CHECK OUT THE AMAZING PHOTOS FROM THE DAY HERE.

What I really enjoy of a hot summer day on Sydney Harbour is being a microscopic cog in Nick Cave’s catastrophic plan, as designed and directed by his red right hand. You know? Sorry, I mean going along to All Tomorrow’s Parties. For future, note to self: morning cloud cover does not mean you don’t need sunscreen. We all forgot this, and so many hundreds of people were walking around in the evening with “festival eyes”, where their sunglasses had been, now outlined by weapons’ grade sunburn. In all, a small price to pay in traumatised skin cells.

It’s lovely taking a ferry across the harbour in the morning, giving Melbournians in attendance a crash course in Sydney nautical landmarks while hoping you are pointing at the right thing.

“And there’s Goat Island.”

“Where are the goats?”

“There aren’t any.”

“I seeeee.”

We arrive under clouds threatening rain, and what turns out to be very disappointingly, the Stabs are just about finished their set. This band is so good. The singer howls in some magnificent agony (“Hands! Feets! Face! Glands!”), while the drummer pounds his kit, honestly, harder then almost anyone I’ve ever seen – so much so that he flinches a bit every time he hits the snare. The effect is kind of unnerving and completely enthralling at the same time. Guitars squall and careen wildly, there is a lot of back-up screaming and general clatter in a more screwed up, Scientist-ish way; like something you’d find on a 1970s exploitation road movie soundtrack which featured a lot of murders. Heady stuff to be witnessing in broad, midday light.

We need beers.

Well, would you like to choose perhaps from a selection of beers on tap, or maybe just a few of these bottled varieties at staggeringly normal prices? Yes, good then. What about a coffee, do you need one of those? Lord, yes. No problem. I know also, that you are hungry. So, we got Mexican, Moroccan, Chinese. How about a brownie? Do you want a cookie? Water? We got water. And also, we’ve got small queues. At all times. Dear Big Day Out: you fucking suck.

From where we are, we can see Bridezilla at a distance doing their thing sweetly for a burgeoning crowd, as their set floats over the water and greets the new arrivals. Daisy on violin appears to pull off a complete backbend while keeping her feet on the floor and playing her part the whole time. It’s bad enough being the youngest people in the whole place, do you have to make us feel so, so old and not flexible? We love them for it.

Hoss next take the stage, after the guitar tech had given us a wonderful Slash impersonation for a good ten minutes. Hoss is dirty and mean, throwing around that Rocks era Aerosmith thing in the best possible short, sharp and brutal way, and inspiring the first of what will be increasingly epic pangs of – œ90s nostalgia (particularly for me, of seeing them playing shows with Crow at the dear departed Globe in Newtown. Aah.)

Everyone knows that Afrirampo is the thing to be at today. The program notes proclaiming them the “one of the two greatest live show ever at ATP” haven’t helped stem the tide. This hyperbole turns out to be almost true, other than that they are probably the greatest live show to ever play ATP. Two girls from Japan (red dress excellent), raise a toast to us and we to them, and they lead us in a chant: “We want to party, at Nick Cave’s house in Melbourne, with family!” We sure do! This goes on a while, building to a little frenzy of screaming indecipherable words before launching into some chaotically charged rock and roll, which put beaming grins on everyone’s face, and more to the point, showcased some deeply impressive chops. Meg White, you’re nothing.

By now the sun is beating unholy hell onto our backs, and it is at this moment when we must give props to the stubbornness of old goths, whose later life commitment to fashion requires the wearing of dark wool three piece suits and ties, even in the face of 35 degree heat – without breaking a sweat. Somehow. Weird.

Harmonia are cueing their machines, and something about an outdoor setting like this is not quite conducive to what sounds to me like claustrophobia (our companion’s three word review here is, “new age bookshop.”) I get a stern taking down for this from a friend most enamoured with the Krautrock, so my feeling is that if you like this kind of thing, Harmonia were truly excellent this day. I think I lost patience on account of my third degree burns.

The crowd is really filling fast for the Laughing Clowns. Ed Kuepper had a really good day, or so one might surmise from the look on his face, other than that one odd remark about being “stuck down here with the KISS army” (this is a problem?).

The Laughing Clowns are not an easy listen, a little like the Dirty Three, only with much, much more saxophone (think of Bill Pullman’s scene in the jazz club in Lost Highway, now add more saxophone), but their overall effect is hypnotising. The crowd largely consisting of people who have waited a lot of years to see this, goes absolutely crazy at the end, they were eternally yours.

(Here I will tell you that I did not run around like an idiot in order to see everything for roughly ten minutes a piece so as to able to pass this onto you, dear reader. Also, do you remember how hot it was this weekend? Crackling in a frying pan we were! Anyway! Here I should like to give thanks for the geniuses who mixed the sound at ATP – it was crystal on every stage, and particularly the low end and percussion which is so often just a low dirge in a festival setting, but was absolutely clear. Considering that Cockatoo Island is essentially a cavernous concrete pit, this is no small feat. There was no interference floating across from other stages either, another great, great moment of planning. Thank you! We want a million of your babies.)

Spiritualized began their set of transcendental psychedelia with a tripped-out cover of Amazing Grace, which coupled with a cooling of the afternoon via sea breeze, was a pretty blissed-out experience for everyone. Two back up soul singers swayed as groovily as possible to a white rock band from space and added their lovely pipes to another unexpected cover, of Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love.

ATP was kind of ruinous as a festival – where else will you ever be able to dangle your feet off a jetty overlooking the city, drinking a cold beer as the sounds The Necks swirled beautifully around you at sundown? We even lay on the grass a while during their set of unbroken improv, and people stepped gently over us – anywhere else and it would have been stomped on the spleen, most like by the endless stream of people coming from all sides of the island to see The Saints.

As befits the frontman of what is pretty well now universally agreed to be the world’s first punk outfit, a trim and terrific looking Chris Bailey takes to the stage in a hoody. He can do whatever he wants, and so delights in teaming this with red checked pants, while magnificently flaunting on-stage smoking and twirling around with Robert Smith-ish dance moves (but we know who came first.) Some of the old people here are nearly crying, they’re so happy. I can’t say I ever thought a day would come when I could see this band either, so I can’t imagine what the deluge of happy memories this super-charged set brought forth for people who where there the first time must have felt like.

“You know, today you’ve got holiday houses, and nice cars and designer Swedish furniture,” Chris Bailey says, deftly drawing the distinction between 1976 and 2009, “so you might not quite relate to this now, it’s about growing up in Brisbane in the – œ70s,” and so the Saints tore through all three and a half minutes of I’m Stranded, during which I would be very hard pressed to remember a time when I was prouder to be an Australian.

There is a minor kerfuffle when we find that Passenger of Shit’s set was moved around and alas we have missed our chance to see some “erotic SPEEDCORE happy TERRORCORE/ HARDCORE GABBA / trendy fuckwit breakcore tamborine core,” to ascertain if or not this was actual music (though a Sunday attendee reports that it most definitely was, mixed in with schmaltzy – œ50s romance tunes between bouts of hideous noise, as thoroughly enjoyed in its entirety by one Mr Nick Cave, and several disgruntled cops.)

And at last the time as come for the father of our feast, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The stage is set and for the first time, the night permits a light show, which is blowing everyone’s minds. There’s Warren Ellis, looking straight in off the set of The Proposition with that bushranger’s beard of his, and double the drummers: I mean, why the hell not?

Nick Cave is a frightening man. Considering that we are standing on the very spot where all manner of unseemly and horrible things were done by men unto one another (as convicts, prisoners and essentially slaves), there’s no escaping the feeling of inhabiting a Russell Drysdale painting, with the Bad Seeds rendering the nightmarish, surrealist backdrops for Cave’s degenerate characters to inhabit. Though, he is not above making fun of himself when fluffing the words to Red Right Hand (“You’ll see him in your nightmares – oh, no you won’t. Already did that once”) which deflates his creepy demeanor for a moment. He puts that right with an incendiary version of Tupelo.

And I know that it would have been really corny and obvious – on what had become a clear and lovely Sydney evening with us stranded on an island with the city shining in the distance – to have broken out The Ship Song. But damn, I would have loved to have heard that song. This is not complaint though really, as we were spoiled by a most brilliant day, which would have reminded anyone in attendance just exactly how world-beating Australian music has been, and continues to be.

So we filled out as Fuck Buttons drifted over our heads, sated on a day where I saw not one Southern Cross tattoo, not one Australian flag, not one punch to anyone else’s head. No one vomited in front of me, or pushed me in the back down the front of the stage, and most wonderfully of all, no one held their fucking mobile in front of my face the whole time. Imagine that – actually experiencing something, as it’s happening to you!

And though the Nick Cave of the Birthday Party might have baulked at such genteel behaviour, I say thank you old people, for proving that age shall not weary you. For giving us faith in never having to grow up square and grow out of pigtails, or long unkempt hair, or wayfarers, or sharp cut suits, or if you have to, those old school Mambo shirts. Whatever makes you happy, that’s ok with us. Let’s always look forward to all tomorrow’s parties.