Wanderer Festival is happening in Pambula Beach, on NSW’s Sapphire Coast, this October.
Headliners include Missy Higgins, The Living End and Boy & Bear, plus international guests Saint Motel and Jacob Banks, and DJs Petit Biscuit, Lavern and Cut Copy. Wanderer Festival launched in the small coastal town of Pambula Beach in 2022. The event’s founder, Simon Daly, had moved to Pambula with his family in 2020.
At the time, Daly – who founded the Falls Festival and the Lost Lands – wasn’t thinking about starting another festival. “We were living in the caravan park for four months over Covid,” he says. “We just really couldn’t believe how beautiful the place is and the community here are.”
Wanderer Festival 2025
- When: 4-5 October, 2025
- Where: Pambula Beach, NSW
- Tickets: here from Tuesday 27 May
Check out our gig guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.
In the spirit of the community, Daly went to a town meeting after the lockdown had finished. “They were talking about the recovery from the fires and from Covid and what sort of things could happen for the community,” he remembers.
Someone at the meeting pointed out that Daly used to run Falls, something he did from 1993 until 2013. “All the attention was suddenly squarely on me,” he says. “And I just tend to get excited and go, ‘Yeah.’ And so Wanderer was born from that.”
Pambula is a seven-hour drive from Melbourne, six hours from Sydney and three hours from Canberra. In Daly’s opinion, the location is unmatched.
“Everywhere you turn is just beautiful waterways and beaches,” he says. “You only get maybe a handful of nights per year where it’s windy. More often than not, the days are just really beautiful sunshine, blue sky, you don’t see a cloud in the sky for miles.”
Wanderer is back for its third outing on October 4 and 5. After back-to-back events in 2022 and 2023, Daly and his team decided to make Wanderer biennial. “I felt that if we took a year off every second year, when it’s the on year, it’s unmissable,” he explains. “Time goes fast and there’s no reason to be every single year. It’s just a calendar.”
They’ve also cut the festival down from three days to two. “That’s really just getting us to a point where we’re sustainable as an event,” Daly says. “I think in the end the program benefits from that because it’s a deeper program and the quality of acts from the very start to the end are really strong.”
They’ve added a third stage too, the Wanderhaus dance music tent, which will feature sets from French DJ Petit Biscuit, Dutch DJ Lavern, and Melbourne indietronica heroes Cut Copy. “That starts at 8 PM on both evenings and goes through till midnight,” Daly says.
There was a bit of electronic music on previous Wanderer lineups, but the addition of Wanderhaus is a sign they’re trying to expand the event’s parameters. “It’s just recognising that broad demographic and also wanting a festival that is fresh and is moving with the times as well,” Daly says.
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Headliners Missy Higgins, The Living End and Boy & Bear will perform on the Main Stage. That’s also where you’ll find the likes of Magic Dirt, Hockey Day, Grace Cummings and Emma Donovan. The more underground acts on the lineup, such as Dust, Bec Sandridge, The Bures Band and The Tullamarines, will perform on the Wanderer stage.
“Definitely, it’s a case of discovery,” Daly says. “But it’s also interspersed with a couple of acts a day of just straight-out songs [everyone knows.] Missy and The Living End do deliver that and Boy & Bear do as well, along with, to a lesser extent, Magic Dirt.”
Various international acts will perform, including LA-based indie pop group Saint Motel, UK pop-R&B act Jacob Banks and Nashville country singer-songwriter Nikki Lane, as well as up-and-comers like Irish Americana duo Dug and 70s revivalists Sylvie.
The broad programming reflects Wanderer’s broad demographic, says Daly. “If you’re in your 30s, you feel like it’s your festival. If you’re in your late 50s, you completely feel like you’re amongst your own. And if you’re 10, you feel like you’re amongst your own.”
Daly’s long-term goal is for Wanderer to be a place where large numbers of the audience find their new favourite artists.
“I’d like to keep taking Wanderer down that discovery route, where people do come along and go, gee, there’s so much great music that I’ve just discovered,” he says. “Already people are jumping on the Wanderer Spotify playlist and just going, ‘Wow, there’s just so much great stuff.’”
Music Program – Saturday
- Missy Higgins
- Saint Motel (USA)
- Hockey Dad,
- Magic Dirt
- Lavern (NL)
- Pierce Brothers
- Grace Cummings
- Folk Bitch Trio
- Johnny Cash Recordings w Henry Wagons
- O And The Mo (NZ)
- Jack Botts
- The Tullamarines
- Dust
- MAD.DAY
- Groove Society
- Jimi The Kween
- Bec Sandridge
- Prodikal – 1
- Sixten b2b Benjamin
- Sunday Lemonade
- Bega Sound Collective
Music Program – Sunday
- The Living End
- Boy & Bear
- Jacob Banks (UK)
- Petit Biscuit (FR)
- Nikki Lane (USA)
- Cut Copy (DJ Set)
- The Vanns
- Dug (IRL)
- Emma Donovan
- Sylvie (USA)
- The Bures Band
- MAD.DAY
- Groove Society
- Jimi The Kween
- Bega Sound Collective
- Lotte Gallagher
- Mika James
- Radium Dolls
- Val Moogz
- Lillian Mcveity
Wanderer Festival runs from 4-5 October at Pambula Beach. Get tickets here.
