"Kyogle is on the rainforest's doorstep, Kyogle has numerous tourist attractions and lots of  entertainment and accommodation options."

FESTIVAL WRAP UP

View from the President¹s Desk

The weather was perfect, the activities were varied, the organisation went smoothly and Kyogle people had a great time! Fairymount Festival 2000 was a great event and a credit to the hard-working, tireless committee members.
The Photographic Competition, organised by the Kyogle Camera Club, attracted a variety of entries from all over NSW and Victoria. It was interesting to see how different photographers interpreted the competition theme of ³Forests and Fables².
The Festival Banquet this year took the form of a theatre restaurant production of ³Robin the Hood². What a great night! Delicious food, an audience that was buzzing and really got into the spirit of things, booing and cheering with gusto at the appropriate times, and a FABULOUS cast who played up to the audience all night!
The Family Fun Day held at Anzac Park was well attended and enjoyed by all. The Pet Show went well and the Egg Throwing Competition had everyone enthralled! Mind you, cleaning the netball court afterwards was a bit tedious!
The traditional Monday night Variety Night was back in the programme after quite a few people grumbled about its absence in recent festivals. Where were they all on Monday night? Certainly not at the Memorial Hall where a variety of singers and dancers entertained the small number of people who attended. The standard of the performers was extremely high and very professional ­ and deserving of a bigger audience.
>From all reports, the golfers had an enjoyable day on Thursday ­ they certainly looked like they were enjoying themselves in the clubhouse afterwards!
And everyone went ballistic on Crazy Day! It was wonderful to see the business houses getting into the spirit of things, dressing up and decorating their windows; the school children had a fabulous time viewing all the displays, especially the wonderful recycled garden in the hospital!
The Reverse Garbage Sculpture Competition only attracted entries from St Brigid¹s and Rukenvale Schools but the judges were impressed with the creativity and the use of items which would normally be thrown away. Hopefully, a few more schools in the district will enter next year.
And what can I say about Saturday? There was a wonderful feeling in the town, the entertainment on the main stage was varied, professional and got the audience dancing. The doof tent was well-attended by teenagers and there was a variety of market stalls for everyone to enjoy, the parade was terrific and the Hell on Hooves Bull riding Spectacular was a real thriller!
Thank you to the committee for organising such a wonderful festival ­ John ³Motormouth McDrivel² McDowall, and his wonderful offsider, Kay, for all the organising of sponsors, bull-ride bar, entertainment, and a thousand other things that require organising for a festival (and he still had time to be the fairy in ³Robin the Hood² and play music for it as well!).
Lindsay and Stacey Felton should be thanked for the magnificent bull-ride spectacular; Carol Harris for keeping g a close eye on the books (you are a very well-organised Treasurer); Betty Stubbins, for working tirelessly organising the Super Raffle, the Crazy Day judging, marshalling of the floats and anything else that needed doing, and Suzie Coulston for organising the doof tent and children¹s Fancy Dress party.
Special thanks to the SES who, as always, did a great job on Saturday helping to set up the main stage, organising road blocks, helping with security and then cleaning up the street after the revellers had gone home early Sunday morning.
There is, of course, a huge thank you to the major sponsors: The Commercial Hotel, TKN, Kyogle Council, Brown and Hurley, Sarina Russo Job Access, Mitre 10, Norply, Greenmountain Meat and Norco Rural Stores ­ your support was vital in helping get this festival off the ground. Thank you also to all other businesses and individuals (too numerous to mention  here but who appear on the Festival Programme ­ keep it as a souvenir and support those people) whose support ensured the success of the festival.
This year¹s festival was a credit to the seven hardworking people who made up the committee. We would like to see the festival continue but it certainly won¹t unless more people come forward and take a little bit of responsibility for some of the events.
The ³post mortem² meeting and AGM will be held on Monday, August 7, Homestead Room, Commercial Hotel at 7pm. We would like as many schools, sporting clubs, service clubs and business house representatives as possible, not only to make suggestions for improvements, but to be on the committee and help with organisation of events. If the committee has two or three people organising only one event each, the workload on individual members would be lighter, and the festival would be even better!
Tina Pisasale


FESTIVAL FOLLIES
This year's Fairymount Festival may yet be the recipient of record amounts of the most sincere flattery there is ­ imitation! Many people have complimentary things to say about the festival each year, but the rumour mill currently has steam coming off its bearings with tales of copycat events being planned all over, none so inspiring as a ­ ³now all the hard construction work is done, let¹s put on a bullride in the open air arena the Fairymount Festival crew built² ­ type of show from some of the brighter citizens.
Even an average performer like Col Finley re-invented himself as Col ³Fairymount² Finley and packed in four times as many people as he usually does for the highly creative crew at the Bottom, clearly demonstrating the prestige of the premier event on Kyogle's social calendar and in times of great uncertainty for the Dairy industry, showing that milking skills can still pay off if you didn't do very well at high school.
Some local musicians who had absolutely nothing nice to say about this year's blues band project and offered not a whit of help were so impressed with the results that they would like to organise something similar next year. These slow learners are on to a good thing as our guest Musicians-in-Residence, Tim Gaze and Rob Grosser, taught an all local crew consisting of Al Hayes, Neill Cullen, Connor Cleary, Andrew Martin, Peter Stone, Llew Evans and Mark McLaughlin quite a few professional tricks of the trade and local Homeleigh lad, Peter Bolton, who played dazzling keyboards also did much of the production and musical arrangements. Pete is now being courted by several buskers who want to start a band.
Adrian Downie provided great sound production for the workshops and rehearsals and Molly wandered around ranting and raving about the cost of the project to avoid the unpleasant experience of conversations about money.
In the short space of two days these musicians cared, shared and worked hard on refining the blues band project and the ³Tim and the Turkeys² set on the Commercial Hotel sponsored Main Street Superstage was as inspiring and professional as it gets.
Everyone involved in this project can be as proud as they like because the audience absolutely loved 'em, cruel critics such as meself and David Burke loved 'em and Leo Glass, Phil Levy, Johny Green and all his Blues Cowboys were full of praise for the project and everyone involved. The gregarious Grunter said, ³Unreal man, unreal!²
NEXT FESTIVAL?
Next year's Fairymount Festival should be the biggest ever, what with the Centenary of the town and the Centenary of Federation being celebrated in the same year.
Many brilliant ideas are already being bandied about, with a sort of broad general overall concept of celebrating Kyogle's rich history at the same time as exploring our potentially exciting future dominating ideas for a theme.
Eloquent experts have pointed out the amazing economic boom which would be created with an expansion of "Gateway" industries such as bush tucker, farmstay accommodation, cabinet and other plantation forestry, Landcare projects and other local "boutique" opportunities, especially inbound tourism. (I have often pondered on the anomaly that Kyogle can support an outbound travel agency with a customer base of some three and a half thousand people, but cannot create an inbound tourist facility with a customer base consisting of the rest of the world's population!)
A famous tradition of the Kyogle Fairymount Festival is the post mortem meeting and this year our fearless leader, Tina Pisasale, came up with the brilliant idea of combining the Annual General Meeting with the Post-Mortem Meeting ­ should be a hoot!
The festival has always welcomed new members and new ideas and when there are plenty of helpers, the job of putting together the whole event can be a lot of fun and conviviality. As this event is also when the committee is rewarded for its efforts throughout the year with a couple of corned beef and pickle sandwiches and small drinkies, you would be silly not to turn up and say a few words.
NB: Fairymount Festival AGM (and pow-wow)  Monday,  August 7th  at 7pm, top pub.