Good Things?

On Friday 6th December, hubby and I attended the Good Things Festival at Flemington Racecourse. I was so, so, so excited about this festival! So many bands I wanted to see, especially headliners Korn along with Electric Callboy, Living End, Sleeping with Sirens and quite a few others.

Good Things had been my goal for the year and something to look forward to after 2 major surgeries. I knew it would be a stretch, but I worked hard at my recovery and felt really confident going in.

Not only that, we finally got to use our 2 free nights accommodation that was given after a terrible 4 night stay at accommodation prior to one of my surgeries in 2020 or 2021. All we had to do was purchase 1 extra night, so we thought this was brilliant; drive in on Thursday, get ready at the hotel the next morning, stay overnight after the festival then recover on Saturday and explore Saturday night.

None of these things panned out how we thought.

Firstly, the travel in on Thursday was pretty brutal. My body didn't cope well with all of the bouncing around and it was a dry, hot day. We couldn't get into our room until after 3pm, there was no onsite parking and we had a few hours to kill. We went to the centre across the road for lunch where we were asked to prepay for our meal (I ordered an entree and Jared a main, but no drinks.) My tastebuds have been horrendously off for a few years, but have been exacerbated since the hysterectomy so even the spring rolls tasted awful; I took one bite and couldn't eat anymore.

When we finally got into the hotel room, we stayed put. We ordered Uber Eats for dinner, where again I couldn't eat. This was not a great start and had me a bit worried, so we had an early night.

The next morning we woke up feeling like a freight train had hit us; this is how we usually wake up on night 3 of accommodation bedding, not after the first night. I decided not to go all out with what I was wearing because I knew I would struggle as it was; no hair extensions or clips because my head would hurt sooner rather than later, no tight clothes so no corset or belts and no compression socks because it was too hot. I had brought along a massive pink suitcase and a small pink suitcase with lots of clothing options and luckily I did because the 3-4 outfits I had picked as options became non-options very quickly; instead I ended up wearing basketball culottes and a singlet top with a stretchy, breathable jacket. I wore normal makeup. It was very practical and I was as comfortable as I could be. I wasn't about to let this sour my day.

Since I hadn't eaten properly the day before, we headed out early to get Subway for breakfast. This tasted weird but was manageable. It was smooth sailing to drive to the racecourse and we parked where we did for Knotfest. We got there in time for gates opening and met up with Danny. I was greeted by the accessibility liaison and we were on our merry way to enjoy the event.

Good Things was set up extremely differently to Knotfest and I thought this was awesome. 6 stages set up in pairs, all at different spots through the venue meaning the day started out easy to get to different bands, to get to food and drink stalls and to get to the bathrooms. The weather was warm but with a bit of cloud coverage, it was much better than I anticipated.

I had a ball to begin with and was so excited to see the Living End play. This is where things started to go a bit pear shaped. The viewing platforms for accessibility were a bit crappy and the crowd had been great so far; we'd been standing at the back or off to the side for the other sets with no issues. We started out at the back and off to the side for the Living End, but then the crowd started to pile in more. I had my rollator behind me and people kept cutting in front of me, pushing me back and onto Jared who was behind me. I'd get pushed to the side, too, and into Danny. I knew every song on that set, yet I struggled to enjoy it because the heat mixed with my medications was making me a bit spaced out and my anxiety was quite high from being pushed around.

When the set ended, we started to walk off to do a bathroom break and food. I've never had so much trouble getting through a crowd; at Knotfest, people were so polite and even when I didn't need them to, they moved out of the way and/or offered to help; I nearly got bowled over by people and I couldn't join the flow of traffic because of my rollator; in the end, Danny had to take the rollator from the front and Jared behind me to get me through the crowds. The next issue was the bathrooms; the lines for all of them was insane; this started to stress me because I knew the later into the day it got, the more people that would be there and this could become quite an issue if I needed the bathroom urgently. There were no visible disability bathrooms and because the toilets were set up as male and female, it meant that I had to risk leaving my rollator at the front of my stall. Considering the following day I read posts and comments about people having their stuff stolen that day, I don't think I was out of line to worry about this.

I was feeling quite off and my feet were really sore; despite having sat on my rollator at most of the sets, my feet would not stop hurting. We decided to take a breather, get some dinner and relax before the main bands came on. There was about 2 hours to wait before more bands came on I wanted to see and a total of 4-5 hours to go, just with set times. I was really worried by this point; I really wanted to stay but everything was starting to hurt and I couldn't take any more medications; if I dosed up any more, I'd be completely off my chops, but if I didn't take anything, I'd run the very real risk of a pain flare and I did not want that. Not at an event like this, not when someone in the crowd had been (apparently) crushed (or at the very least, in a lot of trouble) and I didn't want to have any issues with a crowd like this. We sat where we thought we wanted to be for the remaining bands but after half an hour I just knew I couldn't do it.

The guilt around letting down Jared and Danny was insurmountable, followed by a dose of frustration with myself because I really wanted to be there. The crushing depression I'd been working so hard against for years just came flooding back. There's nothing quite like chronic illness to make you feel like such an old 36 year old. I didn't want to be too upset because I didn't want to add to Jared's worry or burden.

We went back to the hotel and he massaged my feet and legs. We watched reality tv and I fell asleep pretty early. I woke up the following day feeling miserable, still in so much pain and just defeated. The only thing that made me feel better was seeing the crowd photos where the crowd was much bigger than I thought; it was definitely bigger than the Knotfest crowd, so I researched how many people attended both events: 15,000 for Knotfest, 25,000 for Good Things! Almost double! There was also a report that another person was crushed. We'd made the right decision, I wouldn't have coped or enjoyed that crowd.

Although I was feeling awful still, I did my makeup and got dressed in the only thing that fit me and we went for a walk up to the docks. Shortly after leaving, the pain just shot through my legs and I swelled up like a balloon. I lost it at this point. I just started crying. I couldn't even make it through a date day and for almost 10 years now, my illness has been ruining dates and holidays. I felt so completely useless in this moment. We ended up leaving for home, where the car trip home was really rough on me.

For something that was supposed to be such a Good Thing, with so much effort and organisation gone into it, it just felt like a massive fail. We wasted time. We wasted petrol. We wasted money. We wasted the tickets. We wasted the accommodation. An expensive, time consuming fail.

Today, even though we got home yesterday afternoon, I'm still in so much pain. My feet are so sore that they are numb. I feel really deflated and really sad. I know I have a mental journey ahead of me to recover from this and seeing all of the videos from the show is really depressing.

Then I wonder if I should even write a blog like this? Most people think you're complaining when you talk about stuff like this; this post isn't for those people. This post if for myself, first and foremost, and for anyone else going through something like this (whether you're the person with the illness, or you're the partner or carer or family or friend.) It's to bring a little bit of awareness around just how challenging something like this can be, in the hopes that if you're the affected persons that you don't feel so alone. I also hope it can bring awareness to people not affected in the slightest by any of these things; I hope that next time you attend a festival, you become a bit more aware of the people around you.

So with that, I call a close on Good Things 2024. I won't be attending again; it would have to be a really incredible band to get me there and even then, I'd hope they do a sideshow.