Dirty Workx owner Andrew Minehan started his business in November before securing work at the Surf and Soul tour in February, featuring the Beach Boys and The Temptations.

The company employs 120 university students casually to work on labour projects.

“I’ve got a landscape business I’ve owned for three or four years and it got to the point [where I was wondering] do I put on one person or four people? I needed a floating workforce,” he said.

“It allows them to work whenever they want to work.”

Mr Minehan said Surf and Soul was the company’s first major contract, employing 23 people during a four-day period to set up equipment and lay tracks to prevent damage to Wade Park’s surface from trucks entering the site.

The contract was worth $7800, but the company has only been paid $5000 – almost $19,000 is owed to seven businesses.

“It wiped off the profit so that hurts,” Mr Minehan said. 

“We were a fair bit in the red from it.”

With promoter Southern Star Touring in voluntary administration, Mr Minehan questioned where it had spent Orange City Council’s $20,000 in sponsorship.

“They’ve left with their money and that’s a bit rich,” he said.

Meanwhile, face painter Bernadette Novotny was owed $400 from the Live Life Live event on January 21 after it was washed out in September. 

The event, hosted at Orange Civic Centre, featured The Superjesus’ star Sarah McLeod and Choirboys frontman Mark Gable.

Ms Novotny said promoter Event Trekkerz had since gone into administration.

Ms Novotny said she was not the hardest hit, with a sound company owed $5000 and food vendors having to throw out stock due to few people attending the event.

“What they’ve done is so wrong,” she said.

“It was pretty much a blame game – ‘we didn’t do well so you don’t get paid’ but that’s the risk they took.”

Despite the Live Life Live and Surf and Soul experiences, she hoped prospective organisers would not be discouraged from holding events in Orange.

“It’s a great thing for Orange, but they just need to make sure it’s really well covered and communicated,” she said.

Both Mr Minehan and Ms Novotny supported action proposed at Thursday night’s Orange City Council meeting not to hand over full sponsorship funds until businesses had been paid. 

Event Trekkerz spokesman Glen Thompson could not be reached for comment, while Southern Star’s Steve Scheri blamed the situation on poor attendance and did not feel the sponsorship money should be returned.