Punters push for planning improvements

Margaret River residents are demanding improvements to music concerts at 3 Oceans winery, following complaints about Saturday’s Rufus concert.

Residents spoke of hour-long queues for drink tickets and toilets, being charged for plastic cups after paying $40 for bottles of wine, patrons drinking from wine bottles, and some hopping fences to relieve themselves because of toilet queues.

Similar concerns about queue times and amenities were raised following the John Butler Trio’s Frack Off concert last year and previous events.

Margaret River resident Sullivan McLeod said the venue’s support for live music was appreciated, but planning had to be improved.

“If you are going to put on an event and profit from it, there needs to be a minimum standard of planning and organising required to heighten the experience for all involved,” he said.

Mr McLeod said there had been problems at other 3 Oceans concerts, but “this one took it to even another level”.

“These guys have got to lift their game,” he said.

Perth resident Liv Sangalli, 21, echoed concerns about the concert.

“The event was so poorly organised. For an event with presale tickets you would assume that they would cater for a certain amount of people, but that obviously wasn’t the case,” she said.

However, Ms Sangalli said staff handled the situation well and were happy to refund her drink tickets when asked.

Patrons took to Facebook to vent their frustrations, calling the event “ridiculous” and “super poor”.

Event promoter Macro Music’s director Ross Macpherson said the queues were “unfortunate” but dissipated by 8pm.

“We did experience queues far longer than we have we have ever seen before at the concert last weekend,” Mr Macpherson said.

“When the queues were long, we advised the drink ticket team to refund drink tickets to any patrons who asked, which they did.”

Mr Macpherson said the company did not offer free plastic wine glasses because they were “terrible for the environment and shatter if stepped upon”.

Mr Macpherson said the event had 12 filtered water outlets and 34 ladies toilets, “far exceeding the 24 required by council regulations”.

“We have already had talks with the teams who run the bars (and) ticketing area and infrastructure for the events to ensure that we are massively over-staffed for future shows and this level of queuing never happens at 3 Oceans again,” he said.

Mr Macpherson said people could email events@macromusic.com.au for further feedback.

3 Oceans winery manager Ke Zheng said Macro Music was responsible for running the events for the past four years and tried to improve on each occasion.