Rupanyup 150 success livens community spirit

Organisers of an historic celebration in the Wimmera would like to keep the momentum rolling for their township after gaining overwhelming support at the weekend.

Rupanyup celebrated its 150th anniversary with a long-weekend of festivities to reflect on the origins of the town dating back to its settlement.

The three-day event followed the re-opening of Rupanyup Commercial Hotel, bringing a pub back to the town.

The event launched with the unveiling of chainsaw artist John Brady’s latest sculpture affectionately known as the ‘pup from Rup’ and a viewing of a documentary featuring footage of late Rupanyup resident John Teasdale, which explores Rupanyup’s connection with farming.

Rupanyup 150th committee chairman Russell Dunlop said following the success at the weekend, organisers would like to keep the ball rolling in reinvigorating the town.

“We’re guessing there were more than 1000 people, just on Saturday,” he said.

“We’ve got a meeting Friday-week, we’ve got to see what we can do with the momentum we’ve created from this event.

“We’ll never recreate this, because you couldn’t do that every year, but we could have a farmers market and perhaps a sunset banquet associated with it.

“We could possibly attach a Saturday to our Rupanyup DIRT MUSIC Festival and make a weekend of it.”

Mr Dunlop said people enjoyed live entertainment on Saturday and a farmers market, which complemented classic agricultural show features such as sheaf tossing and a sheep shearing demonstration.

“We were just blown away. The number of people who came was just amazing. We even started running out of food,” he said.

“If it wasn’t for the cricket club – they helped cater for Saturday. They raced around and got food from Horsham and they were cooking all afternoon.

“The weather was perfect. The oval looked fantastic and having the farmers market, it provided the vibe that we needed.

“It was nice to reminisce, picking up old aspects of the show, people really got into the feel of that.”

Mr Dunlop said he would like to thank all who were involved in the weekend.

“You can see on Facebook all the wonderful comments made about the weekend. People came and got into the spirit of it, the people made the event what it was,” he said.

“A credit to each individual group involved, who contributed to the success of the event.”