Punters headed to see Empire Of The Sun, Bag Raiders, Miami Horror and more at the first Groovin’ the Moo festival for 2010 in Bendigo faced three hour queues and a poor festival layout, according to reports. Responding to the criticism of the festival, Groovin the Moo promoter Steve Halpin has emailed punters to apologise for the mismanagement.

According to his email, the festival organisers have “spent the last 2 days reviewing the situation and essentially our plans for the entrance were based on previous years’ arrival patterns. These patterns of arrival have been consistent across all our festivals for the past 5 years. As such we did not anticipate such a large number of people arriving at midday. We were caught short, to say the least.”

However the festival estimates that about 90% of the crowd arrived by 12.30 and they admit that “the peak waiting time [of] over 3 hours” was “unacceptable”. The festival promises that these delays will “NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN”.

The lack of toilets in available in the bar section has been explained as a condition of licensing police, who “insisted that all toilets and food stalls [were set up outside the bar] to force people to leave the licensed area”. The festival has also promised to “push very hard to change this” licensing condition for the festival’s return in 2011.

The festival’s security provider will be busy looking for new work as the Groovin The Moo team have declared that they will be looking for a different security firm next year, specifying that they need security personnel “who know how to manage a festival crowd…”

Halpin’s letter concludes; “I understand and respect [the] criticism and we want to assure [punters] that these delays were not due to lack of care or trying to cut corners. It does not reflect the hard work and professionalism of everyone at GTM.”

triple j is reporting that staff numbers at main gate entry in Maitland and Canberra this weekend have been doubled to prevent a repeat of the situation in Bendigo.