I GOT LOST IN PARADISE
On January 1st last year, four of my friends returned from Lost Paradise with tales of dancing, tent life and 16 bags of potato chips, and reported having the best time of their lives. They’d attended the iconic four-day New Year’s festival to send off the year that was 2024, and spent the next 365 days getting more and more eager to do it again. Naturally, I had to see what it was all about.
Although the most recent year’s electronic-heavy lineup was perhaps less my scene than previous years—actually, so much so that I felt like I was going undercover as an electronic music fan, just nodding my head when my friends were discussing KETTAMA and Chris Stussy—I was hell-bent on going. You’re a journalist. You can do this, I was reminding myself.
After several layers of paper mache to make our doofstick of John Pork (and several beers drank in the hours in-between those layers drying), and quickly throwing a couple of outfits together, it was time for my camping trip.
Day 1
An early morning ute packing, making sure to protect the paper mache’d goods, it was time to hit the road. I’d done two Victorian festivals in 2025, so it was refreshing to only have a two-hour drive to get there. Once arriving the four other girls and I did our best to remain positive throughout the process of trolleying the goods from the car to our campsite which had been expertly found by Amy—a Lost Paradise veteran. Never had a clear 3x3m patch of grass been harder to locate.
A well earned sit-down and a few layers of foundation, setting spray and deodorant followed, before following the Doofsticks to Lost Disco—one of the festival’s larger stages—in time for Odd Mob. We were met by many others who’d had the exact same idea, which is when our Piggy doofstick got to be fully socialised with the 5,234,930 other doofsticks. I grew my Lost Paradise legs and started discovering the site, with aid from Alex, Amy and Mary, and was especially glad to come across a pianist. A festival with some culture. WOLTERS and Bella Claxton closed out the evening, but I made the choice to head straight to bed. This sort of event is a marathon, not a sprint, and this was only night one.
Day 2
Now we were really getting started. After smashing a few cheese and salad sandwiches (carefully rationed) at the tent, I set out to take in all of the festival’s co-curriculars, leaving the girls to rest. Yes—I was always that one kid at a sleepover awake well before everyone else. Yoga was happening at Shambala Fields and the giant tent was absolutely chockers of yogis practicing mindfulness, and long lines were forming to get a Boost Juice. I soon kicked up some dust at Blusher, who absolutely blew me away as a first time watcher and fan of choreographed singing.
Now, I have two words for you: Big. Wett. I always love to brag that I discovered Big Wett on Soundcloud circa 2022—before her entirely explicit earworms made her way to the bigger streaming platforms, I would be sing-shouting the lyrics to Eat My Ass as though I knew exactly what she was talking about. She certainly made a splash at the Arcadia stage, and I was amused to see a redditor give her set a score of 5/10. It’s okay to be wrong.
In the evening, X Club and Duke Dumont took to the stage, but for me nothing—and I mean nothing—could’ve beaten Confidence Man, whose live shows consistently have the best graphics. I found myself at a smaller stage where a queen was spinning some RnB, and got sooooo excited, but then I was boring and retired to my tent at around midnight, definitely not before a well-needed baby wipe bath.
Day 3
Today was the day we really were feeling it. But never fear, I put on my belt and my boots for Line Dancing bright and early (11:30am) and gave that a red-hot crack. The first act I got to see was Pamela, followed by Sex Mask. Admittedly it was my first time seeing both, and I’m really on board with the latter’s tales of jean-pissing. A bunch more quick to-and-fro’s from the campsite took place after that, on one of which I got chatting with a lady from the cleaning team. She’d spent the 9 days prior to the festival setting up bins all over the site in very hot weather, and was quite annoyed to see people chucking their rubbish on the ground, rather than utilising them.
Mary and I then accidentally trod on one of those pop-up portable change rooms that had fallen down, which we later found out was the “piss tent” belonging to a large group of boys camping right there. As one of them pointed out, it was lucky we were wearing shoes… Yep.
Tonight contained the highlight of the whole trip for me, which was of course Fcukers. Shanny Wise’s vocals are just fucking terrific and she’s just so cool as the duo switch sides and slide across the stage. Jackson’s pretty cool too, swaying his hips while plucking the bassline that drives the whole performance. They played banger after banger after banger, opening the set with a real haunting number. Later that night I became the filthiest thing to ever crawl into a sleeping bag—please remind me to give it a good wash.
And there’s where I went wrong: instead of going to see the legendary British act Underworld I went straight to bed. Kicking myself to this day.
Day 4
Waking up on day four, my walk to the toilet block began with a prayer—that there’d be an unblocked one for me. I was in luck, but by this point in the festival it was a general consensus that toileting and showering had become a less favourable experience. The dust and the heat were getting to us all and whenever in the toilet we could hear synchronised nose blowing, presumably resulting in dusty black boogers just like my own.
The girls were taking it easy as I briefly ran off to watch Selve, who rocked out the stage in matching boilersuits, breaking out their latest album Breaking Out of Heaven—recorded at Abbey Road studios—giving passersby something to head-nod to. Following Selve was SalaryMen, a duo whose recent move to London has contributed to their mix of pop, psych and folk sounds. Walking back to the campsite, I got a shock seeing that plenty of punters had started packing up, or had even abandoned camp already to get out of there early and beat the rush, not minding missing out on the countdown. But not us. We were in it for the long haul.
After the girls got a few pics, we made the walk back to the festival ground, John Pork in tow, and soon enough Hot Dub Time Machine—the world’s first time travelling Dj—was taking us through the decades on the Arcadia Stage. Let’s put it this way—I wasn’t walking out of there thinking god that was great, I gotta get this guy’s merch. However the crowd was absolutely loving it. I couldn't possibly have foreseen that I’d be welcoming the new year listening to ‘Wake Me Up’ by Avicii and getting hit in the head by a large stack of redbull cups right as the countdown hit zero (whoever was holding it must’ve become otherwise occupied). I did not mind at all—and found it amusing. We continued to dance around and run between stages and an interactive light display before heading to bed, exhausted.
The next day we leapt out of bed and we toiled and troubled through the rain until the now soggy tent was in the car. My friends had warned me of this, but it was still super shocking to see the state of the campsite after the majority of people had vacated. Tents, still pegged and upright, still full of food and rubbish, stood discarded in the fields—despite the signs meant to remind people to take their belongings with them. I’ll never understand this—creating more problems for the already hardworking site crew to take care of, especially as it’s just wasteful.
We headed back up the hill in the ute, with newly muddied trolley wheels and feet, and soon we arrived at the holy land (McDonalds), packed full with other weary travellers.
I feel accomplished with a four-day festival now under my belt, it was a long haul. But you can do it, don’t let that scare you scare you off. It's great during the day when you can kinda relax, recover and conserve energy—or at least until like 3:15 if you’re like me and get excited to see new bands, rather than wait for the renowned DJ at 8pm.
I personally would love to see more of a balance between live acts and DJs at next year’s event, as the Arcadia stage is an incredible place for up-and-coming bands to show us what they’ve got. Some people I spoke to on the ground felt the acts lacked diversity, but they did well to draw a solid crowd who, unlike me, was just jazzed about all the DJs. and it led to overcrowding at certain stages, and that the set times were a little confusing, with larger acts on earlier days, inspiring people to leave the festival early. I’d gone into the festival more excited to share a tent with my friends than I was for most of the musical acts—aside from Fcukers of course.
Camping festivals are an art and science, and they’re also not for everyone. For me, I love getting grubby and goofing around under a gazebo, and enjoyed my time doing so at Lost. While yes, I felt disappointed by a few other punters (like the “piss tent guys” and my neighbours who I thought I’d befriended but were actually laughing at me, not with me (long story), and those campers who failed at the leave no trace principle, I met a bunch of lovely people and popped many a silly dance move. What a way to bring in the new year.
That being said: here are my top tips for surviving Lost Paradise:
Bring a cute outfit that’s warm—you’ll be shivering at nighttime.
Breathe through your nose! My nose-hairs worked overtime filtering the dust which would’ve otherwise ended up stuck in my throat.
Bring a 10L+ refillable water container! We only brought one box of water and gosh it was annoying walking to the campsites only water station just to fill up bottles once we’d drank it all.
Protect your hearing—this one’s a given. I accidentally forgot my Sets at home but the festival were giving out foam ones that did the job.
Bring food in an esky, and make sure you drain the water as the ice melts, before it infiltrates your cheese.
Pack more socks than you think you’ll need! They get dirty quickly.
