Festival

Statistics from Tourism and Events Queensland unveil a fresh milestone for the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers in total attendance, with a record-breaking figure of 417,517 - an impressive 14 per cent surge compared to the 2022 results.

After months of planning by the Nhill Karen Community, our town really came to life on Saturday with the celebration of the Karen New Year. There were over 1,000 in attendance travelling from around Victoria and some even from interstate.

Tony Frohloff has been growing giant pumpkins in Minden, Queensland for years ... This year, he picked his pumpkin a week ago, hoping it wouldn’t lose too much weight before the weighing ... It came in at 358.5kg and won him the winning title and first prize money of $1100.

Glyn Rees. One of the region’s premier events, the annual Allora Heritage Weekend, will see the Allora Showgrounds host a two-day feast of historical machinery displays and activity on Australia Day weekend, January 27th and 28th. Vintage vehicle and machinery enthusiasts from around the nation will again have the opportunity to take to the many roads leading to Allora and its picturesque showgrounds.

Fred Beck grew pumpkins in the 1920s on Mount Pleasant, Woodenbong. Mr Beck’s grandson, David Smith said when the pumpkins were ripe they were carted to the pigsty ...This year Lillian Cox ... has cracked the 300kg mark ...

Elvis has left the building! Around 25,000 Elvis fans donned their bejeweled jumpsuits, poodle skirts and pompadour wigs to shake rattle and roll the week away in Parkes, New South Wales, for the 2024 Parkes Elvis Festival.

A Saturday afternoon party, nothing out of the ordinary . . . except it was. The first of its kind in Donald, a community Christmas party – all welcome, bring a plate.

Crowds packed Berridge Park for Denmark’s Christmas festival, parade and Carols by Candlelight on Saturday evening. Organiser Simone Klose said the event was a resounding success with a bigger than expected turnout of locals and holidaymakers.

Many countries from around the world celebrate the beginning of the New Year at different times, in many different ways for many different reasons. So, it is in our Karen Community! Since coming to Nhill in 2010, we, the Karen have continued to celebrate our New Year in the traditional way, on the first day of Pyathoe, which is the tenth month in the traditional Burmese calendar.

Over 50 years ago, in 1972 Colin Ubergang acquired the Versatile Tractor Company distributorship in Australia ... To mark the 50 Year anniversary of the first Versatile Tractor in Australia a celebration will be held at next year’s Allora Heritage Weekend on 27 and 28 January.

Well-known local artists Kerry and Malcolm Nicholson have taken out the top award at Sheffield’s International Mural Fest 2023 held this month in Tasmania. Kerry and Malcolm won the Inder Prize People’s Choice Award with their mural "The Spirit of Adventure".

John Leadbeatter has been growing giant pumpkins for so long he can’t remember when he started. He has several pumpkin patches in his garden in Rukenvale … to increase the chances of growing the heaviest pumpkin to enter at the Summerland Giant Pumpkin and Watermelon Festival...

Honor Auchinleck. The Man From Snowy River Bush Festival Elyne Mitchell Photo Story Awards hopes that you will find great pleasure in creating your entries for the 2024 Awards ... Elyne was a great admirer of A B (‘Banjo’) Paterson. As she was the inaugural Patron of the Bush Festival, it seems fitting that we use a theme that complements both Elyne’s and Banjo’s legacies.

Candece Jay. Donald’s Soldier’s Memorial Park was awash with colour as a gathering began to take shape last Saturday, October 28. Community came together to celebrate one of Australia’s most enduring narratives: migration and mateship, and Donald celebrated well; as multicultural locals came out in force to share food and dance and words.

The Maldon Folk Festival returns this weekend, with a sensational program that features performers from across Australia, the US and England ... Where to start?!  Let’s begin with Gina Jefferey, who must surely be one of the queens of country music.

The Festival of Small Halls stopped in at Pilton Soldiers Memorial Hall, performing in front of a big crowd. Lee ann Weekes from down the road at West Haldon opened the show. She was followed by Brisbane-based cellist Monique Clare and Canadian musician Shane Pendergast.

The stunning beauty of Grafton’s famous jacaranda trees is being captured forever on canvas by internationally acclaimed South Korean artist Kim Chang Han, who is visiting the Clarence Valley for the 2023 Grafton Jacaranda Festival … Mr Han said painting is one of his greatest enjoyments in life…

Hundreds of admiring spectators gathered beneath the glowing purple petals of the jacaranda trees in See Park, Grafton ... for the opening night of Illuminate Jacaranda ... “It was a stunning way to show off the beauty of the jacaranda trees”: Cherie Goodwin.

Organisers of the all-new Bundanoon Folk Festival this November 24-26 say it’s heart-warming to see the village community rally to lend their time and skills to bring the Festival to life ... The vision is to build an annual Folk Festival unique to Bundanoon, that connects and showcases the village, supports local businesses, and creates gigs for regional artists along with crowd-pleasing national talent. Among fun live performances will be music, song and spoken word.

It’s the Byron Bay Film Festival, so there's always going to be  surf  films ... Topping the bill is Emmy-winning filmmaker Paul Taublieb’s documentary Ground Swell: The Other Side of Fear, which poses the question: what prompts big wave surfers to travel the globe to find absurdly colossal waves to throw themselves into, tackling natural forces in a contest that any rational human would see as insane?