The guest speaker at the Donald History Society July meeting was local Festival Director and recycler extraordinaire, Sam Goldsmith.

The weather was cold and wet for the 2 p.m meeting, but the crowd kept streaming in until there were no chairs left.

Sam was born in the early 1980s and spent his first three years on the farm at Corack. His family then moved into Donald and Sam started school there. The family later moved to Birchip when they bought the Birchip Newsagency and this is where Sam did his secondary schooling.

In 1999, Sam decided to fill a need in the area and set himself up as “DISCOGOLD” where he would hire out sound systems, lighting and DJ music at birthday parties for all age groups. He showed a slide of his “DISCOGOLD” sign. The slogan under his sign is “Mixing business with pleasure since 1999”. Sam said “I have been doing that since I was 15 years old”.

Sam said he had taken “DISCOGOLD” to parties and functions all over Victoria and sometimes interstate. Corporations and festivals also began to hire Sam to do sound and lighting for their shows and performances. He has been employed regularly by the Rex Theatre in Charlton for their live performances.

Over the years, Sam has also “lit up” various structures and buildings around the area. He has done the Donald silos a few times, sometimes just for fun and sometimes as a paid job. “DISCOGOLD” has been a very successful venture and it gave Sam the experience and the contacts for his next venture.

Wooroonook

In 2016 a festival was to be held at Wooroonook Lakes and Sam was asked to do the sound and lighting for it. The organiser had not applied for the correct permits and the Buloke Shire was forced to shut it down. Sam said that he sustained a substantial loss over this and decided that the best way to recoup his losses and make sure that such a thing didn’t happen to him again was to run his own festival.

“Esoteric”

And so “Esoteric” was born. Sam has the only “Esoteric Festival” and he has copyrighted the name. Contacts he has made through working at other festivals meant that he knew what he was doing right from the start. Sam started small but he runs it well and each year the festival gets bigger.

Sam says that he has 5 or 6 permanent staff to help him prepare for the festival but as it draws closer and it is actually happening, about 1000 people are employed. And of course, there are many, many volunteers as well. Sam made special mention of the Donald Lions Club, which provides the barbecue and has been with the festival since its inception.

Last year 10,000 people were catered for totally, camping, food wise and entertainment wise at the Esoteric Festival. There is a special children’s area and performers keep them entertained throughout.

Sam showed many slides of the festival. Among of the most important features are the decorative sail cloths which Sam says are replaced every 3-4 years. They are very important for sun protection as well as adding to the beauty of the site.

Many of the people who help build the stages are from Europe. Sam showed a photo of three Spaniards, two men and a woman, who decorated one of the stages with a highly textured wall that they made themselves out of molten plastic. It was huge but they could pull it apart and they packed it into eight suitcases and brought it on the plane with them.

Sam showed another young man who comes from Europe each year and does all the visual lighting “kaleidoscope type” effects for the stages. Next year he is very excited as he will do his “own design” especially for Donald. One slide showed the huge Art gallery which has developed at the festival. Sam said that he has been told by exhibitors that the Esoteric Festival has the biggest gallery by far when compared to like festivals.

Big Bus

Another slide showed Donald’s Keith Brusnahan standing next to a 130-seater bus. Sam bought this from Steve Irwin’s Australian Zoo in Queensland. Keith drives it around the car park picking up people and taking them to where they want to go. The carpark and campsite is extremely large and the heat makes it very difficult to walk for many people. The very long bus also has a huge novelty appeal amongst the festival goers.

Lagoon

Sam’s Esoteric team have built their own lagoon, which was on an old Channel site. They extended it themselves, installed some tarps as liners and fill it with Pipeline water. Sam bought a Water treatment plant from the Ararat prison that had never been used. He said that this can treat the pipeline water to a potable standard. He says that the festival uses heaps of water so this has been a wonderful acquisition. The lagoon has a lovely fake grass lawn. Sam bought this from a Brighton school, where it had been one of their sports fields.

Sam has also bought a sound shell from Perth. He hopes to install this in Donald one day for use by the community.

Each question he was asked reminded Sam of yet another purchase he had made. He is a very good recycler of valuable equipment.

In answer to a question, Sam says that his festival has survived where others are beginning to fail because he puts most of his money into the visual and physical experience of the festival rather than putting it into music. He also says that many festivals have been reliant on Government grants so they are not self-sufficient.

Sam has tried for grants but has never been successful, so his festival can stand alone. Sam has not found insurance prohibitive although he says that the amount of valuable equipment on site during the setting up could prove expensive if any of it was damaged.

“Buloke Hire”

Sam then went on to talk about his other business “Buloke Hire”. He showed several slides displaying the equipment that he hires. Rubbish skips are his most successful item. He says that almost every farm now had a permanent skip for disposing of rubbish that can no longer just be taken to landfill. Again, this probably means that material is properly recycled or disposed of. “Buloke Hire” also has trucks and cranes and lifts. Sam says that much of what he does is loading tractors and vehicles on to his trucks and transporting them.

“Goldy’s Patch”

Sam and wife Karen, who owns “Goldy’s Patch” Nursery are within weeks of moving to their premises on Racecourse Road. Karen has been trading for this year and longer in front of the Donald Post Office, which has been very convenient for the town but not for her. She is looking forward to never having to set up there again.

David James, an enthusiastic Donald Lions Club member and worker at the festival over the years was the ideal person to thank Sam and make him a small presentation on behalf of the History Group.

Next month’s meeting is to be held at the Railway Station at 2 p.m. where members will proceed on foot to view the old Railway cottages in Walker Street, which are now over one hundred years old.

This article appeared in The Buloke Times, 23 July 2024.