EVERY weekend of the year, if you travel far enough, you can find a music festival in Australia.
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In such a crowded market, the Meredith Music Festival remains a special and unique beast.
Held on Nolan's Farm between Geelong and Ballarat and run under the spiritual guidance of legendary matriarch Aunty Meredith, the festival is an idiosyncratic event that thrives on 24 years of tradition.
Those customs includes a BYO alcohol policy, a "no dickheads" rule, three days of camping, a wide-ranging line-up that touches on so many different musical styles, a nude running race, and the intriguing salute known as The Boot.
A gesture that has migrated from sister festival Golden Plains, The Boot is the ultimate sign of adulation the crowd can show a band at Meredith - it's easy to clap and cheer and whistle and woohoo, but it takes a little bit of extra effort to take off your shoe and hold it aloft as a symbol of your appreciation for a band.
Usually at Meredith there will be a stand-out band that gets more boots than the others, but such was the strength across the line-up that plenty of bands were greeted by a sea of raised footwear.
Veteran punks The Hard-Ons kicked it all off on Friday afternoon and suffered a bass-light mix that didn't do their noisy ferocity justice, but things picked up for Brisbane indie-poppers Blank Realm and Melbourne's Teeth & Tongue.
The first real highlights came in the form of the dark stripped-back rock of Mark Lanegan and the doom/stoner rock of Sleep, with both acts drawing the first major smattering of boots for the festival.
As evening settled in, the Supernatural Amphitheatre was suddenly packed as the year's buzz band - The War On Drugs - took to the stage. Personally I don't get the appeal - as one of my friends put it, they sound like "Bruce Springsteen with all the good bits left out" - but the crowd loved it and they were the pick of the fest for many.
The rest of the night was given over to dancing via the Bollywood funk of The Bombay Royale, popular Aussie psych-dance group Jagwar Ma and London synth trio Factory Floor took the crowd into the wee hours.
The following day, as gusty northerlies swept the occasional tent across the increasingly dusty camp grounds, it was time to do it all again.
The early highlight and boot recipient was Mia Dyson, who played a cracking set of soulful rock, while the old-school R'n'B sounds of The Harpoons were also impressive, but the surprise packet of the festival, at least for this reporter, was the country/synth/psych/pop/rock sounds of Phosphorescent.
Led by the aching Southern croon of Matthew Houck and his beautiful songwriting, the band is the latest in a long line of previously unknown acts I've stumbled across at Meredith and instantly fallen in love with, which is one of the reasons I adore the festival - it remains the greatest place to find your new favourite band. I gave Phosphorescent an enthusiastic boot, as did many others.
The wonderfully grungy American trio Cloud Nothings were great, the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra brought a buoyant mix of afro-beat to the afternoon, and Wu-Tang Klan rapper Ghostface Killah was a hit, as was gold medal-winning Paralympian Dylan Alcott, who crowd-surfed his way to the front in his wheelchair, joined Ghostface on stage, and then proceeded to word-perfectly rap Method Man's verse from the Wu-Tang classic Protect Ya Neck. The crowd, unsurprisingly, went nuts.
Augie March provided us with the first big singalong of the weekend with the Hottest 100 winner One Crowded Hour, but a second and even bigger singalong came later in the night when hip hop legends De La Soul dropped Ring Ring Ring.
De La Soul had the massive crowd eating out of the palms of their hands and provided another get rap memory to rival Golden Plains' Public Enemy set from earlier in the year.
After De La Soul had teased us with a taste of Gorillaz's Feel Good, it was then on to the DJs and the dancers, which lasted well into the morning.
Those with stamina returned to the Amphitheatre one last time on Sunday to catch the final acts, which included a great set from Jen Cloher and her band, and a much-loved collection of favourites from '90s heroes The Lemonheads.
Then it was time to either pack up your tent and go home or join in the craziness of the world's greatest nude running race, the Meredith Gift.
Either way, it was another brilliant weekend that will no doubt inspire thousands to do it all again next year for Meredith's 25th anniversary.