March in Bathurst NSW saw the first Newton 's Playground Festival - held on the top of Mount Panorama . This being the latest in an already crowded outdoor youth festival calendar, the organisers were ready to do something a bit different. So as Bathurst is well known for its high adrenaline sport, what to do better to do than have a few high-speed World Cups.

On the program we saw the World Cup Street Luge, World Cup Speedboard, BMX Big Air Dirt Dance, Giant Skateboard Slalom, Buttboard, Mountain Bike Dual Slalom just to mention a few events. This attracted competitors from all over the globe and truly made Newton 's Playground an international Festival.

As far as the Rock was concerned the line up wasn't shabby at all. Acts included the likes of Grinspoon, Gyroscope, MM9, Tonk, The Tenants, Urthboy, Choas Maths and many more. On the DJ front you could hear Kid Kenobi, MC Shureshock, Funky Punks - just to name a few.

Also appearing on stage was a great performance from the German HK Audio Cohedra. NSW-based AV company, BE Productions, won the contract to supply all the audio for the event. To supplement their inventory, BE got a bit of help from True Sound Productions in Queensland .

The system used was a twelve-a-side Cohedra with twenty-four CDR-210s. CT-115s were used for near field. Onstage monitoring consisted of five sends of CT-115s, run with DSM-2060 controllers. For side fill they used CT-112s with 2 x 18" subs.

For stage manager David Williams, it was the first time he had used HK Audio: "Wow! I'm impressed. what a great system", remarked David, "It was prefect for this event. I would highly recommend it on stages like this", he continued. David has also worked on Homebake, Big Day Out as well as many other Festivals, stage managing at them all.

Marc Mcavoy from BE Productions - after working a very hard week - stated: "Once again, HK delivers for us. I just love this stuff".