Wine Country Tourism and Wyndham Estate have distanced themselves from a promoter in the wake of the disastrous Human Nature concert.
Thousands of ticketholders were turned away and told New Vine Entertainment had over-sold the event.
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I think it would be a shame if people stopped going to events in the wineries, because of one bad experience. I went to Fleetwood Mac at Hope Estate 2 weeks ago and it was magnificent. The facilities, organisation and everything about it was very well done.
We must remember that Cessnock City Council gives the approval for these events/debarcles! If all requirements have been fulfilled and all stardards met, it is CCC that should be roasted in public…the promoters are not in business to provide us with great entertainment or a great experience, they are out to make as much money as possible for the smallest outlay possible! One of the Bush Fire Brigade volunteers told me that when Wyndham Estate orgainses an event, they donate $2000.00 to marshall the parking: the (alleged) organisers of the Human Nature concert offered the outsanding sum of $100.00…
Rachel, which Fleetwood Mac concert at Hope estate did you go to?
We had to line up to show our ticket to somebody to get a stamp, so that we could line up in ANOTHER queue to show our stamp AND our ticket…what on Earth was that in aid of?
I also thought $30.00 for a $18.00 bottle of wine to be extortionate. As for waitng THREE HOURS just to get out of the carpark…did you arrive and leave by helicopter?
Michael – Wyndham Estate is in the Singleton Local Council government area. Cessnock City Council had nothing to do with this.
Lisa
We went to the Fleetwood Mac concert @ Hope Estate on the 5th December. It was our first winery concert and it was way better than hoped. Had an absolutely fantastic night.
There was a fair amount of traffic on Broke Road going to the concert, we arrived via a Rover bus from the motel ($20 each from the motel return! bargain) and ended up entering via McDonald Road, no dramas.
Paid to plan ahead… we knew there were going to be crowds, going by bus = less hassles and didnt have to worry about the traffic or parking.
Wine prices were the same $30 a pop for an $18 bottle, but we expected that.
I hope this episode at Wyndham Estate doesnt stop future winery concerts… the atmosphere cant be beaten!
The winery cant be held responsible because the promoter oversold tickets.
To the people here insisting that nobody should point the finger at Wyndham Estate, kindly pull your head out. The winery’s name was splashed all over every bit of promotional material, and their reputation has suffered as a direct result of their unwillingness to exercise any control over who came to their property and in what manner. To defer all responsibility to an obviously useless (untested?) promotions company demonstrates extreme negligence towards the people who chose to spend their weekend in the hunter and who travelled so far to be there.
New Vine Entertainment/Brad Flowers are rubbish and should be run out of town.
Wyndham Estate should never hold another event. I doubt I will ever again buy the wine after being treated so poorly, let alone return to the winery for any reason.
Hunter Tourism/Local councils should re-evaluate Wyndham and New Vine’s role in the future of Hunter events. Such a fiasco brings embarassment to the entire valley. While Cessnock Council are obviously busy pointing the finger, they need to understand that this effects them too
do you think it strange that Wyndham Estate has been hosting and organising concerts for the past 14 years and no one seems to know anything about them EXCEPT for this latest one? This apparently is the first one that they have merely hired out the venue to a management company for and it has gone pear shaped!!
Good luck Wyndham Estate!!
It does not sound like they tried to hold such a large event before, we are going to see another repeat of this incident soon, early next year Tom Jones and Whitney Houston are booked on the same night at two different venues, each venue can hold 25 thousand people, thats up to 50 thousand people descending on the hunter valley.
The road network basically stopped for the human nature concert, and no one is looking forward to the Jones/Whitney camp to arrive, most of the wineries do the right thing and can cope with big events, however they don’t care about how these events impact everyone else in the lower hunter, we just get a ton of people driving thru town that make it impossible to drive anywhere.
Back when I moved to the lower hunter we were impacted by these large events a few times a year at worst, now the battle is on to attract more large events to the wineries.
The roads around the hunter valley are small local roads, local council’s don’t have the money to repair the damage from thousands of people descending on them at the same time, state and federal governments need to step in and upgrade the road system, or put in a rail line out to the wineries, something is better than what they are doing now.