October 13, 2014
Crowd numbers were up at this year’s Colours Of Yarraman Festival, despite a reduction in the event’s official length from three days to two.
This year the Yarraman Community Council (YCC) elected to move the opening night of the annual art competition from Friday to Saturday to plump up Saturday’s roster.
The Festival’s main activities occurred in Errol Munt Park on Sunday morning, kicking off with a free community breakfast at 7:30am, sponsored by Yarraman’s Bendigo Community Bank and served up by bank staff.
Dozens of keen festival-goers queued up for a generous brekkie of sausages, eggs, bacon, beans and hash browns, all washed down with tea, coffee or orange juice.
The park was dotted with colourful stalls, many providing information about Yarraman’s key community groups and others offering food, drinks and bric-a-brac.
A large mechanical bull attracted the excited attention of many youngsters, while other visitors enjoyed interpretive walks offered by the Friends Of Yarraman Creek to show the large amount of work its volunteers have carried out over the last year restoring the town’s iconic waterway back to its natural condition.
While the work or clearing out invasive species and replanting with natives still has some way to go, spokesperson Susan Reilly said the work already undertaken had drawn an increasingly positive response from locals.
“We’re finding our younger residents, in particular, are starting to get a real sense of ownership of this project since we’ve begun talking about it in local schools,” she said.
“Incidents of vandalism in the park and creek area have dropped off a lot, and many of the children are now very proud of the platypus population we have here and are very protective towards it.”
Another initiative at this year’s festival which drew a lot of interest was replacing the former garden competition with a “Mobile Garden Competition” for gardens on wheels.
YCC president Murray McGee said he felt confident this unusual event would only grow in future, based on the interest the concept drew on its first outing.
- Related article: Big Crowd For Short Show
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Dale Has A Near Miss
Yarraman resident Dale Castle had a shock at 9:30am on Sunday when a limb from a gum tree at one corner of Errol Munt Park came crashing down on his car, which was parked underneath.
The fallen limb dented a rear panel on his car, damaged the rear window trim and scratched the paintwork.
“I was just glad this branch missed the children who were playing nearby,” Dale told southburnett.com.au, pointing to a nearby group of youngsters engaged in youth activities arranged by the Festival.
“You can always fix a car. But if this limb had hit some of the kids I don’t know what the results would have been.”
Dale said the gum tree had previously dropped limbs and had damaged a water tower on the adjoining Red Cross Hall and the building’s roof and walls in the past.
“We told Toowoomba Council about it and they lopped a few limbs, but this tree is still a problem,” he said.
Dale said his car was insured and he’ll be making a claim to get the damage repaired but he said he would consider approaching Toowoomba Regional Council to pay for his insurance excess.
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