If ever there was any doubt – after the success of the likes of the Birdsville Races, the Mundi Mundi Bash, and the Bony Mountain Folk Festival – then the recently concluded Henty Machinery Field Days proves it beyond doubt … country events are back!
Located in the heart of the nation’s food bowl in southern NSW, the mixed farming event – which has been on a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus – smashed all records as 70,000 flocked to enjoy the festivities
For the first time in the event’s 60-year history, organisers of the Henty Machinery Field Days are turning away crowds at the gates.
All the car parks were full and traffic jams stretched for hours on roads from surrounding towns on the final day of the, north of Albury-Wodonga.
The event drew huge crowds ... and a good time was had by all! PICS: Henty Machinery Field Days
Henty Machinery Field Days chief executive Belinda Anderson told the ABC it was unprecedented.
“The support and interest in the event is amazing,” she said. “All of our members who’ve been involved for many, many years, they’ve never seen anything like this.”
Mrs Anderson said neighbouring paddocks had to be used to absorb the excess vehicles.
“We have had a record 70,000 visitors across the three days with the bulk of those attending on Thursday,” she said. “This is a record attendance in the 59 years of field days history … it is possibly a number we will never see again.
Mrs Anderson said all the exhibitors were over the moon, reporting enormous sales of all manner of agricultural products and services.
“The combination of a public holiday, good weather and the return from Covid created the perfect storm,” she said.
Nonetheless, the overwhelming success of the events return suggest that the appetite of the public for country fairs and festivals has not been diminished by the absence of many of them … indeed it may have reached new heights.
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