It’s time for our Begonia Festival to evolve

BY RON EGEBERG

IN the lead-up to this year’s Begonia Festival, I put together a two-part summary of the evolution of the Begonia Festival in the Ballarat Times.

That summary described how this festival has served Ballarat exceptionally well. I believe it is now timely for it to transition into a month-long event that incorporates the theme ‘Ballarat in Autumn’.

The Begonia Festival was established in an attempt to differentiate our city from other Australian regional centres and, hence, the begonia was chosen to define our city under various rubrics such as Beautiful Ballarat in Autumn, Ballarat: The City Beautiful, Ballarat the Garden City in the Garden State, and The Golden City.

The Begonia Festival became the vehicle by which we sold our city and the region, not only from a tourism, visitor economy and visiting friends and relatives perspective but also from an economic development viewpoint, with a focus on industry and the potential for investment.

Over the years it has attracted millions of people and families to Ballarat, including prime ministers, premiers, governors and royalty.

The festival has been recognised via many awards and accolades presented by Australian and Victorian tourism authorities and then when the 50th festival in 2002 was held, the Begonia Festival had entered the 21st century strong and stable.

It had become a key component of the development and promotion of Ballarat as a major tourism destination, attracting in excess of 100,000 people to the annual event. Our begonias became famous throughout Australia, even reaching overseas.

After 2002, the Begonia Festival was reduced to a three-day community event, with little if any promotion outside of Ballarat. Regrettably, it had become overshadowed by a plethora of other annual events in our city (some, sadly, not reflecting our city) and was transformed into a much smaller version of itself.

However, isn’t it time to revisit celebrating our city? And what better time to do it than in March, the best time of the year to be outdoors in Ballarat. Why not reinstate the ‘Beautiful Ballarat in Autumn’ theme?

To support such a transition, research had been carried out a few years ago that proved that capitalising on Ballarat’s four distinct seasons would be a huge benefit to our city. It would translate into increased overnight stays, which, in turn, would create an ongoing economic boon for our city.

Ballarat could be reinvigorated with a month-long celebration, where tourists visited the begonias and other attractions.

The begonias would remain a major feature, as would the gardens and lake, our arts and cultural attractions, sporting and recreation activities, food and wine, and, of course, our history and heritage, and Ballarat the city of innovation.

To my mind, Beautiful Ballarat in Autumn, along with the potential to leverage from the negatives associated with Ballarat’s weather, presents further opportunities for other seasonal events such as Eureka, ‘Ballarat, you’ve found it’ in summer, and in winter, continue the Winter Festival and create a ‘Spring into Ballarat’ event for September.

Ballarat and the region has great strengths. We can build on the international visitation and build events and business events and conferences around the seasons. These are very real untapped growth prospects for our visitor economy.