Organisers of an iconic Corryong festival feel confident it can withstand competition from a clashing Wodonga rodeo event this year.
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Last week’s announcement of the Professional Bull Riders Wodonga Invitational on April 7 left some fans regretting it coincided with The Man From Snowy River Bush Festival (April 5-8).
The bush festival’s own rodeo program is also scheduled for April 7.
Festival co-ordinator Jennifer Boardman said she had been surprised to hear about the PBR event about a month ago.
“I just feel it’s unfortunate when there’s so many days in the year,” she said.
“Commonsense would say pick a different date and keep both events going, there’s not much point trying to compete with each other, there’s no sense in that at all.”
Ms Boardman said festival sales were going well and the four-day program offered a diverse range of activities, including art shows, street parades, markets and dog events.
PBR Australia general manager Glen Young said venue availability and fitting in logistically with other stops on the PBR Australia tour influenced the choice of date at Gateway Island.
“We are working to hold the PBR Wodonga event on the weekend prior or following The Man from Snowy River Festival in 2019 to try to avoid any clash next year,” he said.
Mr Young said PBR Australia had been aware of the Corryong fixture “but when we were looking at dates for PBR Wodonga initially, The Man from Snowy River Festival was scheduled for the end of March to April 2”.
However Ms Boardman said festival dates were set 18 months to two years ahead and never over the Easter weekend.
The 2017 festival took place between March 30 and April 2 while the 2019 dates will be April 4-7.
Mr Young said the impact of this year’s situation was hard to predict as some people might go to the Saturday night invitational in addition to the four-day festival.
“That’s how we first became alerted to the clash as a group of PBR fans from north Queensland said they were going to take in both events,” he said.
“Plus, we are capped at 3500 attendance.
“So we would like to think that some PBR fans will attend our event as well as The Man from Snowy River Festival.
“I know that a lot of our team is planning to do so.”
