Bendigo Easter Festival announces major changes

Thursday 20 October 2011

Following on from the success of this year, the Bendigo Easter Festival will retain a three day format in 2012 commencing on Good Friday April 6 and concluding on Easter Sunday April 8.

Chair of the Bendigo Easter Festival Committee Cr Rod Fyffe said this is a major change for the festival and while he understood that some people in the community may not be pleased about the change it is integral to the festival’s ongoing success.

“The community need to understand that the Bendigo Easter Festival is run on an extremely tight budget that relies heavily on more than 600 volunteers.

“The festival doesn’t receive any funding from the State or Federal Government’s and relies soley on funding from the City of Greater Bendigo and our sponsors.

“Let there be no doubt the festival does not run itself and without the goodwill of our volunteers and financial support from both the City of Greater Bendigo and our sponsors it simply would not be possible to run it at all.

“To ensure the festival continues into the future we need to ensure that we spend what little funds we do have in the best possible way.

“This year due to Anzac Day we were able to concentrate our funding into the three day festival rather than spread it thinly over four days and this worked really well and resulted in a much better, more action packed festival,” said Cr Fyffe.

He said the change to a three day festival will see some old favourites like the awakening of the dragon and the torchlight and gala parades moved to different days over the Easter period.

“The main changes will see the awakening of the dragon, the torchlight parade and fireworks take place on Easter Saturday while the gala parade featuring Sun Loong will take place at a later starting time on Easter Sunday.

“This decision has not been taken lightly and we have consulted with all of the festivals  stakeholders and sponsors who have all agreed to the new format,” said Cr Fyffe.

Traditional Easter Festival events will take place as follows:-

Media Inquiries:                      John Rossi 54346067