What Happened?

Esoteric Festival was cancelled last minute in 2025 due to the denial of a POPE permit.

Prior to this the Buloke Shire council voted to approve the event. The community that elected them wanted it to go ahead.

This is because of the trust earned by the organisers from the consistently safe events they have run since 2017 and the benefits the festival has brought to so many in Donald and beyond.

Prior to this Buloke Shire CEO Wayne O’Toole had repeatedly raised health and safety concerns and determined the event should be cancelled.

However, the emergency services who are those in charge of looking after health and safety were happy to sign off and approve and attend the event confident that it was safe to run.

In 2024 Esoteric was impacted by an outbreak of a highly contagious bacteria. As discovered in the COVID pandemic there is always risks of infection when people gather and this can happen anywhere.

What wasn’t reported is the people primarily affected by this outbreak were the workers on site prior to the event. A huge proportion of the management and workers went down sick right as they were most needed.

Other staff had to work twice as hard to get the event over the line requiring immense physical and mental fortitude. But they did it because of their love for their community. The successful running of Esoteric 2024 was a beautiful triumph of the human spirit that should be celebrated.

Despite facing this challenge the organisers still managed to put on a safe event through their hard work and dedication. Patrons were kept safe and having fun amongst extreme heat. Organisers learned from this incident and implemented measures to further ensure health and safety for the 2025 event.

The event selling out in 2025 despite the 2024 outbreak demonstrates the trust people hold in the festival to run safely.

Cancelling Esoteric was like cancelling Christmas. Thousands of people poured their hearts and souls into the event and travelled from far and wide to be together. A 15-million-dollar economic boost was lost for the Mallee Wimmera region. Small businesses devastated. Family kept apart. So many people invested so much time, love, energy and money into the 2025 event to get their hearts broken.

The fact that the 2025 event was cancelled last minute despite the support of the emergency services responsible for health and safety, the local community, the local government and thousands of festival goers suggests something is not right and changes need to be made.