The festival, now in its 35th year, started on Thursday and wrapped up on Sunday with the last performance - tagged Final Words - finishing at 6.30pm.

Longtime patrons know the festival is no stranger to rainy weather but this year, publicity officer Nick Hartgerink said it actually made people happy.

"If anything it lifted everybody's spirits because they're so happy to see the rain after the month that we've had, particularly here on the South Coast," Mr Hartgerink said.

"The feedback I'm getting from around the place is that it's much better than last year when it was 35 degrees."

The fires on the South Coast was very much on the minds of both bands and festivalgoers, with a fundraiser for the Cobargo community - which has its own iconic folk festival - raising $5000.

"There was a letter writing hub set up with an invitation for festival patrons to send their messages of support, particularly to the South Coast bushfire victims," Mr Hartgerink said.

"It seems to have been very popular, there's been lots of people lining up to write letters and little notes.

"There are a lot of people who come from the South Coast to this festival and a lot of our volunteers come from the South Coast as well."

Mr Hartgerink said some bands even performed freshly written songs about the recent bushfire crisis.

"One of the bands, a local band called The Water Runners, they wrote a song called The End of the Year about New Year's Eve at Lake Conjola.

"It's a fantastic song and that went down really well - people just loved the sentiment in that."

While he said it would take a few days to calculate the numbers of people through the festival gates, Mr Hartgerink said the weather probably did lead to a small drop in ticket sales.

"Anecdotally the rain probably cost us a few walk-ups," he said.

"Numbers have been slightly down, I would say, because you get walk-ups on Saturday and Sunday. People who are looking for something to do for the day and haven't bought a four-day pass."

But he said the people who did go to the festival had a great time - and they weren't just the hardcore folkies either.

"Last night, I was watching [indie-folk band] Elephant Sessions and the mosh pit, I guess you could call it, it could have easily been a show at Waves," Mr Hartgerink said.

"It was lots of young people in their late teens and early 20s dancing away to this pretty wild Scottish band."