When Travis Tiddy and friends first established Tasmania’s biennial West Coast festival The Unconformity in the old copper mining town of Queenstown, they were all very new to the festival world.
Once covered by verdant bushland, the forests surrounding Queenstown were chopped down in order to fuel the copper smelters that were once the town’s lifeblood. Coupled with toxic smelter fumes, the mountainous landscape quickly became a moonscape – stark, bare and striking – further adding to the already isolated region’s unique qualities.
