February 4, 2021
The South Burnett’s Wine and Food In The Park Festival will not be held this year.
On Wednesday night – in the face of continuing uncertainty over COVID-19 – organisers voted to postpone the festival, which is held in Kingaroy’s Memorial Park, until March next year.
The postponement is the second time the festival hasn’t been run due to pandemic concerns.
“January’s lockdown of Brisbane and Queensland’s borders after a COVID-19 outbreak shows how rapidly the situation can change,” president Dafyd Martindale said.
“We care about the health and well-being of everybody who comes to the festival.
“Wine and Food draws visitors from all over south-east Queensland, and at the moment we feel the situation still poses too many potential risks for festival-goers.
“However, by next year we hope the vaccination roll-out will have brought a lot more certainty to Australia.
“So we’ve reluctantly taken the decision to postpone the festival another year, but we hope to be back bigger and better than ever in 2022.”
The cancellation is the latest to occur in the South Burnett so far this year.
Several popular events – such as the Boondooma Yellowbelly, the 2021 Cooyar Show, Ironpot’s Reef’n Beef, the Wondai Sprints and the Nanango Stamp Fair have also announced they have been cancelled or postponed, all for similar reasons.
Others – such as the Murgon Show – have announced they will be running in a reduced format this year due to COVID-19 restrictions.
[Disclosure: Dafyd Martindale is CEO of South Burnett Online]
How on earth can any event organiser even consider the risk of immediate financial losses when we have such skittery Premiers as we have now? They will all, with the exception of NSW, shut down at the drop of a hat without any apparent reasoning.
Take W.A. for example, one case in the whole State and everything is SHUT. Even when the vaccine comes on stream it will not stop the COVID and we are going to have to live with the petulant actions of our premiers as well!
Life is gonna be dull! But then we are not talking about football or tennis or anything else that attracts all the celebrities are we?