Sean O'Brien, Pro Windsurfer – seanobrien.com.au™

My final week at home in Brisbane for the summer I decided to head to a massive Rock/Metal music festival in Australia called Soundwave. Headlining were bands like Iron Maiden, Slayer, Primus, Slash, 30 Seconds to Mars, Queens of the Stone Age, Rob Zombie and about 1 billion others. It was a stonking 37 degrees all day with no shade anywhere and thousands of Brisbane’s metal fraternity arriving in their tattoos, piercings, rebellion and Jack Daniels to see what the day had to offer. My highlight was the deathpit for Slayer.

Big Day Out is the largest and longest running music festival in Australia, playing in every capital city (including in New Zealand!) to the tune of 120,000 people per city. With the Downunder Pro Formula Windsurfing Championships looming next week, I thought I’d show some of my European windsurfing friends how we do festivals in Australia. Some of those friends included Jesper Vesterstrøm and James Briggs who are down here already for training. I also thought it’d be a good idea (at the time) to swing in to a friend of mine’s birthday party at the Gold Coast Turf Club; which means – getting suited up and hitting the horse races for the afternoon the day before Big Day Out.

On the 1st January, a bunch of mates of mine decided it would be a good idea to head to an epic all-day music festival right in the heart of Sydney CBD. After a few phone calls and some early morning trips to the airport to get friends flying in from other cities we had VIP tickets organised for the festival and were on our way! One of my favourite French DJ’s – JUSTICE – headlined the festival and we had a blast with the other 40,000 Aussie’s who were down at the Domain that day! What a way to bring in 2011 !!!