Punx Picnic: An Oral History

An Oral History of one of Australia's longest-running punk traditions.

For those of you dipping into the Noise Levels project for the first time via this book, welcome and thank you for the support. Noise Levels is an archival project that seeks to document the histories of Australian bands through interviews, collation of historical material, and preservation of music, flyers, and other material associated with the alternative music counter culture of the '80s, '90s, and '00s.

This oral history of the Sydney Punx Picnic functions as Issue #11 of the ongoing zine series ve been putting out over the last 18 months. This publication was initially intended as a zine but, when seeking to present compreensive history of yearloSney insta found it too difficult to keep the length down - so now it's a book.

People were so generous with sending in pictures and memories for this project that I had to keep making it bigger and bigger. I'm incredibly thankful to all who helped out in this way - there's a full list of thank yous/credits at the back.

The Sydney Punx Picnic is the glue that unites so many different subgenres and movements of the Australian punk story. Started in 1988 by the milieu of anarcho-punx that drew upon connections to the '80s Melbourne scene and the broader'80s punk protest movements of Sydney at this time, the Sydney Punx Picnic quickly came to exemplify the anarchic spirit and ethos of punk music itself.

Looking beyond the early years of this event, you will see all sorts of bands and people gravitating towards it - straightedge hardcore bands from the Newcastle scene, street punx from Wollongong, inner-city grindcore, the so-called violent and snotty teen hardcore of Hornsby, crust punks from Canberra, and grass roots punk outfits from the Central Coast, Campbelltown, and Western Sydney. There has also been a wealth of interstate visitors from Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide, as well as a few reputable international bands that somehow made it all the way to Sydney Park from America and Canada.

The torch has been passed from era to era as new generations have taken on the event to keep its spirit alive. There is arguably no other event in Australian history that better represents our punk and hardcore heritage (and the often contradictory meanings within it), and during the course of researching this book it's been heartening to realise how much the Punx Picnic has meant to so many people.

If I kept researching and interviewing people, I could have created a book twice this length, but I would also never finish it. There have been 67 to 69 Punx Picnics (two of them weren't called 'Punx Picnic' but they may as well have been), with more than 250 bands performing, and who knows how many people hanging out and watching over the years. The history that follows features the voices of about 40 people and over 400 photos, flyers, and zine extracts.

Thanks for reading, and here's hoping the picnic returns sooner rather than later.