Splendour 2013: International Acts, Julian Assange, Celebrity Sightings and More (VIDEO)
Rumours of Hollywood celebrities Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan gracing the 2013 Splendour in the Grass Music Festival buzzed as their husbands were part of the headliners for the recently held music event at Byron Bay.
Mumford & Sons headlined Friday night's Supertop stage. Fans expected to see Carey Mulligan to accompany his rockstar husband, frontman Marcus Mumford.
On the other hand, Keira Knightley's husband, James Righton, plays keyboard for The Klaxons, who were the headliners for the Mixup Stage on that same night.
Unfortunately, the actresses didn't show up to support their respective husbands at this year's Splendour. Mulligan accompanied Mumford at Glastonbury last June.
Meanwhile, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange made himself present at the Splendour forum on Saturday via Vimeo. Assange, who is on political exile, presented the state of Australian politics, the current bid for the Australian senate and 'media-ocracy'.
Assange started his presentation by asking 'Can we trust the media?' and quoted American philosopher and political critic Noam Chomsky:
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, which will allow very lively debate within a narrow circle of that spectrum.
He called Rupert Murdoch's News Corp 'one of the worst concentrations of media ownership in the world' and explained why Wikileaks wish to enter the Australian political arena. His Wikileaks party hopes to bring political reform to bring about media reform.
He concluded that the media cannot be trusted and even journalists, at times, are no more trustworthy than used car salesman or people smugglers.
"Newspapers have a knowledge advantage, an information asymmetry. THey know what readers don't know yet but want to know. So they make up or invent things and you won't know the difference until Iraq is a wasteland with 100,000 dead or Tony Abbot is elected," he said.
Watch the video below:
Missed Mark
Splendour's partnership with Destination Tweed, the official tourism body of the region, missed the mark for Tweed's tourism industry.
Bill Tatchell, Destination Tweed CEO, already expected that slow start as the festival is establishing itself in its new location. He expects to see a real difference next year.
"It's important to realize this is a quiet time of year," he said.
"By setting prices realistically, Tweed businesses have drawn buses of people to them."
Echonews reported that only 80 festival-goers visited Tweed's seven parks and local businesses near North Byron Parklands missed out on spikes in business as bus services bypassed local towns.
"It would be better if there was a bus running between Splendour and Burringbar," Jim Davidson, owner of Burringbar General Store, said.
In addition, Crabbes Creek General Store owner, Alan Vincent, said that the limited bus routes didn't allow him to benefit from the festival.
"We saw some people who were working at the festival beforehand, but we didn't get much from it at all,"he said.
Tatchell agreed that Tweed's potential to draw in tourism over the weekend was not met due to limited bus services.
"What we want is more public transport infrastructure," he said.