More than 1000 festival goers are demanding their money back after a severe electrical storm forced the closure of the main stage at the Pyramid Rock Festival in Phillip Island, Victoria, on New Year’s Eve.

Fierce winds, heavy rain, lightning and thunder ripped across Phillip Island a few hours before midnight, damaging vital lighting and effects systems that could not be restored in time to bring in the new year. It meant headliners Empire Of The Sun, Grinspoon, The Butterfly Effect and Van She could not perform as scheduled on the last night of the three-day event.

In a statement to media, festival organisers said that despite their best efforts to shift the acts to a smaller stage, safety concerns were paramount. “Organisers and bands in conjunction with security and emergency services personnel decided that moving the acts to the Pharaoh’s Annex would be unsafe,” the statement read.

“The Pyramid Rock Festival organisers sincerely regret that the festival could not run as scheduled and extend their sincere apologies to all the patrons and artists involved … However, they remain secure in the knowledge that the most difficult decision in their proud six year history was made with patron, artist, employee and volunteer safety as its foremost consideration.”

However, disgruntled fans claim they were left in the dark about the decision to close the main stage, demanding a refund and starting a Facebook group in protest. The group has swelled to 1027 members at the time of writing, with most complaints centering on a perceived lack of communication between organisers and punters. Others were particularly aggrieved by being denied a countdown, while some took issue with their paper drink tickets being soaked by the weather.

“I CANT BELIEVE THERE WAS NO COUNTDOWN!!! and they didnt even tell us what was going on until quarter to one, just chilled in the rain for 3 hours only to be told nothing was going to happen,” wrote one poster.

Another put the event’s unfortunate climax down to poor planning. “It's not the weather that annoyed most people, its the fact that such a 'well organized' festival catering for that amount of people didn’t organize any contingencies for bad weather.”

If all this sounds familiar, well, it is.

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