Quote
Montrealsuperfan
Guys- I was watching Australian open on TV last month and noticed that the stadium is open air? Will it be covered for Stones?

Still no ticket but flights and hotel booked.....

The roof will be closed for the Stones concert. Better get your ticket ASAP- there's still some decent single PC1 tickets available on ticketek.com.au but that's it!

I found these three panorama views of the Hanging Rock venue.

(Drag the image around with your mouse...)

The first is of Hanging Rock from the paddock where the concert will happen.

[www.hrag.info]

The second is a view of the paddock from up Hanging Rock. (The paddock is the area across the small lake).

[www.hrag.info]

The third is a view from the top. (And my latest information is that it will be CLOSED on show day, but who knows!)

[www.hrag.info]


Finally these images come from this site.

[www.hrag.info]

Read it and make up your own mind...

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

The Stones' concerts in the Melbourne area (Friday at Rod Laver, Sunday at Hanging Rock) co-incide with the annual Melbourne Comedy Festival.

There are, quite literally, thousands of comedy gigs around the City during the Festival (26th March - 20th April). Some of the gigs are in huge theatres, others are in tiny rooms in pubs. And everything in between. Some are a lot of money to get in, others are free.

Be overwhelmed by the details at [www.comedyfestival.com.au]

Stones' fans passing through may not have the time/money/inclination to pre-book something but I hugely suggest that there are two free venues that are an absolute must-see.

Federation Square. This is the core of Melbourne's central district and there are FREE shows there on Friday 28th at 5pm, and then on Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th at 2:30pm.

City Square. A short walk (one small block North) from Federation Square. FREE shows on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th at 12:30pm

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

The Frontier Touring web site site still says...

Check back here for concert times and special guests

3 weeks to go and nothing announced yet. Seems odd to me.

Does anyone have any information about Hanging Rock support?

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

No news on any support acts for the Oz tour and in Adelaide they are still counting the new seats in the rebuilt stadium so tickets haven't been released yet.

Maybe they will start at 7pm like in Tokyo so the boys and the audience can get to bed early.....unlike the Bruce shows!

pool's in but the patio ain't dry

There have been no Support acts during the 50 Counting and since the start of the On Fire Tour except for Hyde Park which is a Kind of Festival like Glastonbury.

I don't think there will be any in Australia, perhaps Adelaide and Hanging Rock. However the announcement has been for concert and not any notice of Support acts.

Quote
Grison
There have been no Support acts during the 50 Counting and since the start of the On Fire Tour except for Hyde Park which is a Kind of Festival like Glastonbury.

I don't think there will be any in Australia, perhaps Adelaide and Hanging Rock. However the announcement has been for concert and not any notice of Support acts.

Nothing new there. I know that Hanging Rock and Adelaide are the odd ones out.

It's pretty much impossible for Hanging Rock not to have support. The gates open at 2:00pm. There's no sane way that loads of people can be asked to turn up that early for a 8:00pm show start. All (100% ever) previous promotions there (Leonard Cohen, Rod, Bruce) have had support. My quote was from the Frontier Touring web site.

It's all very odd. Both outdoor shows will require supports and Adelaide is only two weeks away! What gives?
Ticketek says show starts at 8pm in Sydney and estimated finish 10.10-10.30 so no supports at the arena shows I'm sure.
Lets hope with the d smaller venues we get longer more expansive sets!

Travel Advice:

Visitors to Australia who expect to use their phone/tablet to check travel times in Google will find that it works in all cities other than Melbourne.

ie Don't use Google to plan train/bus travel in Melbourne.

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

Frontier Touring (promoter) have released a map of the Hanging Rock venue.

See [www.frontiertouring.com]

But it still says "Check back here for concert times and special guests"

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

For those folk driving to Hanging Rock, Frontier Touring have just released a detailed map of the pre-show traffic flow plans.

You can find it at [www.frontiertouring.com]

No information (yet) on post-show traffic, or on support act(s)

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

Melbourne :

Public transport (metro trains, trams) is not free in Melbourne (1). You have to pay to use the trams and trains. (I'm putting that first because I've seen a posting here that claims that they are free.)

Unfortunately the system (called MYKI) is not very tourist friendly. You need to buy a MYKI card (from a machine outside most train stations – they are NOT for sale on the trams - or from a 7-11 store) and then you need to top it up with money (at a station, or at a 7-11 store). Daft? Yes. Am I responsible for that? No.

You cannot jump on a tram with cash and pay the driver.

The Rod Laver Arena [www.rodlaverarena.com.au] is a pleasant 15/20 minute walk from Federation Square in the centre of Melbourne. If you are staying in the middle of Melbourne, then you'll know where Federation Square is (or ask your hotel). If you have to travel in to Federation Square, then get off the train or tram at Flinders Street.

Most, not all, trams go very close to Federation Square, and Flinders St station is underneath it. The web site also suggests public transport access as follows [www.rodlaverarena.com.au]

If you are arriving by train, and the train goes through Richmond station, then it's probably just as easy to walk to Rod Laver from that station. Same distance, but it's not such a nice walk.

Travellers these days are used to expecting to check train/bus etc times using a phone/tablet interface and Google. This (I am told) works fine in all Australian capital cities.... but not Melbourne. Apparently the folk running the trains/buses etc do not release the timetable information in a form suitable for use in phone apps. So, don't depend on Google to be able to help you plan a journey within Melbourne.

[www.theage.com.au]



Hanging Rock :

The most important thing to read about the Hanging Rock concert is what the promoters (Frontier Touring) have got on their web site.

[www.frontiertouring.com]

They have a LOT of good detailed information there. Note the stuff about car pooling, and also the (sadly sensible) advice about what happens if the show has to be cancelled due to weather or fire danger. For those who do not understand; this is Australia and 'fire danger' is a very very real and dangerous thing. “14 On Fire” is perhaps not the best name for a Tour in Australia. Re-visit the site from time to time before the show date (March 30th) as the information firms up, and quite possibly changes.

The site now has a good overview of the Concert site and layout, plus the Traffic Flow diagrams.

And now my bit...

Hanging Rock is a fairly remote place. Despite being only 80-ish KM from Melbourne it's not that easy to get to.

It's too far from anywhere to think about walking the 'last' bit.

Although the nearest town (Woodend) is served by trains, and Frontier Touring are running a shuttle service from Woodend to Hanging Rock, because the last train from Woodend back to Melbourne is at 9:35pm (ie while The Stones are still on stage) on a Sunday night I cannot advise anyone to travel to the show by train. You may be stranded in Woodend – which is quite a small place.

Fontier Touring have confirmed to me that there are NO plans to run extra/late trains back to Melbourne.

Coach operators are offering trips. See [www.melbourneonthemove.com.au] for routes, prices, and pickup points. They seem to drop you at the venue pretty early (2pm in some cases) and firmly state that they leave 30 minutes after the show ends. I'd not like to be marooned at Hanging Rock.

If you have a car (eg a hire car) and are planning to drive to the venue, don't underestimate how long it will take. It's at least an hour's drive from central Melbourne, and there's a toll to pay if you take the main motorway Citylink at its southern end. You may be using a SatNav – reject any route that takes you from the city centre past Tullamarine airport (2).

Use the Calder Freeway (M79) towards Bendigo.

Obviously if you are staying somewhere south of the city – such as St Kilda which is very nice – then it will take longer.

If you are a Cricket Tragic and want to visit Rupertswood House – the Home Of The Ashes – then you actually do need to take the route past Tullamarine, and you go precisely past the entrance gates at a roundabout in the centre of Sunbury. There really is no other reason to take the route past Tullamarine from central Melbourne.

If you happen to fly in on the day, want to go straight to the venue, and hire a car at the airport (Tullamarine), then take the Sunbury exit from the airport. It's immediately after you leave the main car hire pickup area. Allow over 45 minutes to get to the venue, more if you are not used to driving on the left! Once you get to Sunbury, the main road to Bendigo is signposted.

If you are planning to drive to Hanging Rock, then when you book your tickets select the pre-paid parking option. Definitely. It will be cheaper and it will allow you to drive round the queue of people waiting to pay to get in. Or make sure you car pool with a total of 4 people – that gets free parking. There's no other parking available anywhere within (literally) miles, and cars illegally parked will be removed without mercy. Very very quickly. The lanes around the venue are very small and illegal parking could very very easily block them and cause chaos. This [goo.gl] is Straw's Lane (the primary road to the entrance to the main car park).

Hanging Rock is very easy to find from the nearby motorway (Calder Freeway). It's well signposted all the time, and if previous shows are anything to go by, the show will be well signposted. The promoters have a good map on their web site showing the (well laid out) one way systems in place for before the show.

(I had some exchanges with the local Council, who licence the venue, about the less than great post-show directions after the Springsteen concerts. They said that they would tell the Promoters about it. In short, it's out in the countryside 80 KM from Melbourne, and the traffic was being sent all over the place. I knew the way (in the dark) as I've been there several times, but there were quite likely many lost people in that area for several hours.)

There are almost no lights anywhere away from the show area, so if you want to find your way to the bus, or your car, you are strongly advised to take a torch.

When we were at a show there last year, there were car parking marshals before the show getting all the cars in and lined up in nice rows. We saw none after the show, and within minutes there was emerging chaos. (By chance we'd been put about 15m from the main exit, so got to our car - a long walk through the chaos - and pretty much drove straight out.)

Assume mud if it has rained.

The show will be in a paddock to the East of the main rock [goo.gl]. It's the big one that's bounded on the North by Colwells Rd, and on the East by Straw's Lane. Sadly, the stage usually goes in direct line between the audience and the Rock itself. The Sun will have set behind the Rock by the time The Stones come on stage. There's a nice diagram on the Frontier Touring web site.

Camping on site (Hanging Rock) is not allowed. But finding legal camping in the area is a good idea. But well away from the venue.

This is what Hanging Rock looks like (warning – big files, so don't click on the links if you don't have bandwidth)

[www.hrag.info]

and from the Rock

[www.hrag.info]

[torosvecchi.files.wordpress.com]

Mobile phone coverage may be an issue for some people. There's Telstra coverage, there's no Optus coverage.

Also remember that the telecommunications infrastructure is there for a population in the local area of less than 1000, and not the 18,000 who may be trying to use it. These systems, and mobile wireless Internet (etc), break down if the demand exceeds the planned usage levels.

After the show, to avoid the mass of people moving towards Melbourne, it's reasonable advice to 'head the other way' away from Melbourne, but it's necessarily restricted. The next place North from Woodend is Kyneton (really nice place, limited accommodation). After that there's a gap until you get to a bigger places like Castlemaine and Bendigo, about an hour's drive from Woodend. Heading towards Bendigo after the show is probably a good idea for some, but then anyone moving on from there to the next show in Brisbane then has a much longer a journey back to Melbourne airport.

The other places in the area (Macedon, Gisborne, Romsey, Lancefield, Sunbury) are all small towns with limited accommodation. Castlemaine is bigger. By far the best bet is to have accommodation in Melbourne and head back there.

Film Buffs should definitely watch 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' which is a film about events there on Valentine's Day 1900. The rock itself (which will NOT be accessible the day of the show) is a great place to climb - easy footpaths about half of the way then easy climb (clamber?) if you are fit - but definitely spooky. We were up there in November 2013, and came across two Koalas up a tree - not bad.


Other Melbourne Stuff

Melbourne's primary airport is Tullamarine. There's no train from there to anywhere (shame!), and the easiest way to get into the City is by the very frequent SkyBus service ($15 each way). Something that's not well advertised is that included in your SkyBus ticket is a free shuttle from the city terminal (at Southern Cross station) to your central hotel. If you have a hotel in the city centre then there's no real need to splash out on a Taxi either at the airport, or at Southern Cross. Some pricey hotels do offer a pickup service from Tullamarine – check when you book.

There are always seriously dodgy people at Tullamarine offering you (usually out of the side of their mouth) special deals on transport into the city. IGNORE THEM. They are offering unlicenced, unregulated, probably uninsured and deeply dodgy deals. For transport, either Taxis or Skybus, leave the terminal as directed and pick it up outside from the well managed queues.

There are limited coaches/buses that go North from Tullamarine. If you know that you are going to stay in (eg) Bendigo, ask your accommodation provider if there's a recommended way to get there from Tullamarine. Your arrival may be well timed for a bus... or you may have missed that day's only link.

There was another popular band in the 1960's called The Beatles. At the Melbourne Arts Centre (second building south of the river from Federation Square) there's a very good free exhibition about their 1964 visit to Australia. It caused quite a stir – about 300,000 people turned up in Adelaide to see them out of a population of about 1,000,000. Unusually the exhibition has a lot of correspondence from the (then) Promoter's archives about the arrangements.


Driving Between Shows.

I've seen postings where people write about hiring a car and driving between several of the venues. Unless you have experience of driving in Australia - where the distances are vast and there are huge long stretches of the route across the Nullarbor where there's nothing - it may not be the best idea. No people, no accommodation, no food, and no fuel. Places marked on a map turn out to be a single petrol station in the middle of nowhere. We drove from Perth to Melbourne last year and came across one such marked place where the petrol station was closed, and then had the worry about running out of fuel. Unprepared people sometimes don't do too well trying to cross the Nullarbor from Perth to Adelaide. In most cases the drive, even if achievable, will leave you drained and unable to enjoy the Stones!

Perth-Adelaide 3 days. Bad Idea.
Adelaide-Sydney 3 days. Bad Idea.
Sydney-Melbourne 3 days. Achievable.
Melbourne-Brisbane 3 days. Bad Idea.

HTH

This version dated 15th March 2014
(Yes, and if you repost this stuff somewhere else, at least have the decency to credit the source. Thanks).


Footnotes

1 Pedantically there is a circular “tourist” route with an antique tram that is free.

2 The main reason for rejecting the Tullamarine route in favour of the Freeway is that there are several tight bottlenecks like this one [goo.gl]

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

Anyone going to bobby keys Saturday night

Still thinking about Bobby's show....I hadn't realised the 1 first show had sold out. Ah Melbourne the best rock'n roll city!!

pool's in but the patio ain't dry

Interesting account of the economic impact of a Hanging Rock show on the local economy.

[www.theage.com.au]

Rolling Stones cancellation hits Hanging Rock hard

The postponement of the Rolling Stones Australian tour hasn't just dashed the hopes of music fans, it has also hit the Hanging Rock region hard.

Towns in the area, including Woodend and Kyneton, will lose millions of dollars in economic benefit.

More than 20,000 visitors were expected at Hanging Rock for the March 30 concert, booking out accommodation and restaurants and providing work for local food and wine suppliers as well as tradespeople employed on concert infrastructure.

As stunned fans came to terms with the tour postponement, accommodation operators were starting to take cancellations on Wednesday.
Advertisement

Woodend bed-and-breakfast operator Patricia Leonard said her five-room property Auberge had been booked out.

"But already my guests are cancelling and I'll probably have no business at all for that weekend," she said.

"We're not a big accommodation place but every square inch was booked out for the Stones. It affects us completely. But what can you do?"

Ms Leonard said she was providing full refunds to her guests who had each booked in for a three-day minimum stay.

"It's not just us, it effects the whole town," she said.

"The town gets clogged up with traffic and visitors on concert weekends. Everything that is going to happen, happens around the concerts, right down to street barbecues and the cake stalls for schools and scouts. It is like a big party for the weekend and we have been talking about it since the tickets went on sale."

Macedon Ranges Shire Council mayor, Cr Roger Jukes, said the council will work with Frontier Touring to identify a new date for the Rolling Stones performance at Hanging Rock, following the death of Mick Jagger's partner L'Wren Scott.

“While it is disappointing for concert-goers and businesses in our region, we fully understand the circumstances and the need for the Rolling Stones to postpone their tour at this difficult time," he said.

Macedon Ranges Shire Council has a deal with Frontier Touring to stage up to four concerts at Hanging Rock over the next five years.

Previous concerts have been by Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen and Rod Stewart.

The two Springsteen concerts in March last year were attended by 34,000 people with an estimated economic impact of $9.7 million.

The Stewart and Cohen concerts in 2011 and 2012 had an estimated impact of $2.3 million and $1.9 million.

Kylie Lethbridge, the manager of tourism and economic development at Macedon Ranges Shire Council, said accommodation in the region was nearly booked out for the Stones.

She said many businesses had been gearing up to welcome the influx of people.

"The towns are abuzz (during concert weekends) with people browsing shops, eating at cafes and restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner, filling their cars up at petrol stations and provisioning for picnics.

"We are encouraging those who have booked accommodation not to cancel but to make the most of the weekend in this beautiful region."

Meanwhile, the council has started a $4 million project to develop infrastructure at Hanging Rock to support future events. The project includes two new visitor shelters, the supply of electricity, water and lighting.

"The concerts are the best thing to ever happen to the area," Ms Leonard said. "I just wish we had more than one a year."

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

A slightly sensitive topic but I think it's worth posting that the venue in the Macedon Ranges is so called because of a rock formation near the top.

There's a big slab of a boulder that sort of bridges the path up - think tunnel-like with one end of the slab on one side of the path, and the other on the other side and you really have to duck to get past/through it. That's said to be a hanging rock.

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-03-19 08:10 by CaptainCorella.

While ya at it have ya got any info about Tittybong or Chinaman's Knob in Victoria???



ROCKMAN

Tittybong has got to be more sensitive then Hanging Rock...it's just gotta

Dildo Newfoundland

...and the famous prosthetic plant therein...

note that on RS.com all postponed dates are marked with "NEW DATE TBC" - except for "hanging rock" !

Quote
Rockman
While ya at it have ya got any info about Tittybong or Chinaman's Knob in Victoria???

......Fantastic!

What a drag it is gettin' old

Just be glad it's not Hanging C o c k...

JumpingKentFlash

Quote
Rockman
While ya at it have ya got any info about Tittybong or Chinaman's Knob in Victoria???

The Paps of Jura and the Cock of Arran require attention. Bonnie Scotland of course.

Just be glad it's not Hanging C o c k.......Oh but we have them all over Australia



ROCKMAN

Quote
Rockman
Just be glad it's not Hanging C o c k.......Oh but we have them all over Australia

Denmark too mate. I heard it's like that all over the world. Except Greenland. They're all eunuchs....

JumpingKentFlash

wonder what it's like in Dykesville, Louisiana



ROCKMAN

Quote
slewan
note that on RS.com all postponed dates are marked with "NEW DATE TBC" - except for "hanging rock" !

Doesn't look good does it!

Clutching at straws a bit, perhaps it's because the final decision on the use of the venue does not rest with (eg) a venue's management but with Macedon Ranges Shire Council so their decision making processes are slower than others? It's their land, their venue, a very special place, and they reasonably ought to be looking after it.

But... not looking good.

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

Quote
slewan
note that on RS.com all postponed dates are marked with "NEW DATE TBC" - except for "hanging rock" !

"NEW DATE TBC" has now been added for Hanging Rock.