the first time in its 15-year history due to rain
March 3, 2013
South Burnett Events Inc, the organising committee for the annual South Burnett Wine and Food in the Park Festival, announced this afternoon the festival will not be going ahead in Kingaroy this year due to the weather.
It’s the first time in its 15-year history the Festival has been cancelled.
The festival’s organising committee said today they’d been closely monitoring the condition of Memorial Park ever since the Australia Day weekend, when floods first inundated the park.
They had hoped the venue could dry out in time for Saturday’s event.
But after an additional 183mm of rain fell in February, this weekend’s latest 93mm downpour proved too much.
“We’re very sad to announce that Wine & Food In The Park has become another victim of the 2013 floods,” a committee spokesman said this afternoon.
He said in arriving at the decision the committee had considered finding an alternate venue for the festival, as well as postponing the event to another time in the year.
But the committee felt no other venues would have been suitable, either because of the current condition of their own grounds or because they were unable to meet the Festival’s large power requirements.
And rescheduling had to be ruled out because any suitable new date would put the Festival in conflict with other established events, such as the Kingaroy Show, Burrandowan Picnic Races or the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival.
“In the end – taking current weather forecasts into consideration and after looking carefully at all other options – we felt we had no choice except to cancel the 2013 Festival and turn our attention to creating a bigger, much better event in 2014,” the spokesman said.
He said the committee knew the decision would disappoint many people but hoped the public would understand it was only made with the greatest reluctance.
“Wine & Food In The Park has received tremendous support from the community every year,” he said.
“Our major sponsors – Downer-EDI Mining, the South Burnett Regional Council, Ergon and Stanwell – have been very supportive of this decision.
“So have many smaller sponsors such as King Truss, First Avenue Machinery, South Burnett Hire and Sales, Ken Mills Toyota, Tony Cavanagh, Jumping Beans Children’s Community, the Carrollee and Commercial Hotels, the Lions and Rotary Clubs, Accents Restaurant and the SES, all of whom play important roles in helping to bring the Festival together.
“It takes roughly nine months of every year to organise each Wine & Food In The Park.
“So while this decision means we’ve all burned up a lot of time and money for nothing, we hope a bigger and better 2014 come-back Festival will make up for everything.
“We greatly appreciate the messages of understanding we’ve been receiving since we made the announcement.”
