Amanda Jackes’ eyes opened to a new sense of wonder when she attended the second annual Maleny Folk Festival in 1988.
As a teen, she discovered a gathering of people that was much more than music and performance. It was a living experiment in culture, participation and collective creativity that would go on to shape the course of her life.
Amanda returned as a festival volunteer the following year to organise the parking and camping. The then 19-year-old was motivated “by a sense of shared purpose” that the festival had given her and scores of others.
At 20, Amanda had the chutzpah to ask festival founder Bill Hauritz if she could take responsibility for constructing the event site. He said yes. It was 1990 and Amanda was then a fine arts undergraduate majoring in sculpture.
Amanda told Bill she believed creativity and problem-solving went hand-in-hand, and he agreed. And so began a creative partnership that would span almost 40 years, until Bill’s passing in 2025.
In the early days of the festival everything was done on a “shoestring budget”.
“We became incredibly resourceful in building this temporary village where people could live together for a brief moment in time,” Amanda says.
The first Maleny Folk Festival in 1987 attracted 900 people. Amanda laughs, recalling Bill’s famous line: “That’s the perfect size, we shouldn’t let it grow any larger”.
Instead, under Bill’s stewardship, the festival outgrew its small-town origins and evolved into the Woodford Folk Festival in 1994.
“We purchased 240 acres on Jinibarra Country initially and it was a going concern dairy farm,” Amanda explains. “So, when we put the offer in, we had to bring a third party to settlement to actually buy the milk quota.”
Festival folklore suggests the third party was connected to the late Chrissy Amphlett, frontwoman of the Divinyls. Whether fact or myth, it suits the mythology of what grew into Australia’s largest annual gathering of artists and musicians.
Amanda joined full-time as Woodford site manager in 1994 and became general manager in 1997, a role she held for 20 years.
“Owning the land changed everything. We suddenly had to grow up as an organisation and with that came one of the most dynamic and exciting periods in Woodford’s history.”
Woodford was never the vision of one person alone, but something collectively shaped by thousands of contributors over generations.
“Woodford has always been built by people bringing their ideas, skills, labour, creativity and care,” Amanda says.
“The festival evolves because so many people see part of themselves reflected in it and want to contribute to what it can become.”
Amanda fondly recalls people describing Bill as “a pathological optimist”.
“Bill had an extraordinary capacity to commit fully to an idea and never let go of it,” she says. “I think we complemented each other in that way. There was a great drive because you were doing something not for just the here and now, you were doing something that you imagined the next generation to be involved with.”
Today, the festival welcomes around 120,000 aggregate attendees across six days and nights. That’s around 18,000 people daily onsite between December 27 and New Year’s Day.
Amanda is now managing director of Woodfordia Inc and festival director of the Woodford Folk Festival, overseeing an annual budget of about $18 million, alongside capital works infrastructure exceeding $25 million.
Woodford is not simply a music festival but a vast participatory community shaped by volunteers, artists, activists, environmentalists and families returning year after year.
“It’s part cultural gathering, part temporary township,” Amanda says. “Woodford has evolved into a place where music, ideas, performance, social dialogue and ecological restoration exist side-by-side.”
In 1997, the community planted 10,001 trees. Today, more than 138,000 southeast Queensland rainforest species stand across the property, which expanded to 500 acres as additional parcels of land were purchased over the years.
Despite its popularity, the festival has not been without its challenges. The organisation, ever striving for innovation, had committed all its reserves in 2009-2010 to building a $3.8 million zero-release wastewater treatment plant designed specifically for the festival’s needs. Severe Queensland floods in 2010 caused an 18 per cent drop in attendance, leaving the organisation with about $1.5 million in unpaid bills.
“Prior to the 2010 festival, we went to the then Moreton Bay Regional Council to say we were exposed and would they consider an interest-free loan if the festival didn’t go well,” Amanda explains.
“At the time, the council had no precedent in handing out interest-free loans to community groups, but they did have precedent of owning land that community groups operate on.”
The council purchased the unimproved value of the land for $4 million while Woodfordia retained ownership of the infrastructure and secured a 50-year lease with a 25-year buyback clause.
Amanda says the intention was always to return the land to community ownership through a trust, but COVID, music industry volatility and the cost-of-living crisis stalled fundraising efforts. “So we found ourselves halfway through our 25-year buyback clause and we hadn’t raised any money.”
In 2024, Woodfordia launched a major fundraising campaign, A Forest of Goodwill, and by May 2026 had raised $2.5 million. The campaign is now focused on securing the remaining funds within the next year, enabling Woodfordia to buy back the land and protect it in trust through the newly established Woodfordia Foundation.
Amanda often describes the festival as “a social experiment”, bringing together people from different backgrounds to collectively imagine more generous ways of living.
“We’re all more connected than we let ourselves believe,” she says. “And the work that we do at Woodford is about learning how we belong to each other and belong to the environment… and when you work alongside people who really believe in it and they’re doing their best work, being the best version of themselves, it’s addictive.”
Today, Amanda takes particular joy in watching younger generations arrive to help build the festival, just as she once did herself.
Nearly four decades after first arriving at the festival as a curious teenager, Amanda still believes the enduring power of Woodford lies not in the spectacle, but in the possibilities it opens within people.
“When I come across an 18- or 19-year-old young woman who’s come to help build the festival, I wonder, ‘How’s this festival going to impact your life?’” Amanda reflects.
“You never quite know what will shape a person’s life. But sometimes a place, a community, or a moment of shared purpose can quietly change the direction of who you become.”
For Amanda, Woodford became more than a festival. It became a place where people could imagine more deeply, encounter one another more openly and discover a stronger sense of purpose and belonging in the world around them.
“I think people are searching for places where they can feel more alive, more connected, more themselves. If Woodford can offer even a glimpse of that, then something important has been carried forward.”
We often say, it’s a small ship, but it leaves a large wake.”