SPECIAL EDITION Thursday 15 September 2016
ISSUE 29
IMAGE: The Boorowa Irish Woolfest has come a long way since its beginnings as ‘Wool Week’, with 150 sheep now taking to the main street of Boorowa in the running of the sheep.
Boorowa Irish Woolfest to Celebrate 20 Years This year, the Boorowa Irish Woolfest will be celebrating 20 years of action, and the 2016 festival will be one of the best yet. A huge October long weekend has been planned. Sunday October 2nd will be the main day of the event, with the highlight being the running of the sheep and the street parade, which will take place at 12pm. A host of other activities will be held between 9am and 4pm and in line with the Irish theme of the event, Melbourne-based Celtic band ‘Zeon’ will be playing throughout the day.
The headline act will be joined by some other musicians as well, and there will also be a whip cracking display by the Wicks and Pittman families, both of which are national champions. Starting on the Saturday, the NSW Trial Yard Dog Championships will be held for the first time in Boorowa, as well as the South West Slopes Championships. These events will run across Saturday and Sunday from 7.30am. Saturday will also see the popular ‘quick shear’ sheep shearing competition, as well
as a rodeo, a gold trail reenactment, and the Long Lazy Dinner. Woolfest organiser Mel Ford said the event took 12 months to plan. “I would like to thank all of our sponsors as well. The event would not be possible without that support,” she said. The first ever Boorowa Woolfest took place in 1997, with the event being an expansion of the previous Wool Week, which started a couple of years earlier. The former Wool Week event was similar to the current concept of Woolfest in that it celebrated the great sheep and wool of Boorowa, but ran for a whole week at the Showground and only featured displays. In 1997 it was decided to evolve the event to the more festival-like atmosphere it has today, and the famous running of the sheep through town was also introduced. In 2000 the event was officially renamed to ‘Boorowa Irish Woolfest’ to recognise the strong Irish heritage Boorowa has through the original European settlers - the Ryan and Corcoran families. While Woolfest nowadays runs for less days than what it did as Wool Week, many more events and activities now take place, and Mel Ford said this had grown the event from strength to strength. “It’s much more of a festival these days, and it’s a great economic development tool for the town and region,” she said. “We have 150 sheep in the running of the sheep down Marsden Street.” By Joshua Matic
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