Rest and rejuvenation is no longer a ‘luxury’ it is the new normal
BIGSOUND is back this September, which means Fortitude Valley is about to become one giant blur of panels, pints, interviews, wristbands, showcases and people yelling “we should definitely catch up properly” while walking in opposite directions.
It rules.
It is also exhausting.
And somewhere along the way, how we travel for things like this has changed. Thankfully.
Call it soft travel, call it refusing to run yourself into the ground, rest and rejuvenation are no longer luxuries. They’re the new normal.
That feels particularly relevant in music right now, where everyone is doing more with less across interviews, socials, video, reviews, news and whatever else lands before midday.
The answer isn’t to turn a three-day music conference into a wellness retreat, but being completely cooked by the end of it doesn’t work either.
Last BIGSOUND, we scrambled across the Valley trying to make BIG NOTER’s set, only to realise we’d properly cooked the schedule and were going to miss most of it.
We caught the final two songs.
Thank the sweet lord above we did, because it ended up being one of the best sets we saw all week.
But that brain-fried scramble, realising you should have been somewhere else ten minutes ago, then eventually stumbling back to a room that suddenly feels very, very small, is exactly why Happy is doing things a little differently this year.
We’re setting up at Rambla @ Berwick House for our BIGSOUND interviews and using it as our base for the week.
With BIGSOUND turning 25, there’ll be no shortage of meetings, showcases and general industry chaos filling the Valley. Berwick House just happens to be very good at giving you somewhere to come back down from all of it.
There are one and two-bedroom apartments with kitchens, internal laundries, Wi-Fi and private balconies, plus dedicated co-working spaces for whatever emails, edits and interview prep survive the day.
Then you shut the laptop.
Upstairs there’s a rooftop magnesium pool and spa overlooking the Valley, an infrared sauna, gym, yoga lawn, sun terraces and BBQ areas.
And this is where Berwick House gets the soft-travel thing better than most.
You’re still in Fortitude Valley. You’re still going to the shows and answering emails at unreasonable hours. There’s just somewhere to decompress in between.
A swim after an interview. A sauna before the next showcase. An actual breakfast. Half an hour on the balcony.
Small stuff, until you’ve been running around BIGSOUND for two days.
Then it starts looking a lot like salvation.
Brunswick Street, Chinatown and James Street are nearby too, with Howard Smith Wharves, Story Bridge and the New Farm Riverwalk within easy reach when you need out of the conference bubble for a minute.
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Soft travel isn’t about doing less. It’s about leaving enough space in the day that doing everything else doesn’t completely flatten you.
For artists, media and industry people heading into BIGSOUND, Berwick House is a pretty great setup: somewhere to work, somewhere to sleep and, crucially, somewhere to stop.
Work. Shows. Rest. Repeat.
I’ve done the hotel-bed office.
This year, give me the rooftop pool.
Take a look around Rambla@Berwick House before BIGSOUND rolls around.
