The Collector Village will be celebrating ten years of its famous Pumpkin Festival on Sunday May 5 2013 and is pleased to announce that ten percent of the gate takings will be donated directly to the Gunning and District Community Health Service.
Since its inception in 2003 as a small community event the Pumpkin Festival has grown into one of the largest harvest festivals in the country. On Pumpkin Festival day, the village of Collector is filled to the brim with giant pumpkins, amazing scarecrows and rows of colourful stalls selling great food and everything from local produce to wonderful treasures from around the world.
With the growth in the festival has come the opportunity for organisers to build community partnerships that will benefit organisations throughout the district. The contribution of funds to the Gunning and District Community Health Service has come as a result of an offer by volunteers from Gunning to assist with the annual event.
With additional volunteers on board, the Pumpkin Festival committee intends to make the tenth annual festival the biggest one yet. “We are pulling out all the stops this year to mark this significant milestone”, Pumpkin Festival Coordinator; Gary Poile said. “Now that we have some extra help, we will be able to expand our festival to cater for the expected growth in visitor numbers”, he said.
Already, the committee has been inundated by requests from potential stallholders for sites at the 2013 festival and extra space will be opened up to cater for as many as possible. The festival will also feature a great line up of new entertainment acts, a new “Expo Marquee”, a huge display of classic cars and a doubling in the size of the pumpkin exhibition marquee.
Regular visitors to the Pumpkin Festival will be pleased that the main stage will be relocated to take advantage of the natural amphitheatre in the Church Yard and provide more space for them to relax and enjoy the entertainment. This will free up the area adjacent to “Pumpkin Square” for the new Expo Marquee that will show case displays by the festival’s partners. “We still have a lot of work to do, but the plans are coming together nicely and the committee is very excited at the prospect of breaking all the records next May,” said Poile.
More pumpkins than ever are expected for the tenth anniversary of the
Collector Village Pumpkin festival; Sunday May 5th 2013.