This article examines Townsville’s distinctiveness as a site for festivals which looked to the Pacific region in presenting arts and culture. Two festivals – the Townsville Pacific Festival (1970-1991), a ten-day celebration of arts and culture in northern Australia that ran for over two decades, and the fifth Festival of Pacific Arts (1988) – made their home in Townsville. In placing these two very different festivals side by side, we draw attention to the distinctive flavour of engagement with arts and culture prosecuted in Townsville in the 1970s and 1980s. Leading from the north, the celebration of “high art” alongside Indigenous cultural heritage of the region points to the role of Australia’s north in reorienting the focus of Australian cultural life. In this article, we introduce the two festivals, which, while being independent of one another, demonstrate a shared aspiration for defining far north Queensland as a site of diverse cultural practice. Each festival negotiated the Australian arts landscape represented by government departments and arts bodies including the Australia Council for the Arts and Musica Viva, but also created a distinctly localised leadership that guided the priorities of the Townsville Pacific Festival and the 5th Festival of Pacific Arts.