Parade floats revealed
Our history to lead floral show
TUCKED away in a Harlaxton warehouse, designers are about to put the final touches on the Grand Central Floral Parade lead float.
Joy Heylen and her team spent the past months building the float referencing the first bullock-lead floats from 70 years ago. She engaged eight Toowoomba artists to paint a collection of fibreglass bullocks that will take pride of place on the float.
“All we have left to do is put 585 flowers into the float and we will do that on Friday. They will be different colours of petunias,” Mrs Heylen said.
“They are the best flowers for floats because they are hardy and when you pull the caps off dead buds they will regenerate.”
Mrs Heylen has worked on carnival floats for the past 12 years.
“What I really enjoyed about this one was the community outreach and the fact that we engaged with local artists and supported local artists,” she said. “It is more of a collaboration, whereas previous years I would just design, construct and deliver.”
The float draws on a subtle pastel colours range of soft pinks, yellows and blues.
Mrs Heylen said this was another reference to vintage floats.
Along with the fresh flowers and fibreglass bullocks, the float carries a series of undulating flowers made from EVA foam. Despite Mrs Heylen’s decade of experience this was her first go at using the moulded material.
“I worked with Nick Scotney, a local prop builder and costume designer, and I learnt this beautiful technique to make the flowers with EVA foam,” she said.
“We made about 60 flowers for the float and used about 200m of EVA foam.
“It is a heat reactive foam, you can heat it, shape it, curve it and it holds that memory.”
The Grand Central Floral Parade starts at 3pm on Saturday, running west along Herries St, south along Ruthven St and east along Margaret St, to end at Queens Park.