:: WW HISTORY

2022

Focusing on the four elements over four weekends the debut WinterWild Festival included surf films from Andrew Kidman Ocean cinematography from Jon Frank with a live film score from Seagull, Opera, Butoh Dance, A Writers Festival, and a series of live performances including Friendships, Sui Zhen, Laura Jean, Jess Cornelius and The Sand Pebbles

Public Art Installation, the WildWood

The WildWood is a sculpture of a tree on the Foreshore.

You can buy a leaf and write a message on it:

The whale is for taking secrets

The swamp wallaby is for your wishes

The black cockatoo carries messages to the dead

The snake carries your curses

You can write on the leaf, and remove the animal token to take with you. Post the leaf at the WildWood and it will be hung for you. The WildWood will be carried to the beach and burned on the final night

2021

In 2018 the festival celebrated Death and Birth. The Festival kicks off with Death (August 10 – 12). Once again, the huge WinterWild fire brazier will light the stage for public performance, this time telling the story of a sacrifice offered up to Death. Fire-cooked food and mulled drinks will help the crowd stay warm in the midst of what may be wild, wet weather. Indoors, the festival welcomes RVG - TROPICAL FUCK STORM + ADALITA to a set they’re calling Laughing Death. Those seeking a quieter alternative may wish to attend Quietus, music for instrument and voice in the town’s atmospheric Catholic Church.

Birth follows on the weekend of August 24-26 when the Apollo Bay Foreshore explodes with fire and light.  A mass feasts pyrotechnics and dance hall burlesque courtesy of Finucane and Smith will drive a frenetic weekend of activity. Moksha wakes up the Otways with a late night electronic and experimental music installment the Otways up all night with a huge line up featuring Null, Post Percy, Various Asses, Golden Syrup, Nina Buchanan and Simon Kanis.    

Outdoor cinema, soundscape forest walks, a performance in a remote quarry, local galleries and small performances scattered throughout town will bring the weekend together and reward those who take the time to explore.    

WinterWild is known for its nocturnal program of extravagant fireside performances, epic feasts and music, but 2019 presents a full daytime workshop program. Drumming, meditation, ice bathing, mind and body workshops and discussion panels on sacred plant medicines are all among this year’s offerings.

At the centrepiece are two epic journeys in Pathways, a carefully curated 10 hours of spiritual and physical work starting at 7am each Saturday. But there’s a catch: participants don’t know what they are getting when they purchase a ticket. They must surrender, and simply choose between one of two available Pathways - seeking love, light and union with the divine, or seeking to celebrate the darker powers of body, mind and spirit?

The WinterWild evening program kicks off as darkness descends with the festival’s flagship event, DogWatch, a free public performance between 6-8pm featuring evening street parades, performances and beach bonfires. This year Part 1: “Immolation” will be held Saturday August 17th, followed by Part 2 on Saturday August 30th: “Resurrection” Festival goers can immerse themselves in psychedelic rock at the local Mechanics Institute, gorge themselves at Feastiality, groove in darkness at a seaside dance party or drop into gigs at one of the town’s two pubs. Music performances include The Fillmore Brothers, The Vacant Smiles, Black Heart Death Cult, Flyying Colours, Alistair Turrill, The Grogans, The Refuge, Los Borrachos (Canada) and a debut performance by baroque musician, Max Riebl in Alchemy