Controversy

In addition to high temperatures and long queues for water, throughout most of the festival, bottles were thrown around the crowd, mostly in a harmless manner. However, during the Sunday headline set of Guns N' Roses, one or more bottles landed on the stage. This caused problems after the band's lead singer, Axl Rose, slipped on the wet surface and a bottle hit bassist Tommy Stinson. Stinson threw his bass, accidentally hitting one of the cameramen, and left the stage. He returned after the song and apologized, but warned the crowd that if this activity continued, he would leave for good. There were some disturbances but they eventually died down, and later in the set Rose commented "I'm actually having quite a good time now! I couldn't have said that an hour ago!"

On the final night, fires were started by some festival goers and police were called, arresting twelve people. At around 4am, the fire brigade arrived to put out a large fire at the gold campsite. A number of people had taken the railings that had been used to separate the campsite area from the path and used them to barricade the road to prevent the fire engines from reaching the main fire. At this point a number of police assembled in riot gear, and proceeded to stop the troublemakers. The festival director, Stuart Galbraith, posted a message on the official website stating that "About 150 people spoiled the end of what had been a great weekend for over 75,000 of us." 

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