EDITORIAL
AROUND kitchen tables and perhaps in some council chambers across the country there will be people meeting, thrashing out ideas.
Pieces of paper will be handed out left, right and centre as suggestions are put forward, embraced, rejected, re-worked, and major questions like: "Will we have enough toilets?" will be asked.
These are the committees that are bringing together the festivals for the year.
We're not talking any festivals though - the festivals based on vegetables and fruit.
Think the Chinchilla Melon Festival, the Crookwell Potato Festival, the Thorpdale Potato Festival, the National Cherry Festival (Young), the Citrus Festival (Adelaide), the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival, Donnybrook Apple Festival, the Meeniyan Garlic Festival and the Truffle Kerfuffle (Manjimup), to name but a few.
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Australia has a great tradition of such festivals in regional areas, highlighting the agricultural history and modern links to a particular crop.
They are generally full of colour, fun, food, music and quite often a parade down the main street.
The modern marketing inclination is to phrase such things as “food and wine” festivals or “gourmet weekends” which may be more appealing to urban travellers and Instagram-worthy, with less likelihood of encountering someone dressed as a giant carrot.
But there’s a down-to-earth charm about the old school veg or fruit festival.
Hinging an entire event around one vegetable, fruit or nut may seem like a gamble but there are rewards to be had.
In fact, if the crop is a little left of field, all the better.
It makes it more iconic and different to what everyone else is doing, and therefore of more media interest.
As far as is known, celery, carambola, lychees and broccoli are all yet to be claimed for a town’s central festival item.
Is your town a festival town?
If not, perhaps there’s an opportunity to be embraced, not just to support growers in the area but to inject some goodwill and revenue into the town.