Venetian Carnival has a rich local history
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The Venetian Carnival was first held in December 1951 on the banks of the Macintyre River in Campbell Park. Other towns had Christmas carnivals and Inverell Apex decided the town needed an event around Christmas where other groups could hold fund raising activities in a family atmosphere. The name Venetian was chosen to highlight the river and borrow the concept of carnivale on the canals of Venice.
There were many fund raising groups in Inverell and all were invited to attend, each with their own unique attraction such as cake stalls, Games of Chance, lucky numbers and raffles. One popular site was the Ambulance lucky number stall. At the time, the ambulance service was run on a membership system and local officers had to collect regular subscriptions from the members and fund raise very much like the Westpac helicopter service does today. Over the years the carnival gradually got bigger with almost every service club, sporting organisation and charity taking part.
The Venetian Carnival was always free to enter and then a charge per family was introduced. The venue in Campbell Park made it hard to restrict entry so in 1984 the Club moved to Rugby Park. A gate charge per person was introduced but it lacked the atmosphere and after several years the decision was made to return to the riverside.
It was at Rugby Park that one of the more adventurous means of delivering Santa was tried when Santa parachuted onto the footy field with a smoke flare attached to his foot. Unfortunately the Apexian doing the public address joked that Santa might be on fire, at which time 500 children began screaming and crying. Luckily Santa wasn’t on fire and managed to deliver the lollies and calm the children down. With the return of the Carnival to the riverside venue a few years later another ambitious delivery of Santa was tried, with a flying fox hitched to a house across the river and Santa wizzed from bank to bank at a great rate of knots. Again Santa arrived without injury.
Santa has seen fit to use every possible conveyance including: fire engine, police car, police motor cycle, motor boat, jet ski, horse drawn cart, antique cars and sports cars. How will Santa arrive this year? You’ll have to be there to find out. But you can be assured he will have the famous lolly bags!
The Venetian Carnival starts at 5pm in Campbell Park tomorrow.
Barnaby criticism finds support in community
While staff in the Times newsroom were busy working on today’s edition yesterday, the following emailed arrived in our editor’s inbox from a member of the community.
It was in response to the editorial in last week’s edition:
“Congratulations to the Times for its strong editorial (Friday December 5) critical of our federal member Barnaby Joyce for arriving in Inverell to meet with stakeholders, totally unaware it would seem, of the need for backgrounding in the matters under discussion.
“Whatever one’s opinion of for MP’s Windsor and Torbay, they could could rarely be accused of such insulting and incompetent treatment of their constituents.
“Sadly, I sense your editorial may have been missed by many of the Shire’s self-styled intellectual and cultural elite, who shun local media on the basis they are just mouthpieces of Murdoch, Fairfax, et.al.”
Okay, On the Pulse should interrupt here and point out that The Inverell Times is published by Fairfax Media. Mouthpiece? We are Fairfax Media. And like all Fairfax papers, our editorial departments are independent. No one has tried to shut down OTP yet. Anyway, we digress.
The email concluded with the following paragraph: “The question has to be asked – just what were he and his staffers doing during the 120-odd minute road trip? Playing “I Spy”, or perhaps “Tweeting”, updating Facebook or checking eBay? Maybe the former, as continuous mobile phone coverage between here and Tamworth is as likely as Mr Joyce enjoying a 2nd term as Member for New England.”