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Falls Festival

Australian New Year music and arts festival established in 1993

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ5432480 ↗
Source-derived summary

Falls Festival, commonly known as , Falls Music & Arts Festival is an Australian music and arts festival whose events were traditionally held over the New Year period. It began in Lorne, Victoria in 1993 as Rock Above the Falls and later expanded to Marion Bay in Tasmania, Byron Bay in New South Wales and Fremantle in Western Australia. Its most recent events were held in Melbourne, Byron Bay and Fremantle during the 2022–23 summer. In May 2023, organisers announced that the festival would take time off to reconsider its future. By July 2026, it had not returned.

History

Falls Festival began in Lorne, Victoria, in 1993 as Rock Above the Falls. The inaugural event attracted an unexpected crowd of about 11,000 people. The festival was extended to two days in 1995 and was renamed Falls Music & Arts Festival in 1996.

In 2003, the festival expanded to Marion Bay, Tasmania. In 2013, the festival expanded further to North Byron Parklands near Byron Bay, New South Wales.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Falls Festival” as australian New Year music and arts festival established in 1993. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Falls, Festival and Australian.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1993, 2022, 2023, 2026—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1993. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Falls, Festival and Australian providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Falls Festival”, the useful work is to connect “australian New Year music and arts festival established in 1993” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5432480. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1993, 2022, 2023 and 2026.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

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  2. Expand the search: follow Falls Festival primary sources, Falls Festival archive and Falls research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Falls Festival” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.