Australian Story: Oct 3

Australian Story next Monday profiles Greg Donovan who founded Birdsville music event, The Big Red Bash.

This features music from Missy Higgins and John Williamson.

Greg Donovan was in his early 50s when he was made redundant from the Sydney insurance company he’d worked at for 20 years.

“I was a suit and tie guy for my whole career,” he says. “But rather than feeling depressed I thought, well, the upside of being made redundant is you’ve got a pocket full of money.”

Ignoring advice to put his payout into superannuation, Greg took a massive gamble and bankrolled a musical passion project in Munga-Thirri country, on the outskirts of the Simpson Desert near Birdsville.

For those in the music industry looking on, it seemed like a crazy idea.

“They thought I was nuts. Anyone thinking you’re going to put on this big festival in the middle of nowhere, they thought I was mad,” says Greg.

The Big Red Bash grew out of an ultra-marathon fundraising venture for Type 1 Diabetes, inspired by Greg’s son Stephen, who was diagnosed when he was a teenager.

But when Greg realised that people preferred listening to music than running 250 kilometres across the Simpson Desert, a new idea was born.

“We thought we should put on some entertainment for the runners and volunteers who came the whole way to Birdsville,” he says. “Then people started contacting us. Nothing to do with the run: is there any way we can come and listen to this?”

Fast forward nine years since that first small concert on top of the Big Red sand dune, and once a year, Birdsville plays host to many of Australia’s most famous musicians.

“It was a crazy situation where a guy who had no experience just created probably one of the most iconic music festivals in the world,” says music promoter Marc Christowski.

“It’s proof yet again that a crazy person with an idea will always be able to find a place in showbiz,” says Jimmy Barnes’s manager John Watson.

Greg Donovan is now 60 and having the time of his life. “I’m my own boss, I make my own decisions and I just love what I do,” he says.

Producer: Ben Cheshire.

8pm Monday on ABC.