people had a wonderful experience in the most extraordinary of weather experiences!!! You'd throw more cold water on a great day than the weather was able to do. I like to see people have wonderful experiences which they can remember for years.

Jane said, 'It was a roaring success even in the weather.' We heard from ABC's Dan Condon with a Harvest Rock review:

You cannot fault a line-up like this. A perfectly balanced range of artists from our past as well as some of today's most exciting acts. As we get older, our expectations for the experience shift. We want more than a field to lose our minds in...We want good food, we want easy access, we want music that we loved in the past and new music we love right now. And while we still know how to get wild, we want to do it in a more civilised fashion. Maybe we even want a space safe enough for our kids to join us.

We can only hope that Harvest Rock can hang on a little longer. We deserve it.

This is some of the really positive feedback we had from people.

Booking data from the South Australian Tourism Commission and STR show spikes in CBD hotel bookings for major events, including this inaugural Harvest Rock. This spike ended up being one of the most nights booked in Adelaide spurring an all-time high for CBD hotels. Data shows a record-breaking number of hotel rooms were filled for this inaugural event. The Saturday night of the festival saw 9,105 room nights occupied in Adelaide, toppling in August the previous record of 9,001 rooms. This drove occupancy to 91 per cent for that night, the highest post-pandemic occupancy rate.

It is vitally important to bring major events to South Australia. It turns people's heads and makes them come here and say, 'I really want to go to that event. I'm booking my flight to Adelaide.' It fills our hotels rooms, our restaurants, our pubs and our clubs, and helps our economy recover from the pandemic. We are known as the Festival State, but we must always attract new people. We are known for the Fringe, the Festival and WOMAD, but now we have the Harvest Rock Festival as well. We are looking for a bigger and better events calendar to generate multimillions of dollars for our South Australian economy.

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