Tumut Autumn Festival Returns To Town

CELEBRATE the autumn season and Tumut’s best weekend of the year in style when the 2023 Falling Leaf Festival returns to Wynyard Street in the centre of town.

A major highlight of the Snowy Valleys event calendar, this year, with the return of the highly popular street parade, alongside the comedy gala there will be entertainment galore for family, friends and visitors. The outstanding markets including local produce, arts and crafts and the always popular live music stage will ensure the 2023 Festival is not to be missed.

Falling Leaf Festival president, Michael Cichocki said, “We are really pleased to be able to bring the Falling Leaf Festival back to the main street of Tumut. Community and visitor feedback has shown that the street parade has been missed - and we hope it will be better than ever before in 2023.”

The Friday night comedy gala will again be hosted at the Montreal Community Theatre and the main festival hub on the Saturday will be in Wynyard Street, seeing a strategic move away from Bila Park. There will be creative and cultural workshops around town in the morning, as well as markets and live music throughout the day. The whole family will be kept busy with roving entertainment and plenty of kids’ activities.

The main event of the Festival, the street parade at 1pm on the Saturday will be huge. Crowds line the route as a procession of colourful costumes, people, vintage cars plus community groups celebrate the falling leaf and autumn season parading through town.

Businesses, community groups and sporting clubs are invited to get in touch with Festival organisers via the Festival website to express interest in running workshops and taking part in the street parade.

“This is a great opportunity for the people of Tumut and surrounding areas to get really involved in the Falling Leaf Festival. The Festival prides itself in showing o the best of what the region has to o er at the most perfect time of year- when Tumut is at its most beautiful. The Parade is a great way to really express our spirit as a community and local businesses, schools, service groups and clubs are invited to take part,” said Michael Cichocki.

With an influx of visitors to Tumut, the captive crowds on-hand throughout the central business district over the entire weekend will see the town thriving and the place to be as eateries, pubs and clubs and businesses come alive for the Festival. For visitors looking for an extended stay, the surrounding towns are ideal for sightseeing and Tumut has accommodation in the centre of town, perfect to park the car and walk everywhere. For all Festival information visit the event website.

THE task for Dave Warby to break his father’s world water speed record was never going to be as simple as build a boat, drive it fast and the record would be broken. Ken Warby set the world water speed record in October 1978 at 511.09 kmh (317.58 mph) at Blowering Dam near Tumut and it still stands today. But, if everything had gone to plan minus the pandemic, crew chief Phillip Frawley thinks the record would have been broken by now.

“We’re two and a half years behind now because of the bloody COVID you know. We’d have a record by now there’s no doubt in our minds that we’d have the record by now if it hadn’t been for COVID,” said Warby Motorsport crew chief Phillip Frawley.

The plan this autumn is to return to Blowering Dam and resume high speed testing. The exact date is unknown, they are negotiating with council for use of Blowering Dam. So, keep an eye on social media channels for updates.

The most recent testing was November 2022 where the Spirit of Australia II boat tested new rudders on the Manning River at Taree. The new rudders were machined to fine tolerances “and we just wanted to make sure that they worked properly,” said Frawley.

The sti breeze of 25 knots did not help their cause in Taree, but they are confident that the rudders, with two di erent profiles, are looking good at this stage.

When asked did the boat need the open water now to ramp up the speed and see how it performs, Frawley agreed. He stated “we think we’ve got the stability where it needs to be, it’s just a case of gradually increasing the speed”.

“We had it up to 400 k’s as you know, and it was a fair bit unstable as Dave reported, and then we made a whole bunch of modifications since then. We’re pretty confident that we’re very, very close to having the boat exactly where we need to have it.”

The good news is the boat has recently been tested in a wind tunnel, and the results received in January. “We know that the computerised wind tunnel testing that they did says that the boat is safe, well beyond the speeds that we’re looking for. So that was a good outcome.”

The team have had great support from the Newcastle University faculty for fluid dynamics, and defence force individuals have volunteered their time in a nono cial capacity, Frawley mentioned when discussing the ongoing behind the scenes work.

Dave Warby has mentioned numerous times at Tumut that boat speed has never been the issue and he has never pushed the accelerator too far. They need to wait to have the boat performing smoothly before they really up the ante. A visit this autumn with favourable weather conditions should set them up for the next leg of their journey.