A crowd approaching the venue limit of 1000 attended performances by 28 international, interstate and local acts across four stages at the University of Wollongong on Saturday.

The crowd was mixed, with 20-somethings well represented. 

Organiser Jeb Taylor described the atmosphere as ‘‘friendly and fairly chilled’’ and said, while final numbers were still being tallied, the event appeared to have been financially viable.

‘‘It looks like we’ve done well enough to do it again,’’ Mr Taylor said. 

Outside of the folk scene, live music festivals have struggled to gain traction in Wollongong in recent history. 

The ambitious Stacked Music Festival, involving 30 Illawarra bands at Wollongong’s City Diggers over three days, was not repeated after an innagural 2012 showing.

This followed a failed bid at a retro music festival, Rewind, in 2011 and the aborted Play Day of 2009, which was to be headlined by Evermore.

Mr Taylor said he The Farmer and the Owl’s co-organiser Ben Tillman - both long-time band bookers in the region - had set out to create a manageable, ‘‘boutique’’ inaugural event with room to grow.

‘‘With some of the other festivals that haven’t [been repeated] in Wollongong, I think they’ve tried to be too big, too soon,’’ he said. 

‘‘The good thing about the uni is we do have a fair bit of room to expand the parameters of what we do there, so depending on what artists we can get, it would be good to build it into something that gets gradually bigger.’’

Mr Tillman said Wollongong’s relatively small population made building a successful festival challenging, but the pursuit was a worthwhile one. ‘‘Nearly every other major centre has a festival of some sort,’’ he said.  

‘‘It gives [visiting] bands a chance to play to people they wouldn’t [attract] if it were just their show, and it gives local bands the chance to do something a bit different and play with bigger touring bands.’’

Festival-goers enjoyed strong performances on Saturday by blues balladeers Harmony; local acts Shining Bird, Mother and Son and The Walking Who; Sydney quartet Day Ravies and headliners The Drones, Dappled Cities and the Laurels among others.