By Tania Phillips
The Fern Brothers Music and Nine Year Sister will head up the entertainment for this year’s bigger than usual Australia Day celebrations in Killarney at Pat Bush Bicentennial Park (aka Lions Park).
Killarney Lion’s Club member Rod Peterson said with Killarney Memorial Aged Care (KMAC) securing extra funding for this year’s event there would be more to see, do, eat and listen to with the day including both breakfast and lunch, entertainment and the annual Killarney Citizenship awards.
“This year it’s a joint venture with KMAC and the Australia Day Council who put forward a bit of funding this year,” Rod explained.
“What we’re aiming to do is kick off at breakfast by 8am in the morning. We reckon we’ll have a pretty good breakfast, bacon and eggs, baked beans, sausages, tomato and we have a couple of guys cooking quite a bit of damper so there will be damper and syrup.
“We’ve been doing it for the past 20 years – we are the only town in the shire that’s doing it ourselves, all the other Australia Day celebrations are sponsored by council in some shape or form. We’ve always chosen to do our own thing but we usually have a couple of council representatives out here though.”
He said the Australia Day awards are always a highlight of the day for the region.
The awards, announced on the day, include:- Killarney Citizens Award, Junior Citizens Award, Senior Sports Award, Junior Sports Award, Coach/Official Award and Community Event Award.
Nominations are still open for these awards until a couple of days before with forms available from the Killarney Newsagency, Warwick Credit Union – Killarney Branch or by phoning John on 0419 785900.
They are accepted from the Killarney area as well as from Legume area across the border and outlying areas of Killarney including Emu Vale, Murrays Bridge.
“The awards ceremony will be somewhere around 9.30am 10am though the timing of that hasn’t quite been decided yet, we often oblige the councillors or Mayor who like to come to ours and then go to the Warwick one,” Rod explained.
“We will be putting on a barbecue lunch as well and we have a couple of good bands for entertainment and some Killarney talent too.
“The pool, which is right next door, will be open for the event and in there will be a slippery slide for the kids, we will also have some free icecream for the kids and we’ve got a sheep dog demonstration, whip cracking and a jumping castle.
“We will also have a few of those novelty crazy events including mini-putt putt, gumboot throwing, egg and spoon racing, some of the silly fun things that people love to do.
“If it happens to be a wet weather event, it will most likely move to the Rec Club but it’s turned pretty dry out here in the past few months.
“Bottom line is we are putting on an extra special event so an extra special turn out from the population would be great.”
