Here’s Your 'What I Did for Summer’ O Week Cheat Sheet

O Week conversations can be so dry, man. Most of the first week at university is going to be spent avoiding that girl who likes showing photos of her cats or that kid from Ballina who complains that his summer was ruined by all the sharks off the NSW coast. But let’s face it, your summer probably wasn’t much better. No one gives a shit if you were chilling on your daddy’s yacht down in Torquay the whole time, and you’re not gonna impress that cute kid in biology class by talking about getting high during the midnight shift at Coles. You need to fake it and tell everyone you did some cool shit.

Here’s the Noisey guide to cheating your way through O Week.

The Adelaide Laneway is the best because it’s small, like when Laneway was outside St Jerome’s next to a dumpster. Plus, it’s the first one in Australia and Grimes. OMG! GRIMES! She finished her set with “Kill V. Maim”, which is everyone's favourite song off her new album. A guy from New Zealand got evicted – apparently he’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra's brother. He jumped in the crowd during his set and kissed a cop’s gun. The cop got real mad and tried to arrest him, then Laneway banned him from playing the other festivals. Crazy!

Oh man, Meredith was so sick. Father John Misty and Thurston Moore; it was all about the songwriters this year. That Father John Misty song where he sings about lifting up his wife's wedding dress that someone was probably murdered in is so good. Thurston didn’t play any Sonic Youth songs, but that’s cool. After the stuff with Kim it would probably be a bit weird hearing those songs anyway. There’s also this bar called The Pink Flamingo, which is a Meredith institution. A bunch of people hired Flamingo suits and wore them on the last night. It was hilarious.

It’s so hard NOT to do NYE in Sydney – but it’s kind of the same every year and this year there was this sick party in Wollongong. Siberia Records and Young Turks, who rep FKA Twigs, Waves and The xx, threw a massive party and they’d promised a special guest DJ. Jamie xx was in town for Falls Festival and there were pretty solid rumours that it might be him. There were some crazy bushfires in the area around Christmas that made it a bit risky to drive, but it was so worth it.

You could pay an extra $55 and have this fancy meal. All the Melbourne hipsters thought it was real cheap. Cut Copy made some music that was supposed to make the food taste differently or something and there was lots of talk about being stimulated by food; it was pretty fun. The meal finished just in time to catch Kate Tempest go on a massive rant about poverty and corruption in the UK. She was mad about all the banks fucking everyone over and the Tory government always shitting on the poor. Most people were like, ‘That sounds like the Abbott/Turnbull government here.’

If you remember Rainbow then you didn’t do it right. Apparently the cops arrested 40 people for drug driving and they are trying to stop the festival next year, but who knows. The music went for days; it’s like Australia’s Burning Man. There were old hippies making arts and crafts and lots of people dressed in sequins and face paint. And it’s all about sustainability too, so there was hardly any rubbish around. People really respect one another, you know.

New Year’s Eve ended at 10.30pm on New Year’s Day when Four Tet played a super glitchy set and buzzed everyone out. LTEC is such a chill festival. Heaps of people are hung over from NYE and just relax in the Werribee Mansion gardens, which are real nice if you’re into flowers and architecture. There’s a good hedge to crash behind if you need a power nap. Daniel Avery ended his set by lighting up massive fires and there was this surreal moment when everyone just came together and had a massive group hug.

What's up with all the people ODing at Stereosonic? Fuckin’ tragic. Major Lazer brought the party though; Diplo knows how to work the crowd into a frenzy. They dropped that track "Lean On", which was number 3 on the Triple J Hottest 100. DJ Snake was there too, but it was impossible to see him. It would have been so good if Diplo and Bieber did that "Where Are Ü Now" song. Apparently some dude tried changing the Peking Duk Wikipedia to say he was their brother so he could get backstage, but the security guard had read about a guy doing that in Melbourne and busted him.

Nick Fulton saw all the bands at all the festivals this summer. Follow him @nick__fulton