Celebrate a local flavour

By Lachlan Ellis

Mark your calendars, festival lovers – an iconic Moorabool festival is set to liven up a main street again next year, and organisers are planning to make it bigger and better than ever.

The Ballan Autumn Festival (BAF) will be back to fill Inglis Street with colour and cheer next year, with the Committee announcing last week that the Festival’s date will be Sunday 17 March.

Last year’s Festival was a booming success, with around 9,000 people attending – and hopes are high that next year’s may welcome an even bigger crowd.

Secretary of the BAF Committee, Mary-Lou Spain, said work was already underway behind the scenes, and the hard-working volunteers were eager to make next year’s BAF the best yet.

“The parade has always been reported as the main attraction at the Festival, in the last couple of days we’ve been hearing that this year’s parade was the best ever. So we’re looking at ways we can enhance the parade working with the Wombat Regional Arts Network, to have a new banner system to announce each float as they go through,” Ms Spain told the Moorabool News.

“We’re also planning to reposition the stage and bring in some more targeted musical acts for the stage. The pet show will be back, and hopefully the CWA afternoon tea as well.”

While BAF is famous for its themes – this year’s was superhero themed, and 2019 was ‘The Ballan Academy of Magic’ – Ms Spain said next year’s event would go “back to its roots”, and celebrate the beauty and wonder of Ballan in autumn.

“We’ve decided this year not to go with a theme, to celebrate what the Festival is all about, which is Ballan in autumn and who we are as a township and a community. There will be no theme this year, I suppose it’s more about Ballan itself. We’re hoping we won’t distract from that this year, by going back to the roots and focusing on what it means to be Ballan in autumn,” she said.

“We’ll be going back to the core of the Ballan Autumn Festival, celebrating a much more local flavour, with some interesting acts coming through.”

Applications for market stalls, parade entries, pet show and more will open in the coming weeks, and a new BAF website is also in the works.

For updates, keep an eye on the Ballan Autumn Festival Facebook page.