Ben Van Boekel on The Story Behind Caltowie COFU
In the lead-up to Caltowie Chilled Out ‘n’ Fired Up Music Festival 2026, founder Ben Van Boekel talks to us about Caltowie’s origins, raising awareness of men’s mental health struggles and his enthusiasm for live music.
Interview Emily Wilson // Image supplied
Nothing forges connection like music - this is what the folks who put together Caltowie’s Chilled Out ‘n’ Fired Up Music Festival quickly realised.
The one-day regional festival, affectionately dubbed Caltowie COFU for the sake of brevity, was first held in 2019 and is now looking at six straight years of banger tunes and joyful community-building. Caltowie, a small town in the Mid-North region of South Australia, possesses a total population of 122 people, according to a 2021 survey. But every year when the festival is held, people flock to the area in droves.
Over a chatty phone call, Ben Van Boekel, the festival’s founding member and main event director, explains that he was lamenting the decline of the region’s music scene when the idea for Caltowie COFU first came to him.
“The Mid-North always had lots of bands, back when I was younger,” he says. “Every weekend, you could go out and see a band. And it just seemed to die off. Pokies took over all the small little rooms in pubs that you could go play at.”
One day, he got together with a friend and started scheming. “I said, you know what, let’s get a truck, we’ve got enough equipment between all of us to run a show. Let’s light a big bonfire, and see how many people we can get there.”
He invited all of the local bands to come play. That first year, he estimates that they had between 450 and 500 people show up, bringing their own food to cook on a communal barbecue. “We had a fat time. And someone was like, ‘Hey, we should turn this into an event’?” The rest is history.
Now, Caltowie COFU is known for raising funds for mental health initiatives within the local region and destigmatising discussions of mental wellbeing.
Ben explains that a couple of his friends’ sons died by suicide while he was mulling over how to kickstart a festival in the area. He was shocked. “They were people that I wouldn’t have ever thought that would happen to. I was just sitting there thinking about how to help. I didn’t realise that it had gotten that bad.”
“I’d gone through my own mental health stuff, but I just rawdogged it,” he says, laughing good-naturedly. “I made it through by the skin of my teeth, you know?”
The festival as it exists now was created “through a need, through a response to this awful stuff that had happened. We’d seen an opportunity where we could actually make a difference.”
Growing up in the area, did he feel that there was lots of stigma attached to conversations about mental health?
“Absolutely,” he confirms.
READ MORE: James Reyne On Moving Forward and Not Looking Back
The first few years that the festival ran, they focused specifically on raising awareness about men’s mental health. “Because we were losing them people,” he explains. “You don’t want to talk to your mates about shit like that, it was just not something that we did.”
Since first organising Caltowie COFU, he has noticed positive changes across the community.
“I see it a lot in my friend group, that we talk a lot more often. We are being more vulnerable with each other.”
He sighs. “You know what boys are like. Boys very fucking rarely talk about their feelings.” But now, he says, even his father is starting to open up to him about how he feels. “The wider community seems to have dropped the walls a bit, you know what I mean? That’s exactly what we’re after. You can’t fix everything by yourself, sometimes you need a little bit of help. Just letting it out can really help.”
Though it appears to be a joyful endeavour, putting together a major music festival must be no easy feat. “You’ve got to be super organised,” Ben says, sounding slightly overwhelmed.
The live music sector in Australia is famously in an economically precarious place, especially when it comes to live music in regional areas.
“The money side of it is the thing that’s killing us,” he admits. “For the past three years, we’ve broken even and a little bit. Beer & BBQ, they take a fair chunk of their vendors’ profits. They run all the bars as well, so that’s where they’re making their money. Whereas me, I’m doing the community thing, so we’re not making any money off the bars.”
The festival is crucial for the area, economically and socially, “The whole community’s surviving off it. It keeps their projects going.”
And they’re managing to make it work?
“Just,” Ben says, laughing.
“You need to want to come out here,” Ben says. They have to put on a major show so that people can justify the two-and-a-half-hour drive and cost of petrol. “I’d love to charge more, but it’s all about making it affordable.”
He is looking forward to the next iteration of the festival, set to take place on Saturday, March 21st, 2026, with a lineup boasting Aussie rock legends Gyroscope and blues outfit 19-Twenty.
“It’s a great line-up,” he gushes.
The likes of Bodyjar, Jebediah, and Beddy Rays have also played the festival in the past. “To have them really embrace what the music festival is about, that was sick, that was bloody good.”
He can’t think of a better way to bring people together than through music, which he describes as the perfect medium for connection.
“Music’s always been food for the soul for me,” he says. “I love hearing that people have come to the music festival and are catching up with people they haven’t seen in years. People who have moved away from the community and are like, ‘Oh shit, there’s something happening in little old Caltowie. Let’s go check it out.’”
Caltowie Chilled Out ‘n’ Fired Up Music Festival takes place at Caltowie Memorial Oval, Caltowie, on Saturday 21 March. Tickets on sale via caltowiecofu.com.
